Page 40 - Design for Six Sigma for Service (Six SIGMA Operational Methods)

22 Chapter One

Table 1.3 Relative Importance of Six Sigma Activities in Improving Customer
Value and Reducing Cost

Maximize customer value DFSS, DMAIC, Lean
Minimize cost Lean, DFSS, DMAIC

Note: Six Sigma activities are listed in order of importance, the first item being of greatest
importance.

extent, it involves extensive cultural changes both within organizations
and in relationships with suppliers. Under the Six Sigma framework, it is
very easy to add such new twists as Lean Six Sigma and DFSS into com-
panywide Six Sigma activities. You can simply let a few existing Six Sigma
professionals take some additional lean manufacturing and DFSS training,
and initiate Lean Six Sigma and DFSS projects on top of existing Six Sigma
projects. Therefore, Six Sigma is very flexible in adding and adapting
emerging methods and business approaches to existing Six Sigma activities.
In the actual implementation, most companies customize Six Sigma
approaches to their own special circumstances.

Six Sigma started in the manufacturing industry and has been spreading
steadily into the service industry, such as health care, banking, and insurance.
Many Lean Six Sigma and DMAIC type projects are reported in various
service industries relating such diverse objectives as error reduction, cost
cutting, cycle time, and lead time reduction (George 2003).
As we discussed earlier, there are three important aspects of service quality:

1. Service product
2. Service delivery process
3. Customer-provider interaction
Currently, most reported Six Sigma activities in the service industry involve
using either Lean Six Sigma or DMAIC in improving the service delivery
process. Not much has been done in designing and improving the service
product and customer-provider interaction. On the other hand, service
delivery processes contain many varieties of process types, as introduced in
Table 1.1 and will be thoroughly discussed in Chap. 10. Besides lean manu-
facturing approaches, many other methods, such as process management and
discrete event simulation can also be used to help in redesigning and
improving the service delivery process.