An application of Six Sigma to reduce waste

Six Sigma has been considered a powerful business strategy that employs a well-structured continuous improvement methodology to reduce process variability and drive out waste within the business processes using effective application of statistical tools and techniques. Although there is a wider acceptance of Six Sigma in many organizations today, there appears to be virtually no in-depth case study of Six Sigma in the existing literature. This involves how the Six Sigma methodology has been used, how Six Sigma tools and techniques have been applied and how the benefits have been generated. This paper presents a case study illustrating the effective use of Six Sigma to reduce waste in a coating process. It describes in detail how the project was selected and how the Six Sigma methodology was applied. It also shows how various tools and techniques within the Six Sigma methodology have been employed to achieve substantial financial benefits

Can six sigma be effectively implemented in SMEs?

Six Sigma is a well-established approach that seeks to identify and eliminate defects, mistakes or failures in business processes or systems by focusing on those process performance characteristics that are of critical importance to customers. With more than two decades of successful implementation of Six Sigma methodologies at major corporations, the benefits of Six Sigma are well documented. Although Six Sigma has been implemented with success in many large corporations, there is still less documented evidence of its implementation in smaller organisations. Moreover, in the author's experience as a researcher and quality management consultant, SMEs are still not convinced that Six Sigma can be effectively implemented within SMEs. This article attempts to address this issue – can Six Sigma can be effectively implemented in SMEs? One of the common myths of Six Sigma that has emerged over the last few years is that it is just applicable to large corporations with immense resources and budget. The purpose of this article is to test this myth and to show that a Six Sigma-based business strategy is applicable to all kinds of businesses irrespective of the size and type of industry; manufacturing or service

Multiple case-study analysis of quality management practices within UK Six Sigma and non-Six Sigma manufacturing small- and medium-sized enterprises

This paper examines multiple case-study analysis of quality management practices within UK Six Sigma and non-Six Sigma manufacturing small- and medium-sized enterprises

Six Sigma

In the new millennium the increasing expectation of customers and products complexity has forced companies to find new solutions and better alternatives to improve the quality of their products. Lean and Six Sigma methodology provides the best solutions to many problems and can be used as an accelerator in industry, business and even health care sectors. Due to its flexible nature, the Lean and Six Sigma methodology was rapidly adopted by many top and even small companies. This book provides the necessary guidance for selecting, performing and evaluating various procedures of Lean and Six Sigma. In the book you will find personal experiences in the field of Lean and Six Sigma projects in business, industry and health sectors

Reducing the delivery lead time in a food distribution SME through the implementation of six sigma methodology

Purpose – Six sigma is a systematic data driven approach to reduce the defect and improve the quality in any type of business. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings from the application of six sigma in a food service “small to medium sized enterprise” (SME) in a lean environment to reduce the waste in this field. Design/methodology/approach – A simplified version of six sigma is adopted through the application of appropriate statistical tools in order to focus on customer's requirements to identify the defect, the cause of the defect and improve the delivery process by implementing the optimum solution. Findings – The result suggests that modification in layout utilization reduced the number of causes of defect by 40 percent resulting in jumping from 1.44 sigma level to 2.09 Sigma level which is substantial improvement in SME. Research limitations/implications – Simplicity of six sigma is important to enabling any SME to identify the problem and minimize its cause through a systematic approach. Practical implications – Integrating of supply chain objectives with any quality initiatives such as lean and six sigma has a substantial effect on achieving to the targets. Originality/value – This paper represents a potential area in which six sigma methodology along side the lean management can promote supply chain management objectives for a food distribution SME

Quality management in heavy duty manufacturing industry: TQM vs. Six Sigma

‘Is TQM a management fad?’ This question has been extensively documented in the quality management literature; and will be tackled in this research though a critical literature review on the area. ‘TQM versus Six-Sigma’ debate, which has also been a fundamental challenge in this research filed, is addressed by a thematic and chronological review on the peer papers. To evaluate this challenge in practice, a primary research in heavy duty machinery production industry have been conducted using a case-study on, J C Bamford Excavators Ltd (JCB), the largest European construction machinery producer. The result highlights that TQM is a natural foundation to build up Six-Sigma upon; and not surprisingly the quality yield in a TQM approach complemented by Six-sigma is far higher and more stable than when TQM with no Six-Sigma focus is being put in place; thus presenting the overall finding that TQM and Six Sigma are compliments, not substitutes. The study will be concluded with an overview on quality management approaches in the heavy duty manufacturing industry to highlight the way forward for the industry

What is the role of academic institutions for the future development of Six Sigma?

This paper aims to present the role that leading engineering and business schools will play for the future development of Six Sigma. This is a viewpoint article and the material presented in this article is based on the author's experience in the field of Six Sigma. The findings of the paper reflect some of the major limitations of Six Sigma and the paper makes an attempt to address the importance of academic institutions to engage in Six Sigma research topics. The points expressed in this paper are based on the author's experience. It is essential to collect data on this topic from a number of leading researchers and practitioners in the field and to set out a research agenda in the future. This paper provides an excellent resource for those people who are currently carrying out research in Six Sigma. Moreover, the paper is equally useful to practitioners to understand the major limitations of this powerful business strategy and the role of academic institutions to address these limitations in the future

Case study in six sigma methadology : manufacturing quality improvement and guidence for managers

This article discusses the successful implementation of Six Sigma methodology in a high precision and critical process in the manufacture of automotive products. The Six Sigma define–measure–analyse–improve–control approach resulted in a reduction of tolerance-related problems and improved the first pass yield from 85% to 99.4%. Data were collected on all possible causes and regression analysis, hypothesis testing, Taguchi methods, classification and regression tree, etc. were used to analyse the data and draw conclusions. Implementation of Six Sigma methodology had a significant financial impact on the profitability of the company. An approximate saving of US$70,000 per annum was reported, which is in addition to the customer-facing benefits of improved quality on returns and sales. The project also had the benefit of allowing the company to learn useful messages that will guide future Six Sigma activities

Lean Six Sigma Leadership in Health Care Organizations

The reason for choosing this topic was the want to change the current employee settings in health care organizations. Using Lean Six Sigma Leadership has been a proven method to increasing staff satisfaction and empowering lifelong learning. The research for Lean Six Sigma ideologies came from reputable sources of literature, actual Lean Six Sigma training, and other publications. The want for providing information on the benefits of using this leadership program comes from future problems in health care administrators communicating to clinical staff and other employee bases. The findings were significant enough to create a compelling argument for the benefits of entire program in health care organization settings