Six Sigma Touches Human Resource

Six Sigma is a defect-reduction strategy to meet customer requirements. The impression we get from this statement is that by customer we mean those persons to whom we deliver our products and services. There is however another kind of customer that plays a crucial role in Six Sigma projects. This is the internal customer—the recipient, person or department, within an organization of another person’s or department’s output (product, service or information). In other words, the people within the organization itself.

Projects that are directed toward the internal customer is usually done through human resources to make people function faster and more efficiently. The most effective human resources Six Sigma projects are ones that focus on the external customer and are in sync with the strategic goals of the business. An external customer is a person outside an organization who requires a product or service.

A typical view of human resources (HR) is that the organization focuses on the learning and growth.This is essentially a cost center with an internal focus. Now, Six Sigma can help identify areas that have an impact on the external customer. These projects may concentrate on such aspects as leadership selection and training, enabling employees to focus on the external customer by decreasing their non-value added time, and organizational development to promote an effective Six Sigma culture.

According to Alastair Muir, president of Muir & Associates Consulting and once the principal Six Sigma consultant for GE Power Systems, “An effective Six Sigma program must identify high potential employees, hire them as Black Belts and move them back into the organization as part of their rotation and leadership training. And an effective HR organization can balance the financial needs of the company while attracting and retaining the most appropriate personal to become part of the organization.”

Read more Six Sigma Projects in the Human Resources Department

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The Six Sigma Model at Samsung

Articles on Six Sigma are often one in saying that there is no right or wrong model to adopt. The important consideration is deciding which model works for your kind of organization.

For Samsung Electronics Company’s semiconductor business, it initially chose the DMAIC model to prevent anticipated problems and gather feedback data for mass production. However, as the market began to require more LCD color, shorter response time, and lower cost, the company needed to develop a new semiconductor process. The define, measure, analyze, design and verify (DMADV) data driven quality strategy of design for Six Sigma (DFSS) subsequently became its method of choice.

DEFINE: Launch color LDI in a changing market and downsize the product?s chip size.

MEASURE: Determined the CTQs of the new process development project to focus on:
? on-time delivery
? low power consumption
? high electrical performance
? a highly reliable process

ANALYZE: Analyzed data to extract critical to processes (CTPs or the vital few X?s) from potential X?s, and eventually defined 11 items as CTPs (the vital few X?s)

DESIGN: Concentrated on the optimization of process and reviewed weak points. Took into account that semiconductors are not assembled the same way as refrigerators, TV and microwave ovens, which are made up of many component parts. In manufacturing a semiconductor product, a number of photos, etches, and deposition processes are carried out onto a silicon wafer. Therefore, the process greatly depends on a combination of individual procedure capabilities rather than the quality of the components.

VERIFY: Drew up the optimized control plan, including a mistake proofing method, and executed the plan systematically.

Samsung was able to prove that Six Sigma can improve semiconductor processes, and show the adaptability of DFSS methodology in a semiconductor process.

Read more Combine Quality and Speed to Market

Filed under: Samsung, Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations

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Branding and Six Sigma

We often associate Six Sigma with processes improvement and not so much with the output of those processes or the end product. Or just maybe we are so focused on improving the processes that we forget to link it with how our product acquires its brandname and lives up to its brand’s promise.

According to the article titled Who’s Afraid of Six Sigma?, “a brand promise is actually an idealized portrayal of a defect-free experience. A robust Six Sigma culture reduces the gap between brand promise and brand experience. If a company delivers what it promises?and isn?t busy apologizing for its mistakes?it?s more likely to be building stronger, more profitable customer relationships.”

It is therefore only logical that people who want to influence brand perceptions are among Six Sigma?s primary advocates.

If you are into brand managing, you should know that product or service development involves successfully linking conception/improvement and innovation. If you believe in Six Sigma, you will know that it closes the gap–the brand gap in particular.

The Brand Gap is the difference between an idealized customer experience the company promises to deliver (Brand Promise) and the customer?s actual experience. Six Sigma can help close the gap in two ways: by removing problems customers don?t want (Improvement) and by delivering new features that enhance the experience (Innovation).

At the end of the day, the companies that thrive will have developed a Six Sigma culture that values off-the-wall thinking as well as consistent execution. The company that sees data analysis as an innovation catalyst instead of idea killer, and that relies on understanding customers in order to delight them rather than to simply persuade them. Read more…

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Making Six Sigma Work Through Communication

Your company is adapting Six Sigma, and you are the chief learning officer. You’ve done all your homework and have drawn the training programs carefully. Excitedly, and even feeling proud about yourself, you submitted your “Six Sigma Recommendations” to top management.

You waited for some reaction but none came, none according to your timetable at least. Without you knowing about it, your report had been buried among the many reports that top management had to read. It got buried because when the CFO tried to read it, he did not see anything interesting about it, or worse, did not understand an iota of it.

Apparently, you are not able to communicate well what you had planned out to do in the first place. You have missed one of the most critical success factors for any quality or productivity initiative–that is, communication skills training.

Six Sigma initiatives will require you to significantly increase the quality and quantity of communication within your organization. The number of poorly written e-mail messages, reports and proposals that come across their desks each day already overburdens managers. Adding Six Sigma ideas, reports, proposals, solutions, project updates and process changes to the mix will only add to the problem?unless they are presented in a clear, effective way that highlights key points and allows readers to quickly access and understand the information they need.

Adopting organization-wide communication standards, methods and protocols, and adding communication skills training to the Six Sigma curriculum, will help Six Sigma teams communicate and sell their ideas, plans and solutions internally, will make life easier for overburdened managers, and will substantially increase a project?s likelihood of success.

Read more Communications Training: Making Six Sigma Work

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