Six Sigma Practitioner Turns a Negative Incident Into a Positive One

Saeukkang, in Korean means fish crackers, has been loved by the Korean public for 40 years. Recently, however, a customer found a rat’s head inside a noraebang saeukkang, the jumbo-sized version of saeukkang.

The incident occurred just two months after Sun Wook, chairman of Nongshim, took his post. But instead of taking the incident as an assault to the company, Sun Wook took it as an opportunity to make the food company even better.

In an interview with Moon Byung-joo JoongAng Ilbo for Inside JoongAngDaily, Sun Wook says:

I will tell the public more when a complete investigation into the matter is finished. I do believe that there is something that is very wrong with the overall system, and by October, I will weed out these problems one by one. Through Six Sigma, we will lower the inferior goods rate from one in 1 million to one in 10 million.

Read more…

Sun’s career began in 1975 at Samsung. He became head of Samsung SDI in 2005, and was the first person in Korea to adopt Six Sigma practices.

His being a Six Sigma practitioner and believer may just be the reason for his positive view of an otherwise negative incident.

Related story:
S. Korea: Rat’s head leads to cracker recall

Filed under: Food, Processes, Quality, Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations

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Innovation of the Week: An Invitation to Open Innovation

Open innovation is taking a hold in most companies. It can work if the proper measures are drawn up. Here’s how to do it.

Check outl, BusinessWeek Online’s A Ripe Time for Open Innovation.

“Recessions present a good opportunity to collaborate with others on finding, developing, and marketing new ideas.” Continue reading…

Filed under: Innovation, Innovation Update

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The SixSig Roundup

It’s time again to go ’round the blogosphere and read about Six Sigma and other quality management methodologies.

Learn from the following links and leave your message below.

Buffalolog, Six Sigma Too “Dilbert” For The Buffalo News – this is another reaction to my earlier post on slowing down on Six Sigma.

Planview, Notes from ITIL Foundation Training – IT management, like any other field, definitely needs a good management system. ITIL is one approach to IT management, and in the post, Terry Doerscher shares his insights while on training for ITIL foundation-level certification. Six Sigma or not, I agree with Terry when he says that there should be mechanisms for assessment, optimization, and management of IT services.

Bloggeron, is Following a Systematic Approach to Six Sigma Project Implementations – Tony Jacowski offers a good review for Six Sigma practitioners who’ve been doing it through the years.

Statistical Thinking to Improve Quality, Resin Example of Hoerl-Snee Strategy (Part B) – Yes, the improvement process is iterative: gather data, identify special cause, gather more data, notice differences, and then conduct brainstorming session. The process may use Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) or DMAIC steps.

The Sixth Sigma, Kaizen Plan – Kaizen is creating noise these days. Go Kaizen? Yeah, why not. I like the organization part of it. Any strategy that calls for a never-ending contonuous improvement is always a good thing.

Filed under: DMAIC, Deployment, IT, ITIL, Kaizen, Lean Six Sigma, Six Sigma

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Using Six Sigma Tools for Talent Acquisition

I used to work for a training center of a placement agency. Every day, people seeking jobs overseas would crowd the office. And so I thought, recruitment work or the placement business is fast and easy. But that was a misconception. I knew about this when the HR of that agency approached me for help in looking for engineers for a steel company in the Middle East.

I found that there was pressure from employers to fill certain positions with highly qualified people, and the agency was having a hard time accomplishing that task. Maybe for those companies facing the same dilemma, you can learn from what Volta Asia Enterprises is doing.

Volt Asia Enterprises, is a world class leader in the staffing service industry based in Malaysia. To improve efficiencies, the company is going into Six Sigma and using Six Sigma tools such as DMAIC and SIPOC.

Speaking before the American Chamber of Commerce Human Resources Committee workshop in Taipei, Excelsis Magno, regional general manager of Volt Asia Enterprises, said that “Six Sigma is a business philosophy that matches a company’s basic strategies to customer needs and expectations.”

At Volta for example, she further said:

The basic approach is to understand the current performance level. To improve existing processes, the DMAIC roadmap is applied to define, measure, analyze, improve and control. For redesigning a process, the technique is define, measure, analyze, design and verify. She then defined the various roles, before discussing concepts and sharing possible applications.

Statistical metrics are used to describe the quality of a process in a state of near perfection with only 3.4 defects per million opportunities (DPMO). To emphasize the benefits of working towards Six Sigma, here are two examples: For every opening out of 10,000 total that are not filled in a year,” posited Magno, “at 93 percent (three sigma), there are 58 openings a month; at 99 percent (four sigma), there are 19 a month; at 99.9997 percent (six sigma), there are merely three every 100 years.

Continue reading…

Source:
China Post

*Photo from Stock.Xchng

Filed under: DMAIC, Human Resource, SIPOC, Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations

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“Slow down Six Sigma…”

Early this year, Erie County had put its high hopes on Six Sigma. Believing that the methodology will help them save on taxpayer’s money, county officials planned on sending employees for Six Sigma training.

The latest news however is saying that the control board and the Erie County Legislature have taken a stand to slow down on Six Sigma. According to the new on tradingmarkets.com, the budget for the Six Sigma training would run up to $912,000. But the control board’s finance committee would want to start small and see how it would go. Read the full story.

I think Six Sigma is not really for the faint-hearted. Unlike other quality methodologies, Six Sigma has to start big. Big because the first step in Six Sigma is training. And Six Sigma training is quite pricey.

I can now hear quality practitioners say that quality is free. Free in the sense that the cost of starting a quality journey cannot compensate for the benefits and savings that one reaps in the end.

So in the case of Erie County, I’m not quite sure if this is a case of being prudent or a case of politics getting in the way.

Filed under: Finance, Public Sector, Six Sigma, Training

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Six Sigma Delivers at USPS

I knew whatever system the United States Postal Service (USPS) is using must be really good. I’ve already heard a lot of good postal stories.

In fact, my admiration for the efficient postal service was magnified anew when I watched the movie Atonement last week. Even at the height of World War II, mails get delivered and received! If that is isn’t efficiency, I don’t know what is. Unless it was just dramatized in the movie.

At any rate, today, I found this news on iSixSigma about why Six Sigma receives USPS stamp of approval.

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has a number of tools at its disposal to ensure that letters and packages get from Point A to Point B on time and in one piece. Web tools and other technological advances allow for easier shipping and tracking of materials, but it was the use of Six Sigma tools that allowed USPS to enhance customer service by improving on-time delivery at an air mail processing center (AMC). Specifically, the largest contributors to delivery failures were examined and reduced at the AMC in Columbus, OH.

Continue reading…

*Photo credit from imagesthatsing.com

Filed under: Processes, Public Sector, Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations, USPS

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Lean/Six Sigma Upcoming Events

Just like your processes, you also need to beef up your skills, continue learning every step of the way. Here are upcoming Six Sigma events that will be useful for you as a Six Sigma practitioner.

For more events, check out GoingToMeet.com!

Filed under: Events/Announcements, Lean Six Sigma, Six Sigma

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“If Sports Were Six Sigma”

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, Six Sigma, Sports, Zero Defects

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Gun-holding Six Sigma

Err, I just wanted to play with words, actually. But General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products is serious about their gun manufacturing business. The company is strengthening its Lean/Six Sigma initiatives at its Saco, Maine, gun manufacturing facility to increase the plant’s capacity.

The plant is manufacturing MK19 and MK47 40-millimeter grenade weapon systems, high-speed multi-barrel Gatling guns, and M2 50-caliber machine gun. It might also interest you to know that General Dynamics’ Gatling gun systems are found in every U.S. fighter aircraft, including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Also, the company has manufactured more than 30,000 MK19 gun systems. The M2 machine gun has been in production at Saco since 1979.

This news definitely makes some quarters feel safe, others scared.
Source:
ReliablePlant

Filed under: Deployment, Lean Six Sigma, Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations

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Lean Six Sigma to Sustainability in Business

Over at GreenBiz.com, Patricia Calkins shares smarter ways to go green and become sustainable. She outlines seven ways to sustainability in business. First is exploring the entire value chain of your business, and on the second spot is using disciplined, quantitative analysis to identify your best opportunities, specifically Lean Six Sigma.

Analytical tools and methodologies developed for proven quality management programs like Lean Six Sigma can help you identify problems and opportunities that will produce the biggest benefits in the shortest time frame.

Pareto charts, for example, help focus attention on the small number of sources that cause the biggest problems. The chart is a tool based on the famous Pareto Principle — best known as the “80-20 rule,” which was named for Vilfredo Pareto, the Italian economist who noted that 80 percent of the income in Italy went to 20 percent of the population.

A number of organizations have also developed environmental calculators to help businesses and consumers assess their environmental impact on a number of key factors, including paper use. These calculators provide information that can facilitate the development of smart green projects.

Continue reading…

Related post:
Pareto Chart and Six Sigma

*Photo from Stock.Xchng

Filed under: Lean Six Sigma, Pareto chart, Sustainable Business

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