Six Sigma

“SIX SIGMA: IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS AND DEFINITIONS”

Many times during business life, we probably hear about six sigma, with out understanding for real what it is about, or what it is refer to?. This document is to understand what exactly six sigma is for, its benefits, advantages, disadvantages and how it really works.
Six Sigma is a management tool developed by Motorola that emphasizessetting extremely high objectives, collecting data, and analyzing results to a fine degree as a way to reduce defects in products and services. The Greek letter sigma is sometimes used to denote variation from a standard. The philosophy behind Six Sigma is that if you measure how many defects are in a process, you can figure out how to systematically eliminate them and get as close to perfection aspossible. A six sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of the products manufactured are statistically expected to be free of defects (3.4 defects per million). Motorola set a goal of "six sigma" for all of its manufacturing operations, and this goal became a byword for the management and engineering practices used to achieve it. In order for a company to achieve Six Sigma, it cannot produce morethan 3.4 defects per million opportunities, where an opportunity is defined as a chance for nonconformance. This is the reason why the idea behind the Six Sigma Process is to eliminate defects. In this context, a defect is anything that impairs the quality of a product or service. This could be something physical such as the brakes not working in a vehicle, or it could be something that has gonewrong in the process of making a vehicle.
A good example would be if you ran a bar and had two people serving for hundreds of people. The defect in this context is that there are not enough people serving at the bar for the amount of customers.  In real life, inside real businesses, these defects are surprisingly difficult to see and point out.
In simple terms, it is about looking at thefundamental ways in which businesses operate in order to find a better way. Every part of this process is about improving the service or product a company offers to its customers.
There are two Six Sigma processes: Six Sigma DMAIC and Six Sigma DMADV, each term derived from the major steps in the process. Peter Pande. 2002)
Six Sigma DMAIC is a process that defines measures, analyzes, improves, andcontrols existing processes that fall below the Six Sigma specification.
Five phases are:
* Define the problem, the voice of the customer, and the project goals, specifically.
* Measure key aspects of the current process and collect relevant data.
* Analyze the data to investigate and verify cause-and-effect relationships. Determine what the relationships are, and attempt to ensure thatall factors have been considered. Seek out root cause of the defect under investigation.
* Improve or optimize the current process based upon data analysis using techniques such as design of experiments, and standard work to create a new, future state process. Set up pilot runs to establish process capability.
* Control the future state process to ensure that any deviations from target arecorrected before they result in defects. Implement control systems such as statistical process control, production boards, visual workplaces, and continuously monitor the process.
Six Sigma DMADV defines measures, analyzes, designs, and verifies new processes or products that are trying to achieve Six Sigma quality. Five phases are:
* Define design goals that are consistent with customerdemands and the enterprise strategy.
* Measure and identify CTQs (characteristics that are Critical To Quality), product capabilities, production process capability, and risks.
* Analyze to develop and design alternatives, create a high-level design and evaluate design capability to select the best design.
* Design details, optimize the design, and plan for design verification. This...