Page 36 - Design for Six Sigma for Service (Six SIGMA Operational Methods)

18 Chapter One

Summary of Six Sigma
1. Six Sigma is a comprehensive strategy that provides businesses with
organizational infrastructure, discipline, training, and tools to improve
the capabilities of their business processes. Compared with other
quality initiatives, the key difference of Six Sigma is that it not only
applies to product quality, but also to all aspects of business operation.
Six Sigma is a method for business excellence.
2. Six Sigma tries to achieve business excellence by improving products,
processes, and people. By excellence we mean do the right things, and
do things right.
3. The Six Sigma organization infrastructure consists of Six Sigma pro-
fessionals, such as the Champion, Master Black Belts, Black Belts,
and Green Belts. All Six Sigma professionals are trained with Six
Sigma tools and methods.
4. Six Sigma activities are project-based activities. Six Sigma tries to
achieve business excellence by doing one project at a time. It has
sophisticated project selection, project flowchart, project man-
agement, and project evaluation procedures. Each project should
provide visible benefits to a company’s bottom line with verifiable
financial results. The project activities are led and executed by
members of the Six Sigma organizational infrastructure.

1.3.3 Design for Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma
The Six Sigma movement started with regular Six Sigma process
improvement activities featured by DMAIC. This DMAIC strategy does not
involve any changing or redesigning of the fundamental structure of the
underlying process. It involves finding solutions to eliminate the root causes
of performance problems in the process and of performance variation, while
leaving the basic process intact. The goals for DMAIC projects are usually
related to reducing defects, variations, and costs from poor quality.

However, after several years of application, this Six Sigma process
improvement strategy (DMAIC) encountered a few problems:
1. In many cases, the Six Sigma DMAIC strategy is applied to many
processes. It takes a lot of effort to make some processes become more
capable, less variational, and defect-free. However, it is often found
later that many of these processes are redundant and wasteful. From a
lean manufacturing point of view, these processes should have been
eliminated or simplified in the first place.
2. Some processes are fundamentally flawed in their design, and DMAIC-
based projects will not yield sufficient improvement for these processes.