Six Sigma Melds Data Collection and Analysis

The problem with six sigma, and other quality improvement fads is that they don't address the problem (making things better) so much as they address the "culture of quality" - whatever that is.

I'm an old "continuous process improvement" kind of guy, myself.

The way for a company to get better at doing what it does is for each employee to get better at what he/she does, and for management to let that happen. Any employee can tell you the things that keep them from doing their job better. You just have to be willing to listen, and bold enough to act.

The problem is that many managers are short sighted idiots.

I have yet to work at a company where the top manager was the smartest guy in the room.

Managers like things like six-sigma - it's nice and new and shiny, and if they buy it all their problems will go away.

My experince with Hindustan power Plus Now Taken over by Caterpiller was six sigma Data collection was solely to hide the deffects and six sigma process was used to regularise all wrong practices and procedures and valididate and declare each black belt has closed successfuly at least 4projects in financial year and show substantial svings using all stastical tools avilable the rule book.as Hindustan Power Plus floted six sigma projects ,all data colection was done with out voice of customer and falls voice of business ( for example engineering Black belts were forced to treat manafacturing and Purchase departments as internal customer and successfuly closed and validitae the projects making shure all known deffects or wrong procedures and practices to continue.and to Day Caterpiller after taking over the Hindustan Powerplus and implimented SAP (ERP)dont know How to deal with the situtation because ERP process is implimented based on those Blackbelts and MasterBlack Belts who regularised the Deffects.No doubt six sigma is wounderful tool but management of the companies should be honest in implimenting the six sigma process.

Question: Have you ever been involved in a Six Sigma Lean Kaizen Event???

If you have been an active member of a Lean Kaizen Event you will understand how the process works. Employees are gathered to state their points of view on the current process: frustrations, what works, what doesn't, the current workflow, etc. Taking the existing process in an attempt to better or streamline it.

Having taken part in many Lean Kaizen events with a large office products company, I have found Six Sigma to be fantastic tool to define a process [whether that be in manufacturing or in an office] eliminating time wastes and non-value adds. I have seen and lived the results proving this process definitely works!

There's no doubt that it can work. Or, I should say, there's no doubt that it can be used as a tool to make things better, if your company has the determination and willingness to actually, really, make changes, not just go through the motions.

Like any tool, it can be used for good or ill. Its success depends entirely on the character of the persons who implement it.

Agreed.

This recent Dilbert comic strip seems to stick to mind.

Sorry, Moose, manufacturing's quality 'buzz-words' just bring out the smarta@@ in us design guys.

You havnt worked at a company where the top manager was the smartest guy in the room?? Man, you either think way too highly of yourself or have a problem getting a job at a good company.

I have worked in several environments where there were many people both more and less intelligent than myself. When I started as a cadet engineer, when engineers ran engineering companies, yes I have seen top level managers that were the smartest guys in the room.

But that was a long time ago and management today seems to be made up almost entirely of bean counting account driven people. So of late the most scheming, corner cutting, back stabbing, short term profit seeking, self promoting, buck passing, blame laying, finger pointing north end of a south bound pig type of individual but never the smartest.

Hi Masu -

Your post reminds me of a conversation I had with a colleague a few months before I left a previous employer. A reporter asked Nick Scheele in the press conference following his appointment if he was concerned by the Ford history that seemed to imply that the company could not succeed when led by a finance/accounting type rather than by an engineer or "car guy". Scheele, a business school graduate, waffled, saying that he loved cars, loved Ford, and would be the right person to beat Toyota, making Ford the worlds' second-largest car company during the challenging economic times ahead.

I looked at my friend, who looked at me and said "Well, he failed the acid test.". My response was "Yep, no noble metal he. Let's go to lunch." A few months later, I took a buyout. In a few more days, my friend will have done so too.

I will no longer go to work for, or stay working for, any company where I'm not convinced the top person (women can be bosses too) is 1) smart; at least as smart as I am 2) ethical and 3) knowledgeable about the core business of the firm. Nick Scheele may be a brilliant accountant and cost cutter. He doesn't know squat about how to design and build cars that people want.

Anna

Hi Anna,

The whole concept of trying to run a company purely on a budgetary basis is so flawed that I can't understand how it ever came into being let alone managed to screw things up as badly as it has.

Initially I thought the problem was fairly regional but the more I hear the worse it seems to get. Not only is it an international problem but nobody seems to be learning that the concept is flawed, it just keeps getting worse. I don't know how many times I have warned management of a pending problem only to be ignored because it didn't' fit in some bean counters spread sheet. Then when the procreating male bovine excrement impacts the air movement device it's usually the engineer that saw it coming that gets the blame. These idiots seem to wander through life causing catastrophe upon catastrophe then jump ship leaving a path of destruction wherever their career has taken them.

Then there is this unbelievable concept of "Just In Time" which in the real world where delays are inevitable translates to "Never In Time". To engineers it seem blatantly obvious that it is vital to carry spare parts for critical applications but no matter how many times companies get hurt because a part wasn't available when needed they never seem to learn.

I fly gliders and there is a phrase that we use regarding the wearing of parachutes that goes "It's better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it". Can you imagine trying to get that past management today?

Another great statement by management is "Don't give me problems give me answers". I was apparently und the mistaken impression that it was managements job to find solutions for problems and head them off beforehand thing gout out of control. When you suggest that the answer is to get rid of the redundant layer of management they never seem to understand do they?

Don't you just love those mission statements, "Our goal it to …." What complete and utter drivel, if you need a mission statement to tell you what your job is then you shouldn't be in that position in the first place. What they really mean is that you will do all the work , we'll take the glory and if it goes wrong you'll get the blame.

Frankly I have no idea what the solution is, but I do know everything worked perfectly well and in my opinion far more smoothly, before we started this ludicrous economics and accounting twaddle.

I don't know, maybe I am just a cynic?

No you are not a cynic? You are right as long as finance department drives the company we as hard core engineers cant do Much. its these financial who predict and commiet the profits and stock value one year in advance and expect we ediots to meet Smart goals of Chairman of the company.I worked for Caterpillar for six years and left in frustration. these finance specialists are experts in coining the words like just in time.voise of bussiness,etc its a world wide trend i am seeing.

crm

I trained as a 6 Sigma Black belt at Ford, and I was profoundly disappointed in the way that middle management would steer BB (and GB) project selection away from anything that would have rocked the boat or actually documented problems with "the system" of decision making. Not to mention the credit grabbing and multiple counting of savings as being attributable to 6 Sigma, Value Analysis, Kaizen, and miscellaneous other cost savings inititatives.

In my particular division, our top technical management did get it, sort of. They admitted from the beginning, as Motorola had to after several years' effort, that it isn't possible to achieve 6 sigma quality levels with products that have not been designed to minimize variation in the critical-to-customer areas. But this implies you have to know what's critical to the customer in your design, and something about the process variation which produces those characteristics, and there was very little agreement about the first and less knowledge about the second in the plant and engineering management ranks. I mean that plant people rarely knew what really mattered to the customer, and design engineers rarely had a clue as to what went on in plants, or was achievable with particular processes.

Automating data collection (and the standard sorts of analysis so you can track trends) would be a great step forward in some cases. But many plants I worked with were still collecting and charting SPC data every shift, though no-one above the level of the production supervisor was ever looking at it, nor were production supervisors empowered to do much beyond changing a cutting tool or adjusting a pressure setting. DPMO isn't inherently more useful as a metric than process capability; it depends on what the people with the interets and the power to change things are going to pay attention to.

Anna

ooh - I learned a new word - vinyasa!

Bhankii -

Pleased to be of service in spreading interesting trivia among the engineering community.

I actually stole that quote from someone else, and altered it to fit me better. (A process known to engineers and academics of all sorts. It's called "research".) The original goes "A weapon for every range, a belt for every occasion, and a kata for each arrangement of the furniture."

I do much more yoga these days than I do martial arts of any sort, so "vinyasa" is the better term for me, altough the two words (one from Sanskrit, one from Korean, IIRC) have loosely equivalent meanings.

Anna

Personally I think the most successful engineering philosophy was the one Kelly Johnson used to set up the famous Skunk Works at Lockheed. He took the engineers, draftsmen and managers and put them in the same building as the shop floor. If a problem was found during the production it was a simple problem to grab an engineer, develop a solution and take the solution to a draftsman for documentation.

The Skunk Works managed to produce the U2 spy plane and then went on using only slide rules, pencils, paper and absolutely no computers to design and build the SR-71 blackbird. Entirely new manufacturing methods were required and that was before they even looked at the problems that building a primarily titanium aircraft that cruses and Mk +3 involved. The SR-71 still holds many records including the world speed record for an air breathing aircraft and New York to London speed record. The Russians, Chinese, Libyans and probably a host of others hated it, they fired literally thousands of super expensive SAMs at it and never even came close. For an encore the then went on and produced the F-117 night hawk stealth fighter in complete secrecy.

I doubt any other engineering shop could boast that sort of track record and to think the did most of the work without the aid of computers is phenomenal to say the least. If you want a model of how an engineering department should run then the Skunk Works would defiantly be at the top of my list. To me toe removal of any sort of barrier, physical or otherwise, between engineers, the shop floor, drafting/documentation, management and end users it the most important part of the process. If you do that the chances are everything else will fall into place.

Wether at carporate level or middle management or shopfloor level Six sigma has ended up as an exellent game to kill time . in my last job it was compulsery to be part of sigma for every employee so every one was a green belt for at least five projects under five diffrent black belts at times a Black belt was a green belt for a diffrent project and was fully occupied attending Balckbelt meetings or green belt meetings, some times beyand workin hours for data collection and analysis for next meetings and focus on day to day operations was last and came to stand still ,shipment of orders went into tailspin,and infact every one became creative in finding exquses on six sigma foundation not to do any work.and we last a large chunk of loyal customers to our compitetors. Now another problem has been created by six sigma ie they have an army of Masterblack belts and dont know what to do with them.long live six sigma and its culture.only brighter part of this six sigma game was every one has become an expert in churning out Power point presentations at the droop of the hat.

CRM-

Oh dear. I knew it was only a matter of time. A company where they've managed to ISO-ize Six Sigma!

Apparently all your managers have forgotten the absolute bedrock foundation of being in business - an improvement which is not perceptible to the customer is utterly irrelevant. I suggest you start hunting another job, because that organization is doomed.

Best of luck in parlaying your Powerpoint skills into a new job...

Anna