Six Sigma

Implementing Six Sigma

Six Sigma is considered to be a very effective set of practices to improve the efficiency of processes. Ingraining qualitative and quantitative measures as ways to measure data at every stage of process improvement mechanism, implementing Six Sigma on your processes would ensure that you have taken the first step of reengineering your process.

It all starts with the business owner or the business manager determining the scope of the process improvement. The scope of the project is directly tied to the primary factor determining customer satisfaction and company productivity and quality. Once a gap is determined by measuring historical data for the process, the reasons for the dip in performance is analyzed. Post the analysis of the reasons for variation, the Six Sigma implementation team comes up with performance improvement measures to fix the gaps. The implementation team transitions the measures to the product development team/service cycle team in order to minimize variations.

After the improvement measures are implemented across the product development chain, the data for the reengineered processes are measured for their results to check and see if the Six Sigma implementation has been successful. Results are measured in Short Term Sigma and Long term Sigma. For a good representation of accuracy and consistency of results, data is measured for 45-90 days after the improvement measures are completely implemented. If the process has a short term sigma shift of 3.4 DPMO or its equivalent and has 4.5 DPMO long term shift, the six sigma implementation is successful and the process has been successfully reengineered.

A lot of statistical tools like the X - Bar chart, Median Graphs, Pareto Charts, ANOVA analysis are used during the run of the six sigma implementation project. These projects are implemented by Six Sigma trained professionals who can either be resources of the company or consultants who are hired for this purpose. A classical DMAIC model which involves Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control stages is used for implementing six sigma projects. At the end of each stage, meetings are held to take a stock of the performance in the previous stage. These meetings are called tollgate meetings and the outcome of these meetings decide if the six sigma implementation needs to go ahead.

The key point about implementing Six Sigma on your processes is that you can not implement any Six Sigma project without the coordination of the team members of your organization. You can have Green Belt and Black Belt certified professionals on your team who will lead the implementation, but at the end of the day, it will be the team members who will implement the project with the team leaders leading the team, of course.