Page 33 - Six Sigma for electronics design and manufacturing

Six Sigma for Electronics Design and Manufacturing
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Many other companies have also adopted these high levels of quali-
ty, as well as cost reduction, responsiveness, flexibility, and inventory
turnover. One of the most notable is the General Electric Company
(GE). Several GE executives commented on the six sigma program in
an article by Rachel Lane, a reporter for Bloomberg news, in 1997 and
in the GE annual report for the same year. James McNerney, CEO of
GE Aircraft Engines said:
Foremost among our initiatives, Six Sigma Quality is driving cultural
change throughout our entire operation and accelerating our business
results. Six Sigma tools allow us to improve results dramatically by en-
hancing the value we provide to our customers. Almost one third of our
employees have been trained to lead projects and spread Six Sigma
tools to co-workers, resulting in more than $70 million in productivity
gains in 1997.
The same year, GE Appliance Director/CEO David Cote said: “This is
a leap of faith, when people see the actual results that come from this
and make money, you think, ‘Son of a gun, this thing really does
work!’ ”
Jeffery Immelt, CEO of GE Medical Systems said in 1997: “If you
want to change the way you do things, you have to have people who
are in the game.” To that end, GE created a class of six sigma practi-
tioners that take their titles from the martial arts. Extensive Train-
ing was provided to all employees. Those at the top were called “black
belts” and “master black belts.” They work on six sigma full time and
assist in training and leading six sigma projects. Regular employees
who receive abridged training are called “green belts.”
1.2 Why Six Sigma?
During the last few decades, advances in the high-technology and elec-
tronics industries have accelerated. The price/performance ratios con-
tinue to follow the industry idioms of more performance for lower price.
Intel’s Gordon Moore first proposed the law that bears his name in the
late 1960s: chip complexity (as defined by the number of active ele-
ments on a single semiconductor chip) will double about every device
generation, usually about 18 calendar months. This law has now been
valid for more than three decades, and it appears likely to be valid for
several more device generations. The capacity of today’s hard drives is
doubling every nine months; and the average price per megabit have
declined from $11.54 in 1988 to an estimated $0.02 in 1999.
Great expansion has also been occurring in the field of communica-
tion, both in the speed and the availability of the Internet. It is esti-
mated that that global access to the Internet has increased from 171