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Quality Beyond Six Sigma

Quality Beyond Six Sigma
Ron Basu and Nevan Wright

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Butterworth-Heinemann An imprint of Elsevier Science Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP 200 Wheeler Road, Burlington MA 01803 First published 2003 Copyright © 2003, Elsevier ScienceLtd. All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright holder except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or underthe terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, England W1T 4LP. Applications for the copyright holder’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of CongressCataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 0 7506 5561 5 For information on all Butterworth-Heinemann publications visit our website at www.bh.com

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Contents
Foreword by Professor John S. Oakland Preface Acknowledgements 1 Why FIT SIGMA™? 2 History ofthe quality movement 3 The enigma of Six Sigma 4 Case studies: Six Sigma in practice 5 Lean enterprises 6 The methodology of FIT SIGMA™ 7 FIT SIGMA™ and service organizations 8 Project management and FIT SIGMA™ 9 Implementation, or making it happen References Glossary Index vii ix xi 1 11 33 53 68 81 112 138 150 174 179 185

Foreword
Since the early 1980s, in the ‘Western World’ we have beenin what I have called a quality revolution. Based on the simple premise that organizations of all kinds exist mainly to serve the needs of the customers of their products or services, good quality management has assumed great importance. Competitive pressures on companies and Government demands on the public sector have driven the need to find more effective and efficient approaches to managingbusinesses and non-profit making organizations. In the early days of the realization that improved quality was vital to the survival of many companies, especially in manufacturing, senior managers were made aware, through national campaigns and award programmes, that the basic elements had to be right. They learned through adoption of quality management systems, the involvement of improvement teamsand the use of quality tools, that improved business performance could be achieved only through better planning, capable processes and the involvement of people. These are the basic elements of a Total Quality Management ((TQM) approach and this has not changed no matter how many sophisticated approaches and techniques come along. The development of TQM has seen the introduction and adoption ofmany dialects and components, including quality circles, international systems and standards, statistical process control (SPC), business process re-engineering (BPR), lean manufacturing, continuous improvement, benchmarking and business excellence. An approach finding favour in some companies was Six Sigma, most famously used in Motorola, General Electric and Allied Signal. This operationalized TQMinto a project-based system, based on delivering tangible business benefits, often directly to the bottom line. Strange combinations of the various approaches have led to Lean Sigma and other company specific acronyms such as ‘Statistically Based Continuous Improvement (SBCI)’. The authors of this book have looked at the history of what I call TQM and developed another approach – Fit Sigma –...