Application of Six Sigma in Supply Chain Management

Lean Six Sigma concepts were introduced in the book titled Leaning into Six Sigma: The Path to Integration of Lean Enterprise and Six Sigma (Lean Six Sigma). Lean Six Sigma methodologies combine lean manufacturing and Six Sigma strategies to rely on improved performance from a collective team effort that systematically reduces variation and removes seven kinds of waste, known as Muda. Muda includes any unnecessary motion, transport, wait time, inappropriate processing, excess inventory, overproduction, and defects (Lean Six Sigma). Furthermore, Lean Six Sigma methods aim to provide customers with the best possible quality, cost, and delivery (ASQ.org, n.d.). In all, Lean Six Sigma is a business performance improvement strategy that uses a systematic approach to improving the way people advance processes. Its methodologies allow for systematically enriched processes to satisfy the customer and make money. Simply put, Lean Six Sigma as a business enhancer, ingrained with tools and techniques people can use to learn how to improve their processes (iSixSigma,

The driving factors for a success or failure of implementing Six Sigma is largely dependent on the inputs set forth at the conception and duration of the integration. This whitepaper will compare and contrast these critical inputs for a successful deployment. In order to accomplish this five various companies: GE Electric, W.R. Grace, Royal Chemicals, Diversified Paper and Lemforder. Some of these organizations had very successful results while others failed to reach their full potential. What is clear is the similarities of those that succeed and those that failed.

Global Optimum – Six sigma improvements in supply chain are positioned not as narrowly focused improvements but as end-to-end supply chain process improvements. All new enhancement ideas were to be aligned to global goals rather than local goals. Which means that, when a

Six Sigma can help companies achieve performance levels that externally are invaluable to customers and internally can reduce costs. These projects can now be found in very diverse industries and can span far-reaching …these two initiatives can be complementary, especially for "Greenfield" process improvements… UPS Supply Chain Solutions 2 business processes and geographies

In this document we have done a detailed study of Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma and how they help Business Analysts to maximize their skill sets to attain maximum process improvements in their activities. We introduce the topic, provide a historical timeline and disucuss its relevance to the topic. After that, we analyze current state and use the information to provide results in Analysis and Synthesis section.

There are always pros and cons to any quality improvement methodology. For instance, the pros of Six Sigma tend to place extreme importance on leadership and its support for the success of the project. Another pro is the integration of different human elements, which include cultural change, and focus on the customer and their needs. “By using the concept of statistical thinking, Six Sigma encourages applications of statistical tools and techniques that reduce variability” (Harry, 2000). The cons of Six Sigma include, not having the quality data available, especially when a new process has been implemented without having the data available. Often the solutions that Six Sigma proposes can be costly and only a small

Six Sigma is a set of tools, processes and techniques that aid in the improvement of any

The Supply Chain Council (SCC) is a global nonprofit organization whose structures help member organizations make dramatic and rapid improvements in supply chain performance. One of their structures is the Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR). According to the supply chain council “The SCOR Framework is the basis for all supply chain management were the metrics in SCOR provide a solid foundation for measuring performance and identifying priorities, the processes are the common language in your supply chain operations”1.

Wal-Mart has difficulty developing and implementing a process that can improve the product material quality since there are so many vendors, manufacturers and international companies involved. They need to implement a set of standards that every company needs to adhere to by setting acceptable standards that must be met across the board whether the company is a local business or a foreign company. Most of the material defective products come from overseas. The process that can afford the opportunity to fix this dilemma is the process known as Six Sigma. This method is designed to manage process variations which cause defects. The concept of this process is to take an already established

Six Sigma is a quality improvement philosophy and a methodology and collection of statistical techniques used to implement that philosophy. Six Sigma’s focuses on reducing or removing identifiable sources of changes in order to decrease the number of defects in a product. Six Sigma was developed by Bill Smith and was used to standardize the way in which defects are tallied (Meredith, 2013). As a new way of doing business, six sigma can have a significant impact on the end result of business. There are many way six sigma can be applied. For example, the scientific component of methodology is a structure approach that takes

• Six Sigma affords the avoidance of a “hit and miss” approach by breaking into measurable bites an entire chain of events leading to a problem, and then coming up with a corrective action (Roff, 2005, p. 1). According to Bateman and Snell (2009, p. 582), the acceptable failure rate is “99.99966 percent level of accuracy.” Although Six Sigma is a powerful control mechanism, it takes about 2-3 years from the time of implementation until its development is fully realized. It is a method that is most useful to a company when it is tailored specifically to a company’s processes.

Lean Six Sigma approach is recognized widely and has been implemented predominately in manufacturing rather than other industries. To illustrate the point, this paper draws attention to the adoption of Lean Six Sigma in various industries with a case study. The combination of Lean tools and Six Sigma methodology is used to improve the process and quality by eliminating the variations and creating workflow in a process. The hypothesis of this study was that the Six Sigma technique can be used along with lean tools in order to improve process and quality in any area of industries. The review of case study discovered the use of

It is concluded that SCM is not yet a discipline and it is moving in the right direction. We can consider that SCM is an emerging discipline. If we look more closely at what is supply chain management and how is it being framed in research, there is much more common issues than there are differences. There is a common core of subjects taught in most supply chain management programs. There is a set of fairly well accepted standards by which a company’s supply chains are judged. There is widespread agreement that supply chain management is a philosophy or orientation of the way that organizations conduct business and that it is multidisciplinary in

Six Sigma is a business management strategy originally developed by Motorola, USA in 1981. As of 2010, it enjoys widespread application in many sectors of industry, although its application is not without controversy.

The above four were the main reasons for the company to put together a set of processes which would formally combine SCM and six sigma, by training and developing supply chain people become capable of leading innovations. Over the last years of implementation, SCM six sigma became a unique and useful component of Samsung’s strategy for systematic and continuous improvement of its SCM