“If Sports Were Six Sigma”
Posted by: meikah | 19 March 2008 | 12:58 am
Yeah, what would sports be like if there were no missed shots, missed serves, unforced errors, missed calls by referees?
I think it’s going to be boring. Remember a game becomes exciting when one player is racing against time and himself to score a point.
Actually, I got the title of this post from qimacros.com. So, if sports were Six Sigma, this would be the scenario:
If sports were Six Sigma, no one would ever make a mistake. (Actually, there would be 3.4 mistakes for every 1,000,000 plays, but teams might have to play for months to decide a game.)
- Baseball - Every batter would hit a home run or every pitcher would strike out every batter. It would take 333,000 at bats to get one out or one run.
- Football - Every kickoff or play would result in a touchdown for either the offense or defense (e.g., a fumble recovered and run in for a touchdown). At the end of four quarters, the result would be a coin toss and the point spread would always be 6 or 7.
- Basketball - Every shot from anywhere on the court would always find nothing but net, so everyone would shoot 3-pointers. The result would be a coin toss and the point spread would be 3 (no one would ever foul a player).
- Golf - Every stroke would produce a hole in one.
- Tennis - Every serve would be an ace or every return would win the point.
But then again, this is in sports. I think if you’re running a business, it’s not a question of whether it’s going to be fun or boring. It would be a question of cost. Delays, errors, missed customer calls, defects are costly. And cost is never fun.
Related story:
The World Series as You’ve Never Seen It
*Photo from Stock.Xchng
Filed under: General, Zero Defects, Six Sigma, Sports
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What Composes your Six Sigma Team?
Posted by: meikah | 10 March 2008 | 9:44 pm
This is a very important question. The success of the improvement team will depend in part to its composition.
Many say that a good Six Sigma infrastructure should comprise fully trained business leaders, quality leaders, experts, and individuals supporting specific projects in their areas. Others also claim that a person from the shop floor would be a valuable member of the team as he knows the goings-on from below.
There is however a team that is working on Six Sigma efficiency, in fact more than six sigma because they claim only 1 mistake in every 16,000,000 deliveries. This team is not composed of engineers, quality practitioners, finance men, or management gurus.
I’m talking about the Dabbawalas. They collect home-made food and deliver it to the office workers. At first, you might think this task is just a piece of cake. But the Dabbawalas have increaed and so is their service.
And here’s the interesting part: Eighty-five percent of the Dabbawala team is illiterate and 15% is educated upto 8th grade. How does the Dabba team work?
The entire system depends on TEAMWORK and meticulous timing(in fact so meticulous that, during his visit to India, Prince Charles had to fit in with their schedule so as to not disrupt their schedule). In the course of the dabba’s daily journey, a single dabba would change hands 3 to 4 times. Prior to this, they are sorted out for area-wise distribution from the railway station where it was initially delivered. It is interesting to note that each dabba follows a color coded pattern.
What does this imply? Simply that when you have good solid system in place, people understand it and follow it, then you achieve something great. If I remember correctly, I think it was Peter Drucker who said that 80% of the problem lies in the sytem, and 20% in people.
Related story:
Team Dynamics
Source:
BharatEntrepreneurs.com
*Photo from the article
Filed under: Six Sigma Organizations, Team Dynamics, Deployment, Zero Defects, Six Sigma, Dabbawalas
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Six Sigma and Tennis
Posted by: meikah | 21 January 2008 | 11:50 pm
If there’s one sport that I wanted to learn, it’s tennis. It’s not that there was never an opportunity to learn the sport because for one, my childhood friend’s family was then running a tennis court business. We would often go to their house and play, but not tennis though. Like most little girls, we were addicted to dolls.
I know it’s not too late to learn it. Meanwhile, I content myself with watching tennis live or on TV and see my favorite players execute their almost perfect moves and frustrating unforced errors.
Speaking of unforced errors, I stumbled upon an article on USAToday.com that somehow links Six Sigma with unforced errors in tennis. Of course, we all know that errors of any kind is really detrimental to any kind o f endeavor.
The article, written in 2004, narrates that during a tennis tournament, when players reach the finals, their unforced errors diminish. The winners are those who have the least unforced errors.
Relating tennis to business, any unforced error in transaction is bad for business. This is where Six Sigma comes. After all, Six Sigma is a methodology that help companies examine every little detail in how things are done in order to figure out how to reduce errors to near zero.
I’m enjoying right now the Australian Open, and rooting for Roger Federer and Maria Sharapova.
Update:
Roger Federer gave way to Tennis’s rising star Novak Dyokovic, and Maria Sharapova went on to win her first Australian Open. 
*Photo from MorgueFile
Filed under: Data Analysis, Zero Defects, Six Sigma, Sports
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Quality Training in China
Posted by: meikah | 13 November 2007 | 8:44 pm
A couple of months back, I wrote about China’s need for quality training as what Japan did to bounce back. China apparenthly heard my plea and that of the others.
Over at ASQ last month, it reported that sources from the Ministry of Commerce divulged that the government of China has sponsored 14 training courses for toy makers on product quality and safety since August. The article goes:
From Oct. 11 to 12, the ministry and the general administration jointly held two training courses in Dongguan and Shenzhen, in southern China’s Guangdong Province, as the Chinese government’s latest efforts to improve toy makers’ quality awareness.
During the two courses, experts in toy tests and certification and professionals from world famous toy providers, including Mattel from the United States, explained licensing systems relating to the quality of toy exports, test laws and policies, and related rules and criteria for toys in major European and American markets. They also taught the more than 1,000 trainees for the two courses to avoid using excess lead in toys and designing defects in small spare parts.
The sources said similar training courses would be provided for better quality of exports. Related teaching materials will be available on one of the websites of the Ministry of Commerce, the sources added.
Watch out, world, China is definitely here!
*Photo from MorgueFile
Filed under: Manufacturing, Services, Zero Defects, Quality, ASQ
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The Importance of Being Six Sigma
Posted by: meikah | 14 October 2007 | 11:14 pm
Yet another round of product recalls is happening in the U.S. Over-the-counter infant cough and cold medicines are being removed from the shelves because they are allegedly harmful if misused.
First toys and now medicines, but both involving children’s welfare.
In times like these, I appreciate all the more the importance of being Six Sigma, or at the very least of having some solid quality program in place.
Filed under: Manufacturing, Healthcare, Zero Defects
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Six Sigma and the Zero Defect Concept
Posted by: meikah | 24 April 2007 | 12:17 am
I visited Got Boondoggle? yesterday and found a link to shmula blog. It’s a good find because I found a mountain of information there. Now, I have another good reading in hand.
One of the posts there is rather interesting. Pete Abila of shmula wrote about Zero Defects and it being statistically impossible. He says:
The “Zero Defects” movement has an implicit assumption that all defects are equal. This is not true. In fact, for most firms and products, defects must be identified and prioritized, and attacked and treated from most important to least important. For the defects at the bottom of that prioritized list, it might even make sense to move on and not eliminate or reduce those. The point here is an attitude toward perfection, but fully understanding that perfection is not possible. The attitude and efforts are valuable and the customer will feel and appreciate it. Shareholders will benefit, and the firm will be better for it.
A long time ago, back when TQM was the order of the day, I read an article—which I photocopied but forgot to write down the source—about the Zero Defect Concept. Since the discussion came with real-life examples, it somehow drove an important point. The article highlights the importance of working toward a Zero Defects situation:
The concept of Zero Defects plays an significant role in this analogy. Peole are conditioned to believe that error is inevitable; thus they do not only accept error, they anticipate it. It does not bother us to make a few errors in our work, whether we are writing memos, setting up a machine, tagging bags, typing letters, or giving information…
If we do not maintain some standards, we should expect to be shortchanged every now and then when we cash our paycheck; we should expect our nanny to drop the newborn baby a constant percentage of the time; and would allow doctors to prescribe the wrong medicine…
Most human errors are caused by lack of attention rather than lack of knowledge… If we consider our tasks carefully, and pledge to make a constant conscious effort to do our jobs right the first time, we will take a giant step toward eliminating the waste of rework, scrap, and repair that increases costs and reduces individual opportunity…
ZD is a performance standard with the theme “do it right the first time.”
Both observations above raise valid points. I tend to believe that statistically ZD is not achievable. On the other hand, I also believe that when we consciously do things right the first time then we avoid making mistakes.
What is your take on this?
*Photo from Stock.Xchng
