Starwood and Six Sigma

employees on what Six Sigma actually is, how to use, and how it helps them perform

We will now evaluate the for mentioned companies and break down their respective attempts at implementing Lean Sigma. The first input we will evaluate is the Leadership Commitment to successful deployment. In 1995 GE Electric, at the time a very financially stable organization, the current CEO Jack Welch provided direction to the entire organization would be embarking on Six

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

Top-down commitment to keep up top quality execution, Starwood utilizes the administrations of a Six Sigma group called “Black Belts”. This organization envelops the DMAIC technique that finds the primary driver of obstructions of viable execution. Once the issues are distinguished, Starwood can oversee and mitigate issues that negatively influence implementation and profitability.

• Which group will feel the greatest impact if Six Sigma @ the Edge is implemented: managers, supervisors or plant workforce?

Pam Carter (2010) discusses the Six Sigma process and admits that she resisted it and came up with excuses so that she didn't have to complete the training that her company required. She was turned off by some of the terms used in the process such as black belt and green belt certification. Once she realized that these terms were not in reference to karate, she was willing to learn about the tool. Carter wrote an article discussing how she used the process at her place of employment. The article is titled, "Six Sigma" (2010). Carter is an Occupational Health, Safety and Wellness Manager in Charlottesville, VA. She used this process to reduce medication errors. There were many tools used such as Pareto charts, cause and effect diagrams, scatter plots, and histograms. She

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 is a measurement based strategy for process improvement and problem reduction. It is completed through the application of the Quality Improvement project and accomplished with the use of two Six Sigma models. One model is DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, control), which is designed to examine

The concept of Six Sigma is completely consistent with the aims and objective of many healthcare organizations. At times it is very challenging to attain an excellent Six Sigma accomplishment level in real life. A good example is, a health organization that has 100,000 surgeries annually, apparently it would be allowed only one undesirable occurrence for every three years, which is not very sensible. Nevertheless, the concept behind it is still beneficial and significant, and in

Additionally, MLF embraced Six Sigma as the essential discipline to achieve and maintain what was known internally as the "Leadership Edge": which signified a competitive edge through leadership and the competitive edge of its leaders. MLF used these processes to aim the spotlight on values, accomplishments, potential and goals. Thus, senior management worked with employees to plan specific development actions to ensure the employees' continued growth and progression as business leaders. CEO McCain explained that "our values and principles define the type of people and the culture in which they work. And Six Sigma defines the way they work – having a tight linkage between leadership and culture." Moreover, at MLF, the Six Sigma philosophy – doing the right things right – meant quantitatively understanding and consistently meeting critical customer needs with minimal waste throughout the entire value chain.

Hulsoman, a senior manger at Maple Leaf Food’s, had asked to meet Anthony Scire, plant manager at Maple Leaf Food’s Rivermede plant in Toranto, regarding a new initiative that she was heading, six Sigma @ The Edge. Based on the recent success of Six Sigma at the Rivermede plant, Louann had approached

• 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.

It can also be argued that Six Sigma is proactive addressing the entire production process instead of concentrating only on the end product. The way the concept seeks to find how improvements can be brought about well before defects are detected.

Breyfogle III, F.W., Cupello, J.M. and Meadows, B. (2001), “Managing Six Sigma”, John Wiley and Sons, New York.

In 1990’s Jack Welch launched Six Sigma in GE in a big way. He implemented Six Sigma in all areas and ensured that the entire organization participates in the initiative. He changed the performance incentives and made them based on individual’s ability and enthusiasm to take part in Six Sigma initiatives. He transformed GE to a state where Six Sigma had become the culture of the organization and not just a methodology for brining organization-wide improvements.