The hottest Six Sigma Journey to the East

Six Sigma "journey to the East"

because the leadership advocated by six sigma is incompatible with the leadership methods, behaviors and models familiar to Chinese people in many aspects, the change of leadership will be the premise and guarantee for the success of Six Sigma management strategy

in 2001, with the Autobiography of Jack Welch, then president of General Electric, becoming widely popular in China, For the first time, most Chinese enterprise leaders have heard of an enterprise management method with both numbers and Greek letters in its name - Six Sigma

when talking about six sigma, people usually think of Ge first. But in fact, six sigma, as a breakthrough quality management strategy, was first established and put into practice by Motorola in the late 1980s to cope with the competitive pressure from Japanese enterprises and try to significantly improve product quality. Three years later, Motorola's Six Sigma quality strategy has achieved unprecedented success: the failure rate of products has been reduced from 6210 parts per million (about four sigma) to 32 parts per million (5.5 sigma), saving more than $2billion in this process

subsequently, Texas Instruments and Allied Signal (later merged with Honeywell) comprehensively promoted the Six Sigma quality strategy in their respective manufacturing processes, and both achieved great success. But it is general electric under Jack Welch that really turns this highly effective quality strategy into management philosophy and forms a corporate culture. In 1996, the company began to take six sigma as a management strategy, ranking first among the strategic initiatives of its three major companies (the other two are globalization and service industry), and comprehensively implemented the process change method of Six Sigma in the company

after Motorola, Texas Instruments, Lianxin/Honeywell, general electric and other pioneers, almost all Fortune 500 mandatory modeling enterprises have begun to implement Six Sigma management strategies. At the same time, Japanese enterprises, including Sony and Toshiba, which have been leading the world in the field of quality, also joined the ranks of implementing Six Sigma in the late 1990s. Samsung and LG in South Korea have also started their journey towards six sigma. It is worth noting that since the introduction of electricity, all companies have applied Six Sigma strategy to the optimization of all business processes of the organization, not just limited to manufacturing processes. More and more service-oriented enterprises, such as the largest Citibank in the United States and the largest B2C station in the world, have also successfully adopted the Six Sigma strategy to improve service quality and maintain high customer loyalty. Therefore, six sigma is no longer regarded as a quality management method for manufacturing business processes, but also a highly effective management method and strategy for enterprise process design, transformation and optimization. At present, the average level of American companies has increased from three sigma 10 years ago to nearly five sigma. The scrap purchase of Cheng Fujian Sanbao Co., Ltd. has increased by 30 yuan/ton; Ningbo Shenlong scrap increased by 20 yuan/ton; Yantai new Oriental metallurgical scrap purchase price increased by 20 yuan/ton; Jiangsu Hongtai scrap increased by 20 yuan/ton; Tangshan Xindonghai special steel scrap increased by 20 yuan/ton, while Japan has exceeded the level of 5.5 sigma

the success of this management method for multinational corporations has made Chinese enterprises eager to learn modern enterprise management from multinational corporations boiling with enthusiasm. Many enterprise bosses speak of "Six Sigma". For a time, Six Sigma has mushroomed, and has become the toppriority of the strategic choice of major enterprises. Even some small-scale companies that don't even have a relatively formed enterprise management method are secretly planning how to use some tools in six sigma management method to solve some practical problems of their own enterprises

as the most senior Black Belt master of Six Sigma Consulting, Dr. gozenin, member of the national six sigma Promotion Committee and President of Providence Consulting Co., Ltd., said that if the Chinese branches of multinational companies implementing Six Sigma are separated from Chinese local enterprises, from the overall promotion strategy, planning and thinking, There is basically no difference between the Six Sigma implemented by multinational companies in their own countries and that implemented in China (including methods, training contents, and implementation steps). "In fact, management initiatives such as six sigma that emphasize system and data analysis, in terms of its own characteristics, also want to pursue this high degree of consistency, so as to ensure that the change will not be greatly discounted by regional differences, resulting in the deviation of the implementation effect." Dr. gozenin said, however, since China's business only accounts for a part of multinational companies, only about half of the 10 samples can be successful. These multinational companies will gradually expand to other regions only after they have gained some experience and have a considerable number of resources to cooperate with them. Therefore, when a management measure such as Six Sigma is implemented in China, it is often that these multinational companies have been implemented in Europe and the United States for twoorthree years, "But for those medium-sized multinational companies, since China may account for a large proportion of their total business, China may be the starting point for the implementation of a new management change."

the latest case in this regard is that Lenovo Group has just made the decision to implement the Six Sigma project. There is no doubt that China, as Lenovo's headquarters and largest market, is the top priority when Lenovo promotes Six Sigma in its global supply chain. In contrast, Lenovo's U.S. or European branches may temporarily lag behind - of course, for the whole company, the implementation of Six Sigma in China or other regions of the company must ensure consistency

however, in terms of comparison between these multinational companies, the implementation of Six Sigma in China is still different according to the actual conditions, their own characteristics and the industries in which they are located. For example, due to the consideration of enterprise strategy and the objective conditions of resource allocation, GE's medical instrument department is the most globalized department for the implementation of Six Sigma. At present, GE's personnel in charge of implementing Six Sigma projects in China are basically from those who worked in GE Medical Instruments group in the early stage. In terms of implementation time, GE China is almost the same as that of the U.S. headquarters, and it promotes Six Sigma in the whole business scope. Now, GE has integrated the idea of Toyota Lean production, which is more and more environmentally friendly. Through the implementation of Lean Six Sigma, it continues to maintain a strong growth momentum. Motorola, its American compatriot, is different from GE. Motorola China's implementation of Six Sigma is not only later than the U.S. headquarters, but also limited to the promotion and implementation of its manufacturing sector. The scope is very limited, so the impact is relatively limited

in addition to the differences in time and scope of implementation, Motorola and Ge also have different internal functional departments during implementation. Due to its narrow implementation scope, Motorola's functional department setting is relatively simple compared with Ge, which is why Motorola later proposed a so-called "second generation Six Sigma" internally - they want to learn from GE's experience and promote Six Sigma in other departments outside the manufacturing department

compared with GE and Motorola, GlaxoSmithKline, a multinational giant in the pharmaceutical industry, is more different due to safety and other factors. The particularity of the pharmaceutical industry determines that even a small change in the manufacturing process must be very cautious, because if you don't pay attention to it a little, these changes may bring "absurd" results to the efficacy and even safety performance of the finally produced drugs. It is this feature of "pulling the trigger and moving the whole body" that is likely to conflict with the spirit of "breaking restrictions and removing obstacles" emphasized in six sigma practice, which is set in favor of process optimization. Therefore, GlaxoSmithKline has also repeatedly evaluated and demonstrated in the process of introducing Six Sigma, and made some improvements to better suit its own characteristics

Chai Weidong, logistics manager of GlaxoSmithKline China, has paid attention to the laboratory inspection process. In the past, after drugs were produced, they had to be tested in the laboratory, and it usually took one day to produce results. However, Chai Weidong found that the time of drugs on the inspection equipment was only 2-3 hours, that is, the effective working time of the inspection process was only a few hours. In order to avoid waste, GlaxoSmithKline used six sigma to re plan the layout of the laboratory, and put the five process points that previously belonged to the inspection process into one unit, so that each inspection item is closely connected, and the linear arrangement from the inlet sample collection to the final export sample is adopted, which greatly improves the work efficiency by strengthening the scientific management and utilization of plastic packaging. At present, Six Sigma has become the core tool of GlaxoSmithKline supply chain management. At present, Chai Weidong is most concerned about how to further use Six Sigma to reduce costs at every node of the supply chain

as for Chinese enterprises that implement Six Sigma, in Ge zening's view, if 2001 is counted as the "first year" for Chinese enterprises to learn six sigma, then when entering the sixth year, after the waves cleared the sand, few enterprises still adhere to the implementation of "Six Sigma", and there are also few cases that bring real "change" to enterprise management through the implementation of Six Sigma projects

gozenin revealed that according to the research on the current situation of Six Sigma implementation of Chinese local enterprises by Providence, those enterprises that have not achieved any substantial economic benefits or have not significantly improved their process system after one year of implementation often have no effective attention and involvement from the top leaders in the promotion of Six Sigma. In the implementation of some large enterprises, senior leaders pay little attention to the overall promotion, and even do not participate in any training for senior leaders during the introduction period, let alone the review and monitoring of the project during the implementation period. In addition, many enterprise leaders in China are good at making decisions in the environment of lack of data or unstructured, which often rely on experience, intuition or emotion. When there is data, decision makers often tend to ignore data and facts, and unstructure the original structured decision. In addition, leaders who focus on non structural decision-making often behave as arbitrary, changeable and extensive management. Obviously, this is incompatible with Six Sigma Management Based on facts and data. It is not surprising that the extensive management culture will conflict with the rigor caused by six sigma, and the final failure of the project

gozenin, who holds the doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago and was once a core member of the CIG (corporate initiatives group) strategy group of Ge, pointed out to industry that the implementation of Six Sigma management strategy is essentially a top-down change, and the key factor for its success lies in the courage and determination of senior leaders to promote change. "Because the leadership advocated by six sigma is incompatible with the leadership methods, behaviors and models familiar to Chinese people in many aspects, the change of leadership will be the premise and guarantee for the success of Six Sigma management strategy." He saw with his own eyes that in the few years since the implementation of Six Sigma in China, too many enterprises have not