Friday

Introducing to the Six Sigma

What is Six Sigma?

A. A really small number
B. Flavor of the month program
C. Current incarnation of TQM
D. None of the above

Foundations of Modern Management Philosophies
Edwards Deming’s 14 Points
Create constancy of purpose
Reject defects
Reject inspection
Use quality criteria to award business
Constantly improve
Modernize training
Modernize management
Drive out fear
Break down functional barriers
Eliminate targets & slogans
Eliminate numerical quotas
Remove barriers from hourly workers
Train vigorously
Create a supportive management structure

JBoseph Juran’s 10 Step
suild awareness of the need and opportunity for improvement
Set goals for improvement
Organize to reach the goals (have a plan and an organizational structure)
Provide training
Carry out projects to solve problems
Report progress
Give recognition
Communicate results
Keep score
Maintain momentum by making annual improvement part of the regular systems and processes of the organization

Six Sigma: A Modern Definition
Six Sigma is a philosophy that underlies efforts to improve business performance and customer satisfaction
Using facts and data to eliminate waste and variation
Eliminating activities that don’t add value
It’s more than statistics(much more)
Asking the right question
Questions managers should ask
Questions managers should answer

Using data
Using the right tools
Using the right process

Questions Managers Should Ask
What activities are you responsible for? Who is the owner of these processes? Who are the team members? How well does the team work together
Which processes have the highest priority for improvement? How did you come to this conclusion? Where is the data that led to this conclusion?
How is the process performed?
What are your process performance measures? How accurate and precise is your measurement system?
What are the customer-driven specifications for all of your performance measures? How good or bad is the current performance? Show me the data. What are the improvement goals for the process?
What are all the sources of variability in the process?
Which sources of variability do you control?
Are any of the sources of variability supplier-dependent? If so, what are they, who is the supplier, and what are we doing about it?
What are the key variables that affect the average and variation of the measures of performance?
What are the relationships between the measures of performance and the key variables?
Do any key variables interact?
What setting for the key variables will optimize the measures of performance?
For the optimal settings of the key variables, what kind of variability exists in the performance measures?
How much improvement has the process shown in the past 6 months?
How much time and money have your efforts saved or generated for the company?

Questions Managers Should Answer
What is your product or service and who are your customers?
What perception do your customers have of your product or service? How do you know?
Do you believe quality issues are important to your company? Why? Which ones?
What is the company’s current share of the total market? Can quality improvement efforts assist you in increasing the market share and/or increasing profits? How?
How many hours per week do you currently have scheduled that are devoted strictly to quality issues?
How often per week do you solicit feedback from the people you mange? What kind of feedback do you solicit?
What are the right quality-oriented questions managers need to ask their people? What methods pr tools can be used to answer them?
Are your people trained to successfully use the best quality improvement tools? What is your ROI for the training?
Do you have a SOP for documenting quality improvement efforts?
What barriers do your people face when trying to do quality improvement? What are you doing to remove these barriers?
What metrics are you evaluated on that relate to quality issues? Are you held accountable for these metrics? What are the specific improvement goals for these metrics?
How much waste does your company have? What is the cost of poor quality?
One year from now, what evidence will you have to show that you made a difference?

Use Data…..but KISS!
Measure of central tendency
mean
median
Measures of dispersion
range
sample variance
sample deviation

Use Tools…..the right tools
Quality Function Deployment (QFD)
Pareto
Histograms
Run Charts
Control Charts
Design of Experiments (DOE)
Scatter Diagrams
Process Flow Diagrams
Nominal Group Techniques
Teamwork

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