Thomas Cutler shares with Quality Digest the value of Six Sigma on Engineer-to-Order Manufacturer. He opens by saying, “In a repetitive manufacturing environment, Six Sigma’s quantification is much easier than in the engineer-to-order (ETO) manufacturing environment, where no two products are identical.”
With ETO and Six Sigma, it’s Six Sigma that provides the unifying influence on engineering and manufacturing. As a result, there is a quality control system that ensures flexibility and consistency to deliver the highest quality manufacturing services and cost effective product delivery.
Take a look at the features of Six Sigma and ETO and what it can do both together.
Some key quality ETO challenges:
- Rapid expansion and addition of new facilities
- Increasing variety of manufactured products
- A requirement to achieve and sustain for full ISO quality system certification
- A need to reconcile disparate paper and electronic systems and tools used to plan, measure, and manage quality control
- A need to reduce costs and maintain or improve product quality
Six Sigma focuses on three essential elements:
- Delighting customers. Customers define quality. ETO customers with one-of-a-kind manufacturing requirements still expect performance, reliability, competitive prices, on-time delivery, service, and clear, correct transaction processing.
- Outside-in thinking. Quality requires ETO manufacturers to view business from the customer’s perspective only.
- Leadership commitment. People create results. Involving all employees is essential to the success of ETO manufacturers and a Six Sigma implementation.
Six Sigma benefits in the ETO environment:
- Streamlined tracking and management of Six Sigma issues
- Employees are held accountable for turnaround time and quality
- Problem products, vendors or employees will be quickly identified
- Centralized problem-knowledge database for quick diagnosis
- Rapid identification of outstanding problems based on exceeding time to resolve
- Full integration with inventory control, scheduling, data collection, item master and bills or material
- Tracking of all training, consulting, labor and equipment costs associated with your Six Sigma implementation
- Electronic reports, CAD files, flowcharts or photos can be attached to each task, so all information is available online
Press Release: Visibility ETO ERP and Six Sigma Profiled in Quality Digest
*Photo credit: MorgueFile.com
