Page 41 - Design for Six Sigma for Service (Six SIGMA Operational Methods)

Six Sigma in Service Organizations 23

Recall from Fig. 1.3 that the two most important activities in service are
1. Service design
a. Service product design
b. Service facility design
c. Service process design
2. Service delivery
a. Service delivery process
b. Service encounter environment
c. Customer-provider interaction
It is clear that almost all current Six Sigma activities in service industries
only involve the service delivery process portion of service delivery activity.
Not many Six Sigma activities have been reported in service design.
However, if the quality of the service product design and service process
design is poor, this can be very detrimental to the success of service
organizations.

Just as many approaches of Six Sigma that were originally developed in the
manufacturing industry can be adapted into the service industry and achieve
great success, DFSS can also be adapted into the service industry and
achieve amazing results. Because the manufacturing industry is global and
is under hypercompetition, many service industries, such as health care, are
so inefficient that there are many “low-hanging fruits” ready to be picked,
yet since the service sector accounts for a big portion of the gross domestic
product (GDP) in the developed world, the potential for Six Sigma to gain
in the service industry is very big.

This book is fully devoted to discussing DFSS for service industries. The
DFSS approach in this book has two aspects: DFSS for service product and
DFSS for service process. Chapter 2 will discuss the DFSS project pro-
cedures for both service product and service process. Chapters 3 through 9
will cover the technical aspects of DFSS for service product. Chapter 10
discusses the technical aspects of DFSS for service process. Chapter 11 is a
reference chapter on necessary statistical techniques used in this book, and
Chap. 12 discusses an important technique in service process management, the
theory of constraints.