Corporate Driven Six Sigma Saves Ford $ 300 Million

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,

1. Six Sigma is a management philosophy that sets objectives, collects data and analyzes results as a way to remove wasted expenses from its processes and help reduce the number of defective products produced. Six Sigma uses quality measures to strive for near perfection by eliminating errors and variables.

Six Sigma is a business instrument for the betterment of a process. It is a controlled approach and methodology for obviating defects in any process such as manufacturing, businesses and any product or service. Six Sigma has been gaining tremendous popularity in industry today. However, academics have conducted limited research on this rising phenomenon. Interpreting Six Sigma primarily requires giving out a conceptual definition and describing an underlying theory. This topic uses Grounded theory approach and meager literature available to suggest an initial definition and theory of Six Sigma. This paper indicates that although tools and techniques on the topic are similar to earlier approaches of quality management, it provides a structure which is more detailed. This emerging structure for quality management attempts to improve the quality of the yield of a process by identifying and obviating the defects and causes lowering variability in business processes. Also one of the important areas touched upon is the conceptual understanding of Six Sigma. Each Six Sigma project executed inside an

Lean Six Sigma is a combination of two business-improvement systems, Lean and Six Sigma. Lean refers to the reduction of waste, or the elimination of unnecessary steps to increase speed and productivity. Six Sigma is the reduction of variance to improve system performance. Ultimately, the depot’s bottom line is a process that frequently produces a high-quality product, on time and within or below established budgets, so that equipment can be returned to the Warfighter quickly and at the lowest possible cost to the taxpayer.

Six Sigma was first introduced in the 1980’s by none other than Motorola. It was not however necessarily a novel concept at the time so much as it drew from a conglomerate of proven manufacturing principles. It is strikingly similar to the scientific method in design. Six Sigma approaches areas that may not necessarily be viewed as problematic with an open mind. It seeks to analyze problems or questions with a stepwise, statistical, and quantitative focus in order to discover, fix, or disprove problems that may or may not exist within a process. By doing this Six Sigma can improve efficiency and therefore improve positive outcomes for whatever the endpoint may be (Mast, Bisgaard, & others, 2007).

Lean Six Sigma is a methodology that creates processes within an organization to cut waste and improve the company’s performance. However, studies have shown that over the past decade applying Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma can create problems for companies financially and potential problems for employees. Companies should take great care before implementing a Lean Six Sigma solution because in some instances, going lean can do more harm than good both financially for the organization as well as destroying employee loyalty and moral.

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

Six Sigma is a set of techniques and tools for process improvement. Bill smith who worked as an engineer in Motorola inc introduced it in 1986. The term Six Sigma originated from terminology associated with statistical modeling of manufacturing processes. The maturity of a manufacturing process can be described by a sigma rating indicating its yield or the percentage of defect-free products it creates.

Ford Motor Company is an automobile manufacturing company which manufactures and distributes the products across six continents. Currently, the company has 65 plants producing vehicles under the Ford and the Lincoln brands (Ford Motor Company, 2014). Also, Forbes describes Ford as an important industrial company in the history of the United States. As a consequence, the company boasts of 180000 employees and an annual revenue exceeding 134 billion dollars (Ford Motor Company, 2014). Similarly, the company operation is highly automated, making it necessary for the company to have a Total Quality Management system in place, bearing in mind that ford is one of the first companies in the world to embrace Total Quality Management, as they used the slogan, “Ford has a better Idea” (Scheid, 2011).

One of the common methods of sustaining quality while managing a project is the Six Sigma process. The Six Sigma system improves products or services by increasing shareholder value, refining quality, promptness, and cost, along with customer satisfaction (Laureani & Antony, 2012). The system is a business strategy that is driven by distinguishing the causes of errors or failures within business processes, and eliminating these causes to produce products and services that meets the client’s requests. The focus of the method is to uncover and resolve the root cause of an issue within an organization prior to issue influencing defects within the product or services being produced (Hunold, 2014). By eliminating the root cause of a problem, an organization can increase the quality of the products or services that are created, decrease cost to the organization, and increase customer satisfaction.

Lean Six Sigma should be seen as an integrated framework now to initiate the change in culture and operations, leading to business and operations improvements. Organizations should try to become lean as much as possible and should leave a space for Six Sigma methodologies and should move forward to other philosophies such as agility and innovations. Every lean or Six sigma tool is not suitable for each company but most suitable tools and techniques should be identified and implemented in Lean Six Sigma frame work to get the competitive position in the

The 6-Sigma methodology first originated in 1986 in Motorola. It all began when a sales manager called Art Sundry, told the CEO, Bob Galvin that the quality of their products stinks. Galvin then visited manufacturing plants throughout the country and realised that what Art Sundry said was in fact very true. The company looked to develop a methodology that could help them measure and identify detects, thus reducing the number of defects and the 6-Sigma methodology was created. Once they introduced the 6-Sigma methodology it increased the levels of

Originally, Six Sigma was designed for control of defects and was part of total quality management (TQM) (Gupta, 2003). Since its creation, however, it has gone well beyond what it was originally. It is much more of a methodology now, and used to address and handle the variations that are seen in processes. These variations can cause defects, and that makes them unacceptable deviations that stray too far from the mean. When the variations can be managed systematically, the defects will be largely eliminated from any product (Gupta, 2003; Whalen, 2002; Witt, 2002). Because of that, the Six Sigma objective is to provide performance, value, and reliability to every end user or customer on a level that is world-class. Through the years it has gotten much better at meeting that objective, and more companies have began adopting it. One such company is Cessna. The company makes airplanes and airplane parts, and its name is almost synonymous with small, personal aircraft.

More and more companies have implemented quality management in their operations. According to isixsigma.com, many international organizations have implemented total quality management (TQM) such as Toyota Motor, Motorola, Ford Motor, and Philip semiconductor. TQM which is a strategy aimed at embedding awareness of quality in all organizational process (wikipedia) began in the 1950’s and it has become widely known in 1980’s. Also, Six Sigma was originated from Motorola in 1986. Its purpose is to “identify and remove the causes of defects and errors in manufacturing and business processes. It uses a set of quality management methods, including statistical methods, and creates a special infrastructure of people within the

In my perspective, the criticisms of the Six Sigma approach are unfounded. First, the writer of the article in Fortune Magazine, Lee Clifford argued that the Six Sigma concept can be mind-numbingly vague. This argument seems baseless because Six Sigma is a clear concept and if an approach introduces a systematic implementation of producing error-free products and services, such initiative should be regarded as a step in the right direction not only for the manufacturing industry but for the consumer population in general. Another criticism is that more companies are applying the Six Sigma while producing products that the consumers do not want. Understandably, the approach does not