Six Sigma For ServiceSix Sigma approach had traditionally been employed in the manufacturing sector - till some years ago. With companies focusing as much energy on product service as on product development, Six Sigma practices are increasingly being employed in the service sector. Six Sigma for service is a concept by where a DMAIC or a DMADV model and its methodologies are used to reengineer or design new processes in order to meet the business objectives. The focus of a lot of companies in getting quality work in lesser time has allowed the concept of Lean Six Sigma for Service to establish itself in the service sector. How is it possible? How can an approach designed for manufacturing sector work with service sector when both of them are distinctively different? Manufacturing sectors is all about products and product developments which involves many a quantifiable data whereas service sector is about people and people management. The answer was pretty simple - the tools and methodologies that Six Sigma advocates remain constant. The variable in the Operating models of both these sectors was completely neutralized by the Six Sigma tools. Conceptually, the information flow or the interaction between two people are the major and critical factors for quality and speed of a process. Once it was determined that people are the core to the entire process of quality and speed, companies started adopting Six Sigma Approach to the services sector. What are the advantages? With tools and methodologies being the same, one could expect the working process to be same, albeit with different sets and types of data. The advantages for Lean Six Sigma for service is almost the same as manufacturing sector with a difference in domains and percentages. In a service sector, we may not be able to correlate to defects in products but we can definitely understand what does Service Delivery time mean. As an example, Let us assume that an organization delivers Service in 10 minutes, and it aims at delivering the service in 5 minutes. This would become the scope for the project and the improvement in Service Delivery Times can be bought about by implementing Six Sigma tools and methodologies. The application of Six Sigma for Service is for any organization who has service as the major vertical of operations which includes Retail, Call Centers, Customer Support, Hospitality and so on. The use of Six Sigma is a process-efficiency approach is gaining fast popularity amongst all of them. And the popularity of Lean Six Sigma for Service is still rising by the day. |