Six Sigma Best Practices Lead Other Companies to Six Sigma

When successful companies like GE, Dupont, and Bombardier shared their Six Sigma best practices, many other companies saw the value of Six Sigma more.

For example, GE, with an already 9-year Six Sigma journey, began using Six Sigma to improve sales effectiveness in year five. Jack Welch said, “We found that Six Sigma isn’t only for engineers. . . . Regional sales managers can use it to improve forecast reliability, pricing strategies, or pricing variation.”

DuPont, which has integrated Six Sigma in their processes for four years, began using Six Sigma for top line growth in year two. According to VP and Corporate Champion-Six Sigma, Don Linsemann, “Six Sigma brought a new focus on the voice of the customer. Customer input is valuable in driving research development, product development, and applications.”

Bombardier’s 7-year Six Sigma initiative initially focused its business improvement efforts on cash flow, cost reduction, cost improvement, cost avoidance and efficiency improvement. Today, many of their Six Sigma projects are focused on growth projects to increase sales volume and sales margins.

Because of these companies, others saw the need of Six Sigma not only in manufacturing processes but also in other processes of the organization. The identified processes where Six Sigma can be used are the following:

• Client relationship management
• Sales effectiveness
• New market development
• Pricing process improvement
• Advertising/communication improvement
• Branding effectiveness
• Channel effectiveness
• Lead management
• Service improvement
• Product development

Six Sigma has practically invaded other processes. This goes to show that companies are now realizing that a holistic approach to Six Sigma is a much better option.

Source:
Six Sigma for Sales: Truth About the Customers’ Needs

Filed under: Best Practices, Sales, Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations

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A Six Sigma in Your Shopping Experience

It’s the time of year again of cheer and giving: Christmas. So what do people do? They either rush to the stores and shop or sit in their comfortable chairs, turn on their PC and click-shop away.

With the former, shoppers only need to survive traffic (especially for the last-minute shoppers), crowded shops, and long queues. When management see these, they can always create reroutes or detours to eas up traffic, open more counters. In other words, the action can be immediate.

It’s different though with online shopping experience. Shoppers will have to deal with downtime, erroneous checkouts, or order status is unavailable. The statistics of online shoppers is growing and perhaps it’s good to look at it with Six Sigma eyes.

Over at iSixSigma, I found two interesting articles on how Six Sigma can be applied to your online shopping experience. The first article touches on the growing figures of online shopping and how was it so far. The second article details the metrics and Six Sigma levels for online shopping. Check them out:

Online Holiday Shopping at 2 Sigma
Metrics and Sigma Levels for Online Shopping

Here’s wishing everyone a holiday shopping experience at 6 Sigma!

*Photo from Stock.Xchng

Filed under: Internet, Sales, Services, Technology, iSixSigma

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A Six Sigma Winery?

Yes, indeed, there is a Six Sigma Winery. And true to its name, the company promises only the best quality wine. According to them, a great bottle of wine does not just happen!

Six Sigma Vineyards and Winery combines the old-world art of making wine with the science of data-driven Six Sigma principles. To accomplish this, Six Sigma has gathered a team of experts working towards a common goal: Making wine of an extraordinary quality at an affordable price.

I find the company really interesting, because they have named their businesses as Six Sigma ranch, Six Sigma vineyard, and Six Sigma winery. It appears that Six Sigma is powering every aspect of their business.

As I read through their profile, I found out that Kaj Ahlmann, the owner, named the business after the management process he had successfully implemented during his professional career. Together with his wife, Else Ahlmann who had worked for consultants to large breweries, bought the 4,300-acre ranch in 2000, and put up their Six Sigma company.

When you check out their site, you will see that the company is active and seems to be a lot of fun.

Let’s check out their winery and wines and wine shop and get a taste of Six Sigma.

Filed under: Processes, R&D, Retail, Sales, Services, Six Sigma Organizations, Six Sigma Vineyards and Winery, Sustainable Business, Team Dynamics

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Six Sigma News Round-up

Here’s your dose of Six Sigma news from iSixSigma and YouTube.

Lean Six Sigma Cleans Up TARDEC Shop by restructuring the Design, Advanced Materials and Rapid Prototyping Center in July 2006 after identifying several types of waste: delay of locating materials, duplication and re-orders due to disorganization and ruined materials, errors in unidentified material, lost opportunity due to lack of space and incorrect inventory. To quickly correct this problem the team developed and implemented an identification system and material handling procedure that would significantly reduce waste and cost to TARDEC.

Harsco Reaffirms Company’s Continuing Growth Outlook at Annual Stockholders Meeting, Continues Six Sigma. The Annual Meeting follows one day after Harsco’s announcement of record results for the first quarter of 2007, in which the Company posted sales of $840 million, up 23 percent over the prior year, and a 39 percent increase in diluted earnings per share from continuing operations. The strong results mark Harsco’s 14th consecutive quarter of year-over-year increases in both sales and diluted earnings per share.

Linetec Named Manufacturer of Year, Six Sigma Contributes. Company president Rick Marshall thanked Linetec’s employees and also highlighted the company’s adoption of the Six Sigma philosophy to drive continuous improvement and quality. More than 50 employees have completed advanced training to lead Six Sigma projects, including collaborative projects with customers, to reduce waste, shorten lead times and yield financial savings.

Let me end this round-up with a video on YouTube:

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Filed under: Benefits and Savings, DMAIC, Deployment, Lean Six Sigma, Processes, Sales, Services, Tools/Toolkits, YouTube, iSixSigma

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Upcoming Lean & Six Sigma Conferences

Continuous improvement requires continuous learning. So, today, let me highlight the Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma conferences in the coming months.

On April 17, 2007, there is the 8th Annual Six Sigma Summit 2007 in UK. You will learn how to rate your market performance against fellow Six Sigma practitioners through onsite benchmarking programme; discover proven Six Sigma strategies; and learn from Europe’s award-winning Six Sigma projects .

The 3rd Annual Lean Six Sigma Summit in Chicago, USA will have workshops on April 24 & 27, and the summit from April 25 to 26. During the event, you will learn how Lean and Six Sigma drive business improvement in manufacturing, services and transactional environments.

From May 8 to 10, 2007, WCBF will host the 4th Annual Six Sigma in Financial Services Conference in New York. This conference will address the real challenges for leadership and senior executives who are striving to reduce their operational inefficiencies and maximize revenue in highly competitive markets.

On May 22-24 is the 4th Annual Six Sigma in Sales & Marketing Conference in Chicago, USA. You will learn how to implement Six Sigma to improve your sales process, develop a compliance and control plan for product development, and identify metrics to track marketing contribution on new product development.

The 8th Annual Asian Six Sigma Summit 2007 in Singapore is happening on June 4-7, 2007. With a focus on innovation, the event will teach you how to engage leadership commitment to extract faster results from Six Sigma, Innovation, & Lean Thinking.

For more upcoming Lean and Six Sigma conferences visit GoingToMeet.com. Or if you have upcoming events, you can add them to the site.

*Photo from Morguefile.com

Filed under: Events/Announcements, Finance, Lean Six Sigma, Manufacturing, Marketing, Sales, Services, Six Sigma References, Training

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Using Six Sigma for Customer Winback

You gain a customer, lose him, win him back or lose him completely. That is the business cycle, and that is the why for your customer relations system. In that cycle, it has been proven that winning back customers is far easier than gaining one.

However, your business focus shouldn’t be this alone. Rather, your business should devise a system that will tell you what your customers really need and want. Yet, you can’t do away with customers who go astray. There are many obvious reasons for that.

Let’s just say that you’re now on the task of winning back your customers. An article on iSixSigma says that you can use Six Sigma’s DMAIC for customer winback. Six Sigma being data driven and doing work by data gathering data, it can help you with the root-cause analysis of losing customers, in the first place. A root cause analysis starts with investigation. The Six Sigma methodology provides the structure as to how to understand the data gathered during investigation.

Based on the book Customer Winback: How to Recapture Lost Customers – and Keep Them Loyal by Jill Griffin and Michael W. Lowenstein, four steps have been identified as to how to go about the investigation. The article points where each step is in the DMAIC methodology. Here’s how it goes:

• Prepare: Determine what the organization knows and what is missing. (Six Sigma covers this within its Define phase.)
• Assemble: Identify unmet requirements, unheard complaints, priorities and areas of importance, and clearer insights. (Six Sigma addresses this portion in its Measure phase.)
• Comprehend: Having collected the information, determine with data models, regression, and statistical significance, areas that call for action and correction. (Six Sigma adds value during the Analyze phase.)
• Employ: Apply the conclusions to correct problems and improve quality and training. Expand support and resources, and establish recognitions and rewards to encourage member loyalty. (Six Sigma specifically targets this in the Improve and Control phases.)

Continue reading…

Source:
iSixSigma, “Customer Winback Concept Begs for Use of Six Sigma,” with link provided by Promax Consulting.

Filed under: Benefits and Savings, Marketing, Sales, Services, Tools/Toolkits

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Lean and Six Sigma Conferences @ GoingToMeet.com

Six Sigma projects couldn’t start without training. Training accounts for the most part of the Six Sigma initiatives. You train your people for Black Belts, Champions, or Green Belts.

Apart from these trainings, Six Sigma practitioners should also continue learning, and Six Sigma projects should also be regularly recognized. That is why IQPC or ISSSP and other Six Sigma training or consultancy groups hold workshops and conferences.

Below are Six Sigma conferences in the coming months.

For more conferences, check out GoingToMeet.com. Or if you have upcoming conferences, trade exhibits, or forums, visit GoingToMeet.com, and add your events there.

Update: You can also read this post on Article-Hangout.com.

Filed under: Events/Announcements, Finance, Healthcare, Lean Six Sigma, Manufacturing, Marketing, Sales, Services, Six Sigma References, Training

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Six Sigma and Other Quality Issues

Time and again, we are told, and even those in the know, agree that Six Sigma is not a silver bullet, which can solve all process improvement problems.

At one time, it has been observed that many organizations do not achieve the savings they hope to achieve with Six Sigma. Well, as quality people would often say, efforts toward improvement is a journey that needs a long-term commitment. And you have to commmit to quality again and again.

I believe that Six Sigma or any other quality strategies is better than nothing at all. What organizations need to do is to evaluate their processes well, and choose which quality methodology is best for them.

Let me share with you today an amusing commentary on the human side of business. It is Dale Dauten’s (The Corporate Curmudgeon) interview with his fellow executive at Mundane Industries ( ), the head of Quality Management, Donald “Zero” Difetto. Published on BostonWorks, the interview touches on Six Sigma, zero-defect initiatives, and other quality issues. The issues are tinged with humor but if you read through it, it makes sense.

DALE: I invited you to join me because I wanted your opinion on a new study. The folks at QualPro, a research company I wrote about recently, searched for corporations announcing new Six Sigma programs, then looked at what happened to each company’s stock price. Of the 58 companies they reviewed, only six had stocks that outperformed the S&P 500, while 52 underperformed. That’s 10 percent up and 90 percent down. Could it be possible that quality is to the manufacturing business what health food is to the restaurant business — everybody says they want it, but nobody actually buys it?

ZERO: So are you anti-quality? Pro-defect? We’re building the best Mundane Industries products ever, and yes, our stock price is falling, but I don’t see how more defects are going to boost the stock price. Take our least-profitable division, our toy business. Not our fault. Our product returns are approaching zero. We are, in effect, making perfect toys.

DALE: Good example. Our lead product this last Christmas season was our “Me too” competitor to “Tickle Me Elmo,” our “Wedgie Me Wayne.” Nobody returned it because nobody bought it. So it’s flawless production of a product nobody wants.

ZERO: That’s marketing, not production. The Wall Street Journal had an article on the stock-price research that quoted Jeffrey Pfeffer, a Stanford professor and Six Sigma advocate, as saying: “You can’t do just one little thing. Low cholesterol is just one measure of health. In the same way, quality management is just one piece of the puzzle, but not the answer to the whole puzzle.”

Read more…

Source:
BostonWorks, “Creating flawless products no one wants” with link provided by Six Sigma Zone.

Filed under: Benefits and Savings, Interview, Retail, Sales

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An Update on “Six Sigma not panning out as promised” at Home Depot

In my previous post, I mentioned that what’s happening at Home Depot these days may be attributed to Six Sigma not delivering on its promise to improve processes and increase bottomline.

Andrew Downard of iSixSigma blogosphere presented sides of the story. I tend to agree with him that “correlation does not necessarily indicate causation.” Read his take on “Reports of our Demise.”

Filed under: Benefits and Savings, Retail, Sales, Six Sigma Organizations

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Brand Six Sigma for Christmas Decors and Gifts

Not done with Christmas shopping yet? Well, brace yourself for a last-minute shopping frenzy. Department stores, grocery checkout counters could very well use Six Sigma or even Lean Six Sigma at this time of the year.

However, you may want to forgo going to the stores altogether and opt for online shopping. Well, one store that vows to have the seal of Six Sigma in their christmas decors and gifts, and services is the Christmas Decorations and Gift Store. Their promise:

Christmas decorations and Christmas gifts must be delivered on time with the correct quantities to the proper address. Christmas Decorations and Gift Store, has dedicated itself to having the best performance of any company selling Christmas decorations and Christmas gifts. The range of Christmas decorations and Christmas gifts is vast. More importantly you will get exactly what you ordered on a timely basis. They are able to make that assertion since they have examined their work practices and adjusted them such that their performance is the best in the industry. The goal is six sigma performance. These levels of performance reduce waste, re-work and unnecessary costs, which are passed on to customers. You will find that the prices on many items are substantially discounted from the manufacturers suggested retail price.

*Photo credit: MorgueFile.com

Merry Christmas everyone!

Filed under: Events/Announcements, Sales, Services, Six Sigma Organizations

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