Despite the rising cost of maintaining operations, several companies still put money on Six Sigma trainings. Simply because the payback for such projects is high.
Two companies in particular took the long-and-hard decision to pursue Six Sigma Black Belt Training with SQT Training Ltd. How their initial expense turned into a wise investment is something for other companies to learn from.
The Black Belt programme involves 20 days training carried out over a 4 month period (1 week per month) with the delivery of the key outcome–a strategic company project.
The first company, an electronics manufacturer in Ireland. Its first “project” was on increasing the reliability of a non-core but nonetheless necessary, screen manufacturing process. The second “project” was to reduce the defect level of specific components on delivery time to the customer.
At the onset, the screen reject rate from the screen manufacturing process was in excess of 50%. During the deployment, it was found that the process standard deviation could be reduced by 40% resulting in a 20% unit cost reduction and an 80% lead time reduction. The resultant savings were in excess of ?125,000. For its lead-time project, the defects were reduced from 611 ppm to approximately 45 ppm. It generated annual savings in excess of ?114,000.
The second company is Molex in southwest Ireland, the world’s second-largest manufacturer of electronic, electrical and fiber optic interconnection products and systems.
The Irish plant were challenged by a 28,000 ppm internal reject level on a new product line. During the initial investigations, they found out that resistance failures made up 70% of the problem, and that the 28,000 ppm was only achieved by retesting ?failed? units (44,000 ppm from the first test).
The company addressed the problem by developing resistance standards of 0.33 ohms and 0.5 ohms. That allowed for more accurate calibration at lower resistance levels. Its Six Sigma team got all three to accurately repeat in a guage R&R study. The result was a drop to 4000 ppm, with all three testers giving comparable results. The trainee Black Belt?s diligence and perseverance resulted in an 85% reduction in reject level and savings of over ?75,000 p.a.
Read more Six Sigma Training ? Is it worth the investment?
