GE: From Six Sigma to Lean Six Sigma
Posted by: meikah | 20 July 2008 | 9:10 pm
At GE, at the helm of their Six Sigma initiative is their CIO, Gary Reiner. Since GE’s massive Six Sigma initiative in 1996, Mr. Reiner has been at the forefront of GE’s Six Sigma deployment, and oversees the company’s $55 billion of annual sourcing.
The company started with Six Sigma, and it’s interesting to know that GE’s Six Sigma has morphed into Lean Six Sigma. In an interview with Geoff Colvin, senior editor at large for Fortune Magazine, Reiner shares some of his thoughts and plans for the Lean Six Sigma initiative at GE.
Here are some snippets.
What does Jeff Immelt want from you?
Three things. My responsibilities are information technology, Lean Six Sigma, and sourcing.You’ve been in charge of GE’s Six Sigma initiative since it started, in 1996. Are you still getting value out of it?
We’ve been aggressively trying to migrate away from talking about tools and instead to talking about outcomes. Six Sigma is a tool. It is a wonderful tool, but it is a tool. What we’re talking more about as a company is outcomes, and the two outcomes we really want are product reliability and customer responsiveness.So we start with that and work our way back to what tools are needed to make that happen. For product reliability, the Six Sigma tools are sensational. On the responsiveness side, it’s often less about using Six Sigma and more about getting the right people in the room to map out how long it takes for us to do something in front of customers and, using mostly common sense, take out those things that get in the way of meeting our customer needs responsibly.
For example?
In our GE Money business we offer private-label finance to retailers. We are the financing behind jewelry stores and pharmacies and the like. Sad to say, it was taking 63 days from when a retailer contacted us saying it wanted to consider using us as a private-label financier until it could conduct the first transaction with our financing. No one had calculated this before we went on this journey.We did a number of what we call lean workouts, where we get everybody in the room to map out the process, and they got it down from 63 days to one day. The leader of that business was able to go out and have as his marketing campaign, “Enroll today. Transact tomorrow.” When we did that, sales doubled. And there are 30 examples of that throughout the company.
No wonder GE has been successful in their Six Sigma initiatives. They have understood the role of Six Sigma or Lean Six Sigma, which is a tool, in their process improvement, and work around that premise. They have a goal, which is product reliability and customer responsiveness, and they have focused their Six Sigma initiative with that end goal in mind.
It’s always about a goal and a focus.
Update:
GE: The Heat on Immelt
Filed under: Manufacturing, Lean Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations, Deployment, GE, Technology, Six Sigma
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Six Sigma at McKesson Corp.
Posted by: meikah | 9 June 2008 | 7:49 pm
McKesson Corp., the largest pharmaceutical distributor in the U.S., is using the latest technology and Six Sigma to be ahead of the pack.
McKesson’s EVP and CIO, Randall N. Spratt shares with WSJ how his company is using technology to make its operations more efficient, to improve health care and to create a better environment for the company’s workers, dispelling the impression that many healtcare companies lag in terms of technology use.
This is how the interview started.
WSJ: McKesson makes 1.5 cents for every dollar it takes in on its distribution business, so efficiency is critical. Not surprisingly, the company relies on technology to make its warehouse operations more efficient. What is the process you go through to determine what technology might help?
Mr. Spratt: We have a large investment in a process-improvement methodology called Six Sigma. We employ somewhere north of 100 Six Sigma professionals, whose job is to take apart business processes. It could be as small as taking something off a truck and putting it on a shelf, or it could be as broad as what happens from the time we take an order to the time we ship an invoice. What they are trained to do is take a given business process, analyze it and take it apart to find where the highest variability is.WSJ: One technology that McKesson developed is a small computer that warehouse workers wear on their wrists and that is attached to a scanner on the worker’s finger. How did you come up with this system and what has it accomplished?
Mr. Spratt: It came from a Six Sigma analysis. Most errors in the warehouse came at the point of picking, which is taking something off a warehouse shelf, associating it with an order, and putting it in the right bin for shipping. The second-highest error rate came from stocking errors. If you stock a drug in the wrong place, the pickers have to search for it and they waste a lot of time. So they sat down and said how can we solve these problems.
Continue reading…
It’s pretty obvious that McKesson is trying to combine modern technology and Six Sigma. If they are able to do this successfully, then they’ll be a force to reckon with in the pharma/healthcare industry.
Source:
SmartBrief News
Filed under: Six Sigma Organizations, Deployment, Healthcare, Interview, Pharmaceuticals, Technology, Six Sigma
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Nortel Continues with Lean Six Sigma
Posted by: meikah | 12 May 2008 | 8:03 pm
Nortel, a recognized leader in communications capabilities, will be continuing with its Lean Six Sigma efforts for better business operations.
That’s what President and CEO Mike Zafirovski said during the annual stockholders meeting. Zafirovski highlighted Nortel’s progress against its business transformation plan and discussed the company’s growing momentum with customers. And this is what he says about the company’s view on Lean Six Sigma:
Nortel is not only addressing customer needs through innovation, but through operational initiatives as well. Nortel has launched almost 200 Lean Six Sigma projects designed to reduce costs and differentiate itself from the competition.
Nortel’s growing momentum with customers is evidence of progress against the company’s business transformation plan. “Our customer engagements are proving our relevance and momentum. A new Nortel has emerged and we have the traction to prove it.”
Source:
iSixSigma News
Filed under: Benefits and Savings, Lean Six Sigma, Technology, Nortel
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Innovation of the Week: China Mobile, Softbank, and Vodafone to Set Up an Innovation Lab
Posted by: meikah | 2 May 2008 | 2:22 am
ChinaTechNews reports that China Mobile will set up an innovation lab. The project is a joint endeavor with Softbank and Vodafone.
The joint innovation lab will serve as a platform for the parties to develop mobile services and drive innovation and synergy in the industry to the benefit of their combined global customer base, and it will also launch projects based on emerging technologies and market demand.
The Lab reportedly will focus on pushing the development of new mobile technology, application and services such as mobile widgets. In the initial stage, it plans to develop a platform for mobile widgets to encourage the development of innovative new services that can leverage mobile operators’ unique capabilities.
The mobile telecom is really on a roll these days, and I’m guessing that there’ll be more innovation efforts in this industry in the future.
Filed under: Telecommunications, Innovation Update, Technology, Innovation
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Six Sigma Continues at Chrysler
Posted by: meikah | 3 March 2008 | 9:39 pm
It is clear that the Chrysler group is big on Six Sigma. A couple of years ago, reports on Daimler-Chrysler going into Six Sigma and being benefitted by it hit the frontpage news.
First, there was news about Chrysler adopting DFSS thereby making them more proactive and receptive the what their customers want.
Second, Daimler-Chrysler strengthens its Six Sigma deployment by integrating structured innovation methodologies into its DFSS program.
And now the latest is that Chrysler LLC will boost the company’s Six Sigma by sending its people to training. Giving training programs is not new at Chrysler. In fact, its technical specialist program has been established since 1988. The company just decided to offer Six Sigma trainings in addition to its already tested training modules.
According to the news in ReliablePlant magazine:
The new technical fellow and master black belt senior specialist programs will build on the company’s existing technical specialist and master black belt programs.
Why particularly these programs?
Black belts use different problem-solving methodologies, including Lean Six Sigma, Design for Six Sigma, critical thinking and Shainin Red X to solve various technical and process issues throughout each vehicle program. They progress through the black belt ranks to the current top rank of master black belt specialist. The new top rating of senior specialist demands tougher criteria, but provides greater personal recognition and reward – and benefits to Chrysler’s Product Development operations.
Last year, I heard news about problems and issues—both financial and management—besetting Chrysler. I hope this move will help solve these issues, too.
Source:
Six Sigma Zone News
*Photo credit: thecarconnection.com
