The hottest six step implementation of Six Sigma

Six step implementation of Six Sigma

Motorola once suffered repeated failures in every market it served. Customer dissatisfaction and disappointment with Motorola spread everywhere. Operating costs continued to rise, leading to disappointing profits. The market share it lost was all taken away by Japanese competitors

Motorola's business system is not designed for customer satisfaction. The response is slow and usually not designed to satisfy customers. The quality and reliability of Motorola products have not reached the level of the impeccable technical service team. Customers encounter too many unexpected product failures. The internal bureaucratic system is narcissistic and rarely considers how to serve customers

fortunately, while Japanese enterprises beat Motorola in the market, they also provided a benchmark for how to do better. A number of senior managers and supervisors were sent to Japan for benchmarking to study operation methods and product quality standards. They found that Japan has a nationwide staff participation and teamwork plan, focusing on improving operations to better serve customers. Japanese enterprises not only use the labor provided by employees, but also give full play to their talents and knowledge

from its customers, Motorola recognizes that it must change all operating systems, including manufacturing, service, administration and sales, to focus on overall customer satisfaction. From Japanese enterprises, they learned that letting all employees brainstorm is an effective way to improve efficiency and morale. Japanese enterprises also made them realize that simplifying the design will produce a higher level of quality and reliability. Motorola's leadership put all these together and established the vision and framework of "Six Sigma"

Six Sigma planning focuses on customer satisfaction, which leads to better products and services. This is a cultural change that affects every employee of the enterprise. They will change their way of thinking and pay attention to their participation in their work. Mao Sheng, President of Shenzhen National Institute of innovative energy, takes the search for photocatalytic materials for solar photolysis of water to produce hydrogen as an example: substrate 2 titanium oxide and degree, and looks at things around with different perceptions

the realization of Six Sigma is not the end point. The pursuit of Six Sigma is a never-ending process. It consists of six steps: establishing operational problems and measurement indicators that need to be improved; Establish a capable improvement team; Identify the potential causes of the problem; Explore the root causes; Long term improvement measures; Demonstrate and celebrate improvements. After these steps are fully implemented, all your operational activities will eliminate inefficiency, and employees will have high morale and unremitting pursuit of excellence

first, establish problems and measurement indicators

first of all, clarify what operational problems you will improve. It should meet three criteria: identify the impact of things you are going to improve; Define the scope of things to be improved; Communicate consensus

all interactive activities related to the delivery of products or services in the enterprise will have an impact on customers. You have to study under what circumstances these effects are unsatisfactory. These impacts are actually the result of reasons upstream of the business process. The goal of the enterprise improvement project is to find out these reasons and improve the way of doing things. The square rule is to integrate quality into it

the effective way to do this is the "ask why" skill, that is, you keep asking why until the operation problem has objective and understandable significance. Consider this example: in a company, everyone hopes that there will be no problems in the use of computers. When the problem occurs, they hope that the management information system (MIS) department will repair it immediately. The company does not have enough MIS resources to meet the requirements of "immediate repair". On the contrary, a more realistic expectation is to require the MIS department to solve the problem within 15 minutes or such a period. Therefore, the operation problem of MIS department should be defined as "20% of fault repair requests need to be solved in more than 15 minutes."

in this way, the metrics must come from the defined operational issues. If your operational problem is "20% of the fault repair requests need to be solved in more than 15 minutes", then the metric you establish should be the defect rate, that is, "the number of requests that take more than 15 minutes to repair faults" divided by "the total number of fault repair requests processed"

in terms of communicating consensus, you must show how improvement measures contribute to the overall success of the enterprise, and you must reach a consensus with customers to make them realize that you are doing the right thing

second, establish an improvement team

when you start implementing a Six Sigma project, you must prioritize improvement actions. A team should be established to eliminate the reasons why customers get defective products or dissatisfied services. Once the Six Sigma project is established and runs smoothly (usually months after the project is launched), an effective team must be in place. At this point, the focus of the adjustment changes from assigning team members to solve problems to arranging problems for team members to solve

before building a team, you must obtain the consensus of managers at all levels. Senior executives must realize that supporting teamwork is to support the construction of corporate culture. Managers must realize that they must be willing to reflect on the way they lead their subordinates

when forming a team, you must correctly combine people with different educational backgrounds, experiences and knowledge. Team members must be trained to master the improvement tools and the methods to successfully use the tools. Team members should consist of 3 to 8 people, including team leaders. After the team is expanded to 10 members, it is best to divide it into two small teams. This is because when the team has more than 10 people, some team members will fall into silence and no longer contribute to team activities or success

when everyone's intelligence is brought into play and everyone understands their role in producing specific results, the team efficiency is the highest. This will build common ground

it is important to promote balanced participation. Balanced participation is to recognize that the interests of each member are closely related to the collective achievements. Therefore, everyone should participate in discussion, decision-making, and share the success of the project

III. identify the potential causes of the problems

so far, you have found the operational problems that need to be improved and established an improvement team. Next, before starting to implement improvement actions, you must determine whether all steps, policies and measures need to be in place now in order to create services or products for customers. You can't waste time improving things that aren't necessary or even hinder the achievement of high-quality performance. In addition to improving quality, eliminating unnecessary steps can also reduce costs and shorten cycles

the best way to do this is to draw a flow chart. Even if the enterprise does not implement the continuous improvement plan, it is beneficial to draw an operation flow chart at least once every two years. Letting the system and actual operation go their own way is often easy to deviate from the right track

there are two basic flow chart drawing methods: linear flow chart and inter department flow chart, but there are some shortcomings, such as fragile, not easy to transport, storage and so on. These two methods should first put forward the "existing" situation. Then, you need to determine the "due" situation. Before continuing with the next steps of Six Sigma, you must restructure the system from the "existing" state to the "due" state

the following example shows how a work team reorganizes its system from an "existing" state to a "due" state. The internal testing laboratory must complete the reliability condition test before putting new electronic components on the market. This is an important final step after months of product development. The practical cycle is set at 60 days, which includes stress testing for at least a period of time. In other words, 60 days is the expectation of customers, and the laboratory failed to consistently meet the expectations of customers

the working team then created a "as is" flow chart for handling reliability testing through the reliability laboratory. The first thing they observed was that a lot of time was wasted waiting for the test plan, test bench and available equipment. They then focused their discussion on the phenomenon of delay and the reasons for its occurrence

the team arranged a joint meeting with the personnel of the product engineering department. When asked about the test plan, the personnel of the product engineering department pointed out that they had only five different test plans. The previous decision was that the reliability laboratory should control the test plan document. They are named plans a, B, C, D, and E. When the engineering department submits the test parts, they will specify the plan to be used

then, the dispatcher asked whether there was a way to let the laboratory know in advance when to submit the test parts. Product engineers replied that they always have several products waiting for design and development, so they know very well when specific product parts need to be submitted to the laboratory. It was agreed that a report would be sent to the laboratory dispatcher every week

the successful decision made by the team raised the "existing" status of handling reliability tests to the "due" level. The team only focuses on what steps must be taken to achieve the desired results

IV. explore the root causes

now, the focus shifts to exploring the potential root causes. This requires a focused action plan. An effective action plan includes four components: what needs to be done; Who will do it; When to arrange to do it; What is the status of action items, especially overdue items. For some action items, the person in charge may be the whole team

an action plan is a living document with its own life. Six Sigma projects often take months to find all the root causes, implement solutions and achieve the desired results. After some actions are completed, new actions will emerge. As the team delves deeper into the root cause, they will find new things to do and new information to collect. In this way, the action plan becomes the history of team activities

the tool for collecting fresh information is the "checklist", which aims to determine what kind of data you plan to collect, where to collect data, and how long it will take to collect data. You should have a good understanding of how to decide your actions based on the information displayed in the data. This will help guide you to design the format of the checklist and understand where to collect data. You must also decide in advance how to convey the message

v. making improvement measures long-term

teamwork has changed the corporate culture. Having employees at all levels work together to reach a common vision on important issues and how to continue to work to achieve better performance will improve morale. The working life of all personnel who use the Six Sigma method will also be improved

the key to the successful implementation of Six Sigma is to be customer-centered. If you think you know the customer's needs but don't confirm them, you need to contact them to ensure that the team pays attention to the right goals. Once the team focuses on customer satisfaction, internal conflict becomes unnecessary

of course, everyone will develop to do things in different ways and do them better. This has become a new way of thinking to promote profound cultural change. With the culture of encouraging employees to execute orders without thinking