Correct Craft Implements Six Sigma
Posted by: meikah | 20 August 2008 | 9:23 pm
Correct Craft, manufacturer of the premium Nautique boat brand is going to implement AIMS Manufacturing Lifecycle Management (MLM) Framework Release 5. The move shows the company’s commitment to quality performance, thus, maintaining J.D. Power and Associates’ highest ranking.
According to Perry Smith, CEO of AIMS:
“AIMS MLM 5 goes well beyond simply enabling quality visibility. We’re empowering the quality function to positively impact a company’s risk management portfolio and improve processes that depend on manufacturing, from supply chain, to sales, to shipping and service. Correct Craft, with their laser focus on customer satisfaction, was ideally positioned to take advantage of new quality best practices provided through AIMS MLM to fuel their drive toward six sigma across the enterprise.”
Source:
iSixSigma News
Filed under: Benefits and Savings, Deployment, Manufacturing, Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations
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Six Sigma Reference: Using Six Sigma Tools in Powder Coating Applications
Posted by: meikah | 18 August 2008 | 9:13 pm
Having trouble with your powder coating application system and don’t know where to begin finding the problem, much less a solution? Try Six Sigma methods. This article gives you solid information about this troubleshooting methodology and how to apply it to your operation.
Read: Using Six Sigma Tools in Powder Coating Applications.pdf
Filed under: Six Sigma, Six Sigma References, Tools/Toolkits
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Here Comes IBM’s Green Sigma
Posted by: meikah | 18 August 2008 | 8:45 pm
In October last year, IBM announced that they would be launching their green initiatives soon. Its focus would be on developing processes to reduce the carbon intensity of products and processes, and creating a lean green business.
That dream has come to fruition as IBM launches Green Sigma business consulting. Based on Lean Six Sigma, Green Sigma aims to reduce usages of energy and water by using a software that manages networked sensors and data analysis.
CNET‘s Green Tech shares IBM’s carbon dashboard for tracking energy usage at businesses and a more detailed description of how Green Sigma works. Read the post here!
With the present environment degradation, companies—especially manufacturing companies—are among the biggest contributors of carbon and other toxic wastes. With this Green Sigma solution, companies can now have a shot at sustainable business.
Clean and green, and efficient and prosperous!
Update:
Greenbang’s Take on IBM’s Green Sigma
Filed under: Environment, Green Sigma, IBM, Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations, Sustainable Business
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Six Sigma Improving Transparency in Supply Chain Operations
Posted by: meikah | 18 August 2008 | 7:58 pm
The supply chain is one of the critical operations in an organization. Even a tiny break or pause in the chain can affect the whole supply operation.
Six Sigma is a tool that helps you find these breaks or deviations from the standard or norm that governs efficient operations.
Over at ArabianBusiness.com, in the Ask the Expert section, Andreas Dur shares how Six Sigma improves transparency in supply chain operations. He further emphasizes that Six Sigma or any other approach will do. The important thing is that you have a system and that you are operating systematically.
Filed under: Benefits and Savings, Six Sigma, Supply Chain
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Desirability, an Important Skill for Six Sigma Practitioners
Posted by: meikah | 13 August 2008 | 9:13 pm
This is new to me, too. So, what do we mean by desirability here?
It is a single number that describes how well a person’s performance comes to meeting the targets for all requirements simultaneously.
An article on iSixSigma has a good discussion about it.
The math in the desirability score card requires practitioners to know what the customer wants and what they will accept, known as voice of the customer (VOC); and what can be delivered and with how much variation, known as voice of the process (VOP).
Filed under: Six Sigma, Statistics, Tools/Toolkits
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Two of the Many Applications of Six Sigma
Posted by: meikah | 13 August 2008 | 8:40 pm
First, many Indian IT companies use Six Sigma in their billing collection from clients. They didn’t think that hard times is the reason for clients not to pay up, rather, it has something to do with their collection system.
TCS has said that its DSO (day sales outstanding) figure could be lower in future.
It now sees the billing exercise as a six-sigma exercise (a process methodology that improves processes such that given a million opportunities, only 3.4 mistakes are committed), according to Mr Mahalingam. Read more…
Second, in Indianapolis, officials there see Lean Six Sigma as a big help to solving their problem of potholes.
So far this year the city has received more than 16,000 complaints about potholes. Only four years ago, in 2004, the number was under 5,000.
The mayor asked for help from Eli Lilly and their Lean Six Sigma… Lilly came up with the idea but it is up to the city to get the job done. They plan to simplify the process by eliminating the pothole inspection procedure before a work order is placed. Read more…
Filed under: Benefits and Savings, Deployment, General, Lean Six Sigma, Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations
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Another Quality Quiz from PQ Systems eLine
Posted by: meikah | 13 August 2008 | 8:03 pm
PQ Systems through it’s Quality eline newsletter brings us another quality quiz.
For this month, you will get a chance to win a copy of the popular Quality Gamebox program. Submit your response by August 29 to be entered in the drawing.
Check out the Quality Quiz now!
Filed under: PQ Systems eLine, Quality
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Ford Continues with Six Sigma
Posted by: meikah | 12 August 2008 | 10:34 pm
Despite economic crisis and dwindling sales, Ford Motor Co.‘s VP for Global Quality, Bennie Fowler says, “we’re playing to win!”
How? By increasing their efforts on quality improvements.
Fowler said Ford was aiming for an average of 800 errors per 1,000 vehicles among its small cars launched in Europe, a rate better than Toyota’s in that class and 500 less than the industry average.
Fowler said each U.S. Ford plant will send 5 to 10 hourly workers to Wayne State University this fall to train for Six Sigma black belt certification.
In another story on Motor Trends, Ford plans to be global quality leader by 2010.
… to boost accountability, the automaker is implementing an intricate Early Claims Binning system that will help track quality issues straight to the source. Warranty claims are quickly sent to a car’s original assembly plant, where the problem is analyzed to see whether its cause is a manufacturing flaw or a problem with the overall design.
In addition Fowler says Dearborn is training an “army of problem solvers” throughout the company, using the Six Sigma management strategy originally pioneered by Motorola to improve quality. The automaker currently has 60,000 Six Sigma “green belts,” more than 7000 “black belts,” and 400 “master black belts working around the world,” and will also offer a course this fall through Wayne State University to help UAW workers get certified for Six Sigma black belt status.
If you see a company embarking on efforts like these, it’s hard not to take notice and give support. Way to go, Ford!
Filed under: Benefits and Savings, Black Belt, Ford Motor Co., Manufacturing, Quality, Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations, Training
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Lean Six Sigma Improves Efficiency at U.S. Oncology, Inc.
Posted by: meikah | 12 August 2008 | 9:33 pm
In a press release, U.S. Oncology, Inc. is proud to claim that the company’s increased productivity is a result of their Lean Six Sigma initiatives.
The most glaring proof is that Six Sigma allows U.S. Oncology to expand patient volume by 80,000 in three years. And one example of their success include:
Growth in annual network volume from 550,000 patients in 2005 to over 630,000 patients currently as a result of successful development and expanded marketing and sales efforts, combined with our focus on increased productivity supported by lean six-sigma programs.Read more…
So, how is your Lean Six Sigma deployment going?
Via: iSixSigma News
Filed under: Benefits and Savings, Deployment, Healthcare, Lean Six Sigma, Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations
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Doesn’t Six Sigma Work for the Movies and TV Shows?
Posted by: meikah | 10 August 2008 | 11:50 pm
GE owns NBC. That’s a fact. NBC not profitting as according to GE’s expectations. That’s a conjecture.
But rumors have it that GE is actually thinking of selling NBC because of the latter’s disappointing performance in the ratings and profits game. CEO Jeff Immelt says otherwise, and insists that GE is not selling NBC.
I was especially struck at this phrase (in bold font) on BusinessWorld Online‘s article:
The media unit is plainly out of place in the massive conglomerate, for which in 2007 it provided just under 9% of revenue. While in ’07 NBC’s profit margins topped all GE segments, its revenue growth lagged that of the overall company in ’06 and ’07 and slowed to 0.1% in the first half of 2008. And no one today forecasts stability for big media companies.
The stock price of GE has more or less stagnated since CEO Jeff Immelt took over in 2001, in part because the notion of bona fide multi-industry titans like GE is considered passe. (Even media conglomerates are now passe.) And the governing narrative of GE is hard to extend to NBC. A key tenet of GE exceptionalism holds that it adds value to anything it touches by obsessing over management and management processes like Six Sigma. But that which debugs, say, making turbines simply won’t work for the woolly and unstandardizable ways in which movies and TV shows are made.
That made me ask: doesn’t Six Sigma work for the movies and TV shows?
Somehow, I’m having a hard time reconciling that. Six Sigma might or should work for these industries, too.
