abhishreshthaa
Abhijeet S
Six sigma is powerful approach achieve breakthrough improvements in manufacturing, engineering and business processes. The approach relies heavily on advanced statistical methods that complement the process and product knowledge to reduce variation in processes.
It is new way of doing business that would eliminate the existing defects efficiently and would prevent defects from occurring. Different strategies are used by organizations to introduce and deploy six-sigma approach. Each of these strategies has advantages and potential failure modes that must be addressed and avoided.
This approach of reducing defects in corporations has made a stunning resurgence thanks to highly publicized successes, such as the claim by corporate icon General Electric Co. that Six Sigma cut $1.5 billion from its costs last year. By some estimates, more than a quarter of the Fortune 200 roster of big companies have Six Sigma projects under way.
It is the methodology’s success that has led practitioners to greatly expand how it is used. While Six Sigma initially was applied primarily to manufacturing and logistics, it now can be applied to “all industries and all functions. Six Sigma can even be used in research and development to find innovative products some companies view it as an enterprise wide business strategy.
Six Sigma’s proponents acknowledge that problems can arise, but they say the problems relate to bad implementation rather than to the methodology itself. Proponents say difficulties may stem, in particular, from a lack of commitment from senior management or from a lack of patience.
On the flip side we have found many others aren’t so sure. While acknowledging that Six Sigma is great in some uses, they say the system assumes that what exists is fundamentally sound and merely needs refinement.
As a result, critics charge, Six Sigma is ill-suited for developing innovative products, finding fundamentally new internal processes, or setting overall corporate strategy. Consulting firms often need to relearn the truism that once you master a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail The recent trend to use Six Sigma statistical process-control metrics for every damn fool thing is just the latest example of the adaptive instincts of modern consulting.
The use of Six Sigma also failed to help IBM spot a strategic fiasco in its personal-computer business. The business was using the Six Sigma methodology to improve its forecasts for consumer demand—when the right approach would have been to do away with the forecasts. As rival computer maker Dell Computer Corp. has shown, it is far more efficient to wait until a consumer orders, before building the computer.
Because IBM just made incremental changes to the wrong approach, it posted losses of as much as $1 billion a year in the PC business in the 1990s and ultimately abandoned the consumer part of the market. Even when a company is happy with Six Sigma, results don’t always match expectations.
Six Sigma projects are measured on whether they speed up and improve processes or increase customer satisfaction—not on savings. Savings don’t enter into the equation. There are much cheaper cost-reduction programs than Six Sigma, which is a very training-intensive program that takes years for a company to internalize.
It is new way of doing business that would eliminate the existing defects efficiently and would prevent defects from occurring. Different strategies are used by organizations to introduce and deploy six-sigma approach. Each of these strategies has advantages and potential failure modes that must be addressed and avoided.
This approach of reducing defects in corporations has made a stunning resurgence thanks to highly publicized successes, such as the claim by corporate icon General Electric Co. that Six Sigma cut $1.5 billion from its costs last year. By some estimates, more than a quarter of the Fortune 200 roster of big companies have Six Sigma projects under way.
It is the methodology’s success that has led practitioners to greatly expand how it is used. While Six Sigma initially was applied primarily to manufacturing and logistics, it now can be applied to “all industries and all functions. Six Sigma can even be used in research and development to find innovative products some companies view it as an enterprise wide business strategy.
Six Sigma’s proponents acknowledge that problems can arise, but they say the problems relate to bad implementation rather than to the methodology itself. Proponents say difficulties may stem, in particular, from a lack of commitment from senior management or from a lack of patience.
On the flip side we have found many others aren’t so sure. While acknowledging that Six Sigma is great in some uses, they say the system assumes that what exists is fundamentally sound and merely needs refinement.
As a result, critics charge, Six Sigma is ill-suited for developing innovative products, finding fundamentally new internal processes, or setting overall corporate strategy. Consulting firms often need to relearn the truism that once you master a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail The recent trend to use Six Sigma statistical process-control metrics for every damn fool thing is just the latest example of the adaptive instincts of modern consulting.
The use of Six Sigma also failed to help IBM spot a strategic fiasco in its personal-computer business. The business was using the Six Sigma methodology to improve its forecasts for consumer demand—when the right approach would have been to do away with the forecasts. As rival computer maker Dell Computer Corp. has shown, it is far more efficient to wait until a consumer orders, before building the computer.
Because IBM just made incremental changes to the wrong approach, it posted losses of as much as $1 billion a year in the PC business in the 1990s and ultimately abandoned the consumer part of the market. Even when a company is happy with Six Sigma, results don’t always match expectations.
Six Sigma projects are measured on whether they speed up and improve processes or increase customer satisfaction—not on savings. Savings don’t enter into the equation. There are much cheaper cost-reduction programs than Six Sigma, which is a very training-intensive program that takes years for a company to internalize.