The Six Sigma Roadmap

Essentially, Six Sigma aims to reduce and eliminate defects to improve customer satisfaction, and eventually increase profitability. Defects may be taken as any aspect that deters customer satisfaction, which is determined by high product quality, service-schedule adherence, and cost minimization.

This drive to reduce defect, improve the process, and satisfy customers is based on a three-pronged “statistical thinking” model.

First, everything is a process.
Second, all processes have inherent variability.
Third, data is used to understand the variability and drive process improvement decisions.

Six Sigma’s road map of achieving this statistical model involves a five-step framework: Define – Measure – Analyze – Improve – Control (DMAIC).

At the Define stage, how to satisfy the customers is the primary goal. This is the part where satisfaction goals are established and distinguished into subgoals, or manageable sub-processes. It involves further specifying goals or sub-goals and establishing infrastructure to accomplish them. They could be in terms of cycle-time reduction, cost reduction, or defect reduction. It also includes an assessment of the cultural or organizational change that might be needed for success.

Once defined, the Six Sigma team proceeds through Measurement, Analysis, Improvement, and Control steps. With data or information in hand, the team evaluates it for trends, patterns, causal relationships and “root cause” among others. It may even go further as undertaking special experiments and modeling to confirm what have been established at the Define stage, and understand the extent of leverage of factors. Often, the steps Measure-Analyze-Improve are repeated. When the target level of performance is achieved, control measures are then established to sustain performance.

The road map may go through this process.

Throughout the whole Six Sigma process, it is important to identify which sub-step significantly contribute to the goal in mind. The defect rate of the process, service, or final product is likely more influenced by some factors than others. The Analysis phase can help identify the extent of improvement needed in each sub-step. Six Sigma performance, in terms of the defect rate (parts per million, or ppm metric), is not required for every aspect of every process, product, and service. The goal is distinguishing which part quantitatively drives the end result of customer satisfaction and profitability.

Six Sigma Roadmap

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Six Sigma and Terrorism

I stumbled upon an interesting article featured on USA Today on October 30, 2002. United States of America was just recovering from the 911 attack a year before. Authorities were cracking their brains thinking of ways to catch the terrorists or even curb future attacks. Guess what they had considered as a weapon? A Six Sigma counterattack.

According to the article, Mikel Harry, often called the father of Six Sigma, says that Six Sigma can help in a major way. He estimates the USA would be safer from terrorist attacks by a factor of hundreds or thousands. Furthermore, Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell says that Six Sigma is “powerful stuff” that could work even in the sprawl of the U.S. government. Several other experts say that it can be used in thousands of homeland security projects.

The big question now is HOW?

We know that there are thousands of information that flood into the CIA office. These include intercepted phone calls and applications to pilot schools. Suppose an e-mail is intercepted that includes a disguised threat on the Golden Gate Bridge. A quick decision must be made to discard the e-mail or take it seriously. Discarding bad information is crucial because useless data can paralyze decision makers further up the line.

To decide quickly on say 50 points on the usefulness of a piece of information is crucial. In Six Sigma talk, these points are called “decision nodes.” If each of those 50 nodes passes judgment on 60 pieces of information each day, there are 300 opportunities for a decision error each day as intelligence moves up the chain to Security Chief Tom Ridge and President Bush.

Here’s how this situation can be interpreted using Six Sigma.

If decision nodes average 99.38% accuracy, they are at Four Sigma. If accuracy reaches 9.99966%, that means only one of about every 294,000 pieces of vital information would be erroneously discarded.

There is a 99.9% chance that all 300 decisions are accurate on a given day. There is a 97% chance all decisions in a month will be right. Where there is only a 15% chance that all decisions are right on a given day at Four Sigma, there is a 15% chance that all decisions will be right over a five-year period at Six Sigma.

“To achieve such efficiency would be invaluable when lives are at risk. That’s how attaining Six Sigma in the war on terrorism could make the USA 1,800 times safer,” Harry estimates.

This talk of fighting and saving a world from future attacks brings to mind another interesting article which links Six Sigma to the Star Wars movie.

* I’d say Yoda is a Six Sigma Jedi
* The Millennium Falcon runs about 3 sigma.
* R2-D2 would have to be a 7 sigma droid while C3PO operates at about 4.5 sigma.
* Princess Leia…definitely 6 sigma!
* While using the Force, Luke is 6 sigma but when he’s complaining and whining he drops to about 5 sigma.
* Little Ani was approaching six sigma but over time the 1.5 sigma shift pushed him to the Dark Side of the Curve…
*I wonder what the sigma level of a Wookie would be?

The next generation of Six Sigma experts: Six Sigma Jedi, Six Sigma Padawan, and Six Sigma Wookie.

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Feds May Unleash Six Sigma on Terrorism
Six Sigma and Star Wars

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See the Six Sigma Difference!

Today, several companies that address the varied needs of customers have been getting big savings and benefits the Six Sigma way. Below are two stories of different companies that are enjoying the fruits of Six Sigma.

The Dow Chemical Company, rated as the top performer for the global chemical industry group by DJSI World, launched the PROCITE, a kind of envelope window film. PROCITE allows for readability of text characters and bar codes. It provides the finest level of haze to prohibit third-party reading of personal information beyond the address block area. The film also contains high stiffness giving the customer a consistently flat film. These characteristics prevents misreads, resulting in an almost 100% sorting efficiency.

Seeing the great benefit of the product, Dow utilized the Six Sigma process to increase production of PROCITE envelope window film. Through Six Sigma, they are able to increase production without sacrificing quality. The Six Sigma process gives them the discipline to focus on product and service excellence by measuring, analyzing, improving and controlling the manufacturing processes to create a culture that demands perfection ? on target, every time for customers.

“The success achieved in 2000 prompted us to continue incorporating Six Sigma into the production of PROCITE film,” Jo Watkins, global Dow Postal Films marketing manager said. “We are anticipating an additional 10 percent production increase by mid-2001, without sacrificing product quality, as product reputation and customer satisfaction still remain our top priority.”

On the other hand, Bombardier Flexjet is using Six Sigma on their catering to make sure that plane passengers get their food fresh and in time, and that they would feel as if the Flexjet is their own chartered jet. These days, when customers choose their inflight menus online, each item has a Bombardier reference number. That number can match the number against a two-volume, four-inch-thick cookbook of recipes that Flexjet has concocted, tested, and tasted to ensure the same dish is prepared the same way everywhere across the country.

“We believe catering is a very important touch point with the customer,” says Flexjet president Clifford Dickman. “Before this, there wasn’t a consistent high standard. The menu is fashionable. And so is the china and cutlery. There is a dedicated menu for kids, and a notation in the computer after just one mention will result in a cache of doggie biscuits for the faithful hound. It’s the attention to detail that matters,” Dickman adds.

This experience proves that nothing is too small to escape the attention of the Six Sigma Flexjet team unleashed on its catering. The results are a reduction in suppliers from over 100 to 12. That translates to big savings from negotiating fleetwide supplies of better quality trays, stemware, and crockery, and a happier increasing group of customers who are sorry they had to land so soon.

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PROCITE Envelope Window Film Presents a Clear View
A Six Sigma Sandwich?

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Bechtel Telecommunications’s Innovative Six Sigma Project Honored

Five years into deploying an innovative Six Sigma Project and Bechtel Telecommunications already has a Six Sigma award. Bechtel received Most Innovative Six Sigma Project Award honorable mention for their “Alternative Site Selection Process Improvement.” The awarding took place during the Sixth Annual European Six Sigma Summit in London on April 27, 2005. The process uses Virtual Survey Tool (VST) for network deployment.

Bechtel Telecommunications was the first major engineering and construction company to embrace the industry-leading process improvement program, Six Sigma, in 2001. The VST enables integration of the Site Acquisition and Network Planning activities for network deployment. It allows quick and cost effective accurate site selections from a desktop environment. With the initial version tested on a complex rail network coverage project in the United Kingdom, it demonstrated potential cost and schedule benefits for future projects. The VST is currently being deployed on a pilot project in the United States.

According to Jake MacLeod, Chief Technology Officer of Bechtel Telecommunications, “We are honored to receive this prestigious award. It validates our innovative network deployment process utilizing Six Sigma methodologies. The Virtual Survey Tool has the potential to revolutionize the way operators manage their end-to-end network deployment cycle.”

Six Sigma uses a rigorous set of tools and methodologies designed to produce dramatic enhancements in work quality, profitability, customer and employee satisfaction, and leadership of business enterprises. Bechtel Telecommunications, a unit of Bechtel Corporation, provides network planning, RF design, engineering, site acquisition, project management, and construction management services for the deployment of wireless, wireline, and other telecommunications facilities worldwide.
With more than 83,000 wireless sites deployed, and 23,000 kilometers of wireline fiber laid, Bechtel is the global company of choice for network deployment.

Bechtel Telecommunications

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Prioritizing Six Sigma Projects

A lot of companies these days are beginning to realize the financial rewards of Six Sigma deployments. It will not be a surprise therefore if many companies will embark on several Six Sigma projects within their organizations.

iSixSimga Magazine had a benchmarking study on how companies identify, prioritize, and approve Six Sigma projects. The study surveyed a total of 998 respondents.

Below are the characteristics of the companies surveyed and the results.

89% prioritize projects that yield high financial savings

76.4% deploy projects that require a formal approval before a Six Sigma project

44.6% choose projects with a business case prior to project approval

50.8% select projects that frequently or always uses a project prioritization process

19.9% choose projects that employees have thought of and suggested

40.8% select projects that indicate a known solution

50.1% choose Six Sigma programs that are based on “gut feel”

75.1% prioritize projects that are assessed as highly or somewhat successful

78.3% deploy projects when senior management is very or somewhat committed to Six Sigma

The benchmarking study also observed the following critical findings:

1. Companies select Six Sigma projects and realize significant financial savings.

2. Business leaders and employees represent leading sources of process improvement project ideas.

3. Companies employ more robust project selection processes as they become more experienced with Six Sigma.

4. Companies with a higher ratio of Black Belts to employees more frequently document and communicate their project selection processes.

Six Sigma Project Selection

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Applying Six Sigma to Internet Usability

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing edited by Denis Howe defines usability as a programming language that refers to the effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with which users can achieve tasks in a particular environment of a product. High usability means a system is: easy to learn and remember; efficient, visually pleasing and fun to use; and quick to recover from errors.

Did you ever try accessing a website excitedly only to be told that “The page cannot be displayed,” or “The operation timed out?” Well, you are not alone. According to a recent survey on the usability of 139 websites, the results show that “on average across many test tasks, users fail 35% of the time when using websites.”

In Six Sigma language, the success rate, that is the users’ ability to accomplish their tasks, is 100,000 times worse than the Six Sigma quality level. That is way below One Sigma, which should have posed a 68% success rate.

Below is the results of the study in table form.

User task –> Success Rate
Using web-based applications –> 45%
Shopping on e-commerce sites –> 56%
Finding company locations –> 63%
Using “About Us” information –> 70%
Using the Investor Relations area –> 70%
Using the PR area –> 73%
Subscribing to email newsletters –> 78%

Average success rate –> 65%

The figures above show that when users perform simple Internet tasks such as emailing, they’re successful two-thirds of the time on average. That means, users fail 35% of the time. This corresponds to a 1.9 sigma quality level according to how most Six Sigma people calculate quality.

Web users therefore clamor for an improved usability of websites. It would definitely be wise to adapt some of the six sigma strategies to improve Web quality.

Six Sigma relies on a five-step process called DMAIC (Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control). By deploying these steps, Web projects can achieve better and more systematic quality results.

This is how it should go.

Define As the very first step, specify which usability attributes your customers value most. Which top tasks must be easy for users to perform? How fast should users be able to accomplish critical goals?

Measure I usually advocate qualitative usability studies, because usability’s main goal is to drive the design. For formal quality assurance, however, you must run quantitative studies to collect hard numbers that show how well or poorly your design scores on the usability criteria you defined above.

Analyze Most likely, there will be a gap between the measurement results and the level of quality you desire. Analyze the test results to identify the root causes; this not only lets you make specific design changes, but also helps you determine why these usability flaws made it into your design in the first place.

Improve Fix the design. Removing the flaws is an obvious step, but you should also fix your design process so that you introduce fewer flaws the next time you design something.

Control Don’t slack. You must continue to monitor the quality level of your user experience as you introduce more advanced task support, and as users’ expectations for usability increase over time. Improve your design methods and retain accountability for each team member’s contribution to overall quality.

Two Sigma: Usability and Six Sigma Quality Assurance

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Simplifying the Concept of Defect

The Six Sigma quality is measured by the number of defects per million opportunities or DPMO. By defects, they refer to all products and services that do not conform to the standard or those opportunities that do not fall within the standard deviation. That means, fewer than four in one million customers will have a legitimate issue with the company’s products and service.

The concept of defect may be very broad, and the possibility of a zero defect or a DPMO in manufacturing may be too overwhelming. To contextualize it however will make the Six Sigma concept a lot easier to understand. Below are instances that a customer experiences when he samples a company’s product or service.

1 hour of unsafe drinking water every month

2 long or short landings at every American airports each day

400 letters per hour which never arrive at their destination

500 incorrect surgical operations each week

3,000 newborns accidentally falling from the hands of nurses or doctors each year

4,000 incorrect drug prescriptions per year

22,000 checks deducted from the wrong bank account each hour

32,000 missed heartbeats per person per year

To contrast, below are sample of what life would be like at Six Sigma.

3 wrong drug prescriptions per year

10 newborns accidentally falling from the hands of nurses or doctors each year

1 lost article of mail per hour

Seeing these examples, a customer will surely say that achieving zero defect, that is going beyond Six Sigma, definitely creates a much safer life.

Concepts of Six Sigma Resource

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The Face of Six Sigma at Honeywell

The culture of Honeywell has always been to nurture learning. They put premium on their people’s continuous improvement. Their philosophy is that a learning environment breeds good working ethics, thereby maintaining the company’s competitive edge in the manufacturing industry. That is why at Honeywell, learning isn’t an option; it’s required. Everyone is expected to complete at least 40 hours of learning each year.

Extending this outward, Honeywell also pays attentions to their customer’s needs. They recognize that customers want more than 99% problem-free performance when they buy Honeywell products to use in their airplane engines, automobiles, computer chips, chemical end products, or other critical equipment. Also, customers want fresh ideas that can help them build their future.

Honeywell assures their customers that they can do more than that. In the early 1990s, Honeywell began its journey to Total Quality. That was when Honeywell answered the Six Sigma challenge. They saw Six Sigma as the way for them to achieve performance breakthroughs.

Honeywell is already approaching Four Sigma. However, they believe that they can do better. Their goal is Six Sigma. By applying Six Sigma to all work processes, they can achieve their goal of 15% growth and 7% productivity improvements from now and into the years to come.

In an effort to achieve Six Sigma and more, Honeywell now has developed a new generation of Six Sigma. It’s a proprietary system called Six Sigma Plus. This powerful quality strategy was the result of 1999 merger of the two technology giants: AlliedSignal and Honeywell.

Through Six Sigma Plus, the company embarked on a wide variety of projects other than the elimination of defects. In other words, Honeywell’s Six Sigma Plus umbrella is larger than that of many other companies. Its skills include Lean Enterprise, Activity Based Management, Honeywell Quality Value assessment, Total Productive Maintenance and Growth projects, among others.

Some of the dramatic improvements observed by Honeywell through Six Sigma are:

1. If your water heater operated at Four Sigma, you would be without hot water more than 54 hours each year. At Six Sigma, you’d be without hot water for less than two minutes a year.

2. If your electricity operated at Four Sigma performance, your lights would be out an hour a week. At Six Sigma, you would be without lights about two seconds a week.

3. If your telephone operated at Four Sigma, you would be without service for more than four hours a month. At Six Sigma, it would be about nine seconds a month.

4. At Four Sigma, about six out of every 1,000 invoices will contain incorrect information. At Six Sigma, mistakes will occur only about three times in every 1,000,000 invoices.

5. If your car operated at Four Sigma performance, you would spend 37 minutes in the repair shop for every 100 hours you operate the vehicle. At Six Sigma, you would have only 1.2 seconds of repair for every 100 hours of operation.

Obviously there is a high price to pay when a company is operating under Six Sigma. No wonder Honeywell, uses every resource available to achieve Six Sigma and eventually Six Sigma Plus.

Honeywell Continuously Improving

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The GE Story

General Electric (GE) started working seriously on quality in 1988. They designed a quality process and called it Work-Out. True to its name, the GE’s Work-Out awakened the organization. It identified and eliminated unnecessary processes and tasks that had been there for years. As a result, the organization became leaner. People from design, production, marketing, and sales worked together. There was more work done even with fewer people doing it.

As Work-Out program evolved, GE began involving customers and supplier-partners to the process. This Work-Out process is the precursor of Six Sigma at GE. As they say, “It has changed the DNA of GE and has set the stage for making our customers feel Six Sigma.”

GE’s main efforts were then focused on developing quality for customer. Everything they do remains world-class because of these three essential elements: customer, process and employee.

To GE, customer is king. Customers fashion their products and services. Based on customers’ expectations such as on-time delivery, competitive prices, reliability among others, define quality. “Delighting our customers is a necessity. Because if we don’t do it, someone else will!”

GE also practices what they call “looking outside-in.” To ensure quality, they look at their processes from the customer’s perspective. They believe that understanding the customers’ needs they will in turn discover how they feel. “With this knowledge, we can identify areas where we can add significant value or improvement from their perspective.”

Throughout the cultural change, GE involved not only their customer, but more importantly their employees. People create results. Thus, GE commits to providing opportunities and incentives for employees who focus their talents and energies on satisfying customers.”Quality is the responsibility of every employee. Every employee must be involved, motivated and knowledgeable if we are to succeed.”

What GE learned from it all is that Six Sigma focuses first on reducing wastes and then on improving the process capability. After all, customers value consistent business processes that deliver world-class quality. This is what Six Sigma strives to produce.

Quality for Customer

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Leading the Road to Six Sigma

Motorola has a lot to share about keeping its business afloat and survive. It entered the competitive consumer electronics market in the 1960s. It slowly began its rise until it reached and continues to hold the top position in mobile technology. At present it ranks as the leading maker of cellular phones, paging devices, automotive semi-conductors, and microchips that are used to operate devices other than computers.

The company’s rise however was not without challenges. In the 1980s for example Motorala controlled the emerging U.S. market for cellular phones and pagers. Its boat was rocked when the Japanese began flooding the U.S. with low-priced, high-quality telephones and pagers.

Motorola met the challenge head on, albeit guardedly. Initially, the Management did not know how to fight the battle. Managers thought of abandoning some business areas and even considered merging their own semiconductor operations with those of Toshiba. Afer much careful thinking however they decided to fight back. The motto was “Learn from the Japanese and then compete with them.”

Motorola executives set out some strategies to lower costs, improve quality, and regain lost market share. Managers were sent out on missions, mainly in Japan, to learn how to compete better. Some observed Motorola?s own Japanese operations and learned how it fully functioned. Others studied how other successful Japanese firms operated.

Alongside these efforts, the company also increased its budget, R&D, and employee training worldwide. According to business accounts, one important thing the executives learned from their trip to Japan was that they had altogether forgotten their old ways of doing business. They realized this after seeing a flag flying outside one of its Japanese plants. Back in the U.S. they decided to reinvent their organiation from top to bottom.

A renewed Motorola now places quality, may it be in service or product, at the forefront of everything it did. They boldly announced their goal of achieving a perfection rate of 99.9997% per 1,000,000 opportunities. When they actually achieved this level of quality they received the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

This quality strategy eventually became known throughout the world as the Six Sigma.

Since then Motorola has been successfully eating up much of the electronics market share, especially abroad in Japan. It is currently Number 3 in terms of market share in Japan, both in pagers and cellular telephones, and it is steadily climbing to Number 2 spot.

Worldwide, Motorola controls 45% of the total market for these products. It has also regained its Number 2 position in semiconductor sales, and is furiously launching as many new products that surprise its competitors every time.

Today, Motorola generates more than 56% of its revenues abroad. Major new initiatives are underway in Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. The firm has currently made headway in Western Europe against rivals Philips and Thomsom.

Motorola is not about to sit on its laurels. In fact, it has set new and staggering goals for itself. It wishes to take quality to the point where defects will be measured related to billions rather millions. It wants to cut its cycle time tenfold every ten years. And by this year, Motorola wanted over 75% of its revenues to come from foreign markets.

That’s a feat only a Six Sigma company can do.

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