Lean Six Sigma Reference Material Essay

We designed a survey in class to collect information of how people interest in our designs. Then, we spent a week to interview people. So, our samples might be limited on time, space and quantity. Also, people might make choices without thinking due to the questionnaires are just imagined designs other than real products. It is reasonable to consider that those problems may lead to inaccurate data which may disturb the analysis result.

1. Define satellite-level metrics for a for-profit company, nonprofit organization, school, religious organization, or political organization.

“Six Sigma” and the “Cost of Quality” to a manufacturing company is a systematic approach that increases profits and improves customer satisfaction rates by eliminating the root cause for defects or errors in all processes, by creating new and more effective processes. To the health care company, “The Cost of Quality” may look and feel slightly different, yet in many ways both are the same. Both companies may operate and produce different products, and operate in two different market segments, both are concerned with delivering customer driven quality products or services in the most cost effective manner. Therefore, if we use a comparative analysis and the Six Sigma standard problem solving methodologies and apply it to the “Costs of Quality”, “Six Sigma Project Selection” and the role of “The Green Belt” we know that each looks to eliminate the root cause of defects and poor customer satisfaction scores. We will discuss these similarities and the differences in manufacturing and in health care and the importance of determining who the “Voice of the Customer” (VOC) is, to responding quickly to any sudden market change or in customer driven demand changes and for each current customer, lost customer, or any future customers.

Sigma -  is most common known as a Greek letter which is used in statistics as a measure of variation, or change. Most of the people, however, don’t know that  is not only a symbol but it is also a method of quality. 6 Quality (Six Sigma Quality) is a management philosophy which has to lead to better employee performance and therefore completely satisfy the customer.

Identifying value is the first stride of the lean approach (Wang 2013, p. 15). It is a very vital step in the process of implementing the lean approach because it addresses the question of if or not the project should commence or not, and whether it will be on any value to the business and customers. When value is identified, the business then maps the value stream, which describes the steps and processes that need to be done and eliminate steps that are not necessary, or that which do not and any value to the business or customers. Creating flow denotes streamlining the steps delineated from the previous step so that the products flow efficiently towards the customer at every process. The next step is establishing pull, which denotes the

business environment itself. Thus competition among companies forced organizations to adopt process excellence methodologies like Six Sigma.

Lean Six Sigma can be termed as a program of process improvement that incorporates two ideas which are lean, and six sigma. Lean comprises of techniques for minimizing the time required to deliver services or products. Six Sigma comprises of techniques for refining the quality of services and products, significantly contributing to amplified satisfaction of the client. By incorporating them, Lean Six Sigma can be seen to be a proven strategy of business management that assists organizations in operating more efficiently. Many quality improvement experts and business analysts believe that this program is the most prevalent business performance methodology in corporate developments history (Taghizadegan, 2006).

A Six Sigma case study has been performed on an IT call center by the author David L. Hallowell. The primary focus of the project is to increase the profitability of the company by using the DMAIC methodology. IT businesses these days realized that the best way to get in contact with its customers is by improving their call center customer care services. That is why the senior managers of the company have decided to tackle the issues faced by the call center by giving their Six Sigma DMAIC group a suitable project to take on. A lot of data has been gathered by the company after performing the project and the assessment of the data can be done to improve on their services. For any company to perform well in the market, it has to be at least on par with its competitors, if not better. The DMAIC technique is a powerful tool to get important information about the company and using these details, appropriate changes can be implemented.

Lean Software Development is essentially a transformation of lean manufacturing and IT principles and is a branch of agile development framework. The core concept here being eliminating waste. At the same time CMMI is a capability maturity model integration which is a process improvement technique that is used to bring about an improvement in a project, process or the entire organization for that matter. In this paper, we will first start, first, the background of lean will be explored i.e., Agile and CMMI. After that, how Lean and CMMI, although two techniques for an entirely different purpose could still work in conjunction to enhance a software

This project shows a medium link to strategic imperatives. Their goal is to ultimately get casual labor costs down so they can produce enough outputs that are in demand. This can essentially affect overall profits because as revenues climb from higher demand and expenses fall given the project successfully find a way to lower casual labor costs, profits may rise. However, it is not clear how the project will impact this key metric because there are no estimates for possible labor cost savings from the project. The company wants to find out why labor costs are so high, but fails to set specific goals of what they want casual labor to cost.

Companies ' utilize the quality control process along with following policies and procedures to monitor the quality of goods and services. They measure the quality through statistics and corporations are committed to produce products without defect. The manufacturing industry needs specific regulations and quality control measures should be required to protect consumers, corporations, and the environment. Stronger companies, leaders, and employees are created when quality control is implemented and used properly. By educating employees through training, setting goals, expectations and creating quality control standards new business relationships with vendors are formed and relationships with existing suppliers are stronger. Regulations from city and state are also required in order for corporations to distribute goods. Without a quality control process, companies ' run the risk of delivering defective or contaminated goods.

When you have a complex supply chain, supplier evaluation and reduction is a great step that can be taken towards having a lean supply chain. Supplier evaluation and reduction is a continuous process within organizations and forms part of the pre-qualification step within the supply chain management process, although in many organizations it includes the participation and input of other departments and stakeholders. Most organizations experienced in collecting supplier evaluation information prefer doing so using five-step processes for determining which supplier to approve or reject. Their processes often take the form of either a questionnaire or interview, sometimes even a site visit with each supplier, and includes appraisals of various aspects of the supplier 's business including capacity, financials, quality assurance, organizational structure and processes and performance. Based on the information obtained via the evaluation, a supplier is scored and either approved or not approved as one from whom to procure materials or services. In many organizations, there is an approved supplier list (ASL) to which a qualified supplier is then added. If rejected the supplier is generally not made available to the assessing company 's procurement team. Once approved, a supplier may be reevaluated on a periodic, often annual, basis. The ongoing process is defined as supplier performance management.

"If you do just Six Sigma, you 're not going to maximize the potential of your organization. You have to do both," - Mike Carnell, President of Six Sigma Applications

The overall purpose of this research paper is to define and assess decision making in management as well as the need for alternatives to use in the decision making processes. Management is concerned with combining all of the inputs of production. Managers decide what to make and how to make it. They chose from the available inputs and work out the right mix. Management must organize production to meet the goals of the company, which normally include keeping manufacturing costs low and producing a profit. The first industrial managers were men like Richard Arkwright and Thomas Edison, both inventors and businessmen. They own their companies and made all the management decisions. As the scale of production increased in the 19th century,

The emergence of the global marketplace demands that a company act on a global scale to be competitive. Competing on this level requires that a company provide a superior product and superior service. Companies desiring to achieve international quality status now have a manufacturing, quality control, and documentation standard in which to strive. ISO 9000 is the implemented international process management baseline for which all participating organizations will adhere.