CHAPTER 7 : LEAN SIX SIGMA Flashcards
described as a business
improvement approach that seeks to find and eliminate causes of defects and errors in manufacturing and service processes by focusing on outputs that are critical to customers and a clear financial return for the organization.
Six Sigma
At Motorola, for example, Six Sigma became part of the common language of all employees. To them, it
means ________________, even if they do not understand the statistical details.
near perfection
____________________ a pioneered the concept of Six Sigma as an approach to measuring product and service quality.
Motorola
Motorola’s CEO,
Robert Galvin.
Improve product and services quality ten times
1989
at least one hundred-fold by
1991
Achieve six-sigma capability by
1992
efforts by General Electric, driven by former CEO ___________ ,
brought significant media attention to the concept and made Six Sigma a popular approach to quality improvement.
Jack Welch
Ultimate goal
Zero Defects in Everything we do
One of the key learnings GE discovered was that Six Sigma is not only for ___________.
engineers (it is for everybody)
____________ can use Six Sigma to reduce waste, improve product consistency, solve equipment
problems, or create capacity
Plant managers
___________________ need it to reduce the cycle time for hiring employees.
Human Resource Managers
________________________ can use it to improve forecast reliability, pricing strategies, or pricing variation.
Regional Sales Manager
Six Sigma began as a manufacturing focus to reduce defect levels to only a few parts per million. It evolved into a
formal business strategy designed to accelerate improvements in every facet of an organization.
contrasting features between TQM
and Six Sigma include
- TQM is based largely on worker empowerment and teams; Six Sigma is owned by business leader champions.
- TQM activities generally occur within a function, process, or individual workplace; Six Sigma projects are truly cross-functional.
- TQM training is generally limited to simple improvement tools and concepts; Six Sigma focuses on a more
rigorous and advanced set of statistical methods and DMAIC methodology. - TOM is focused on improvement with little financial accountability; Six Sigma requires a verifiable return
on investment and focus on the bottom line.
Six Sigma is the realization of many fundamental concepts of TOM, notably, the __________ of
human and process elements of improvement.
integration
Human issues include:
management leadership a sense of urgency
focus on results and customers
team processes
culture change
process issues include:
- use of process management techniques
- analysis of variation and statistical methods
- a disciplined problem-solving approach
- and management by fact
The first step in using Six Sigma is to select an ___________
appropriate problem
a deviation between what should be
happening and what actually is happening that is important enough to make someone think the deviation ought to
be corrected.
problem
every instance of quality problem-solving falls into one of five categories:
- Conformance problems
- Efficiency problems
- Unstructured performance problems
- Product design problems
- Process design problems
characterized by unsatisfactory performance that causes customer dissatisfaction, such as high levels of defects, service failures, or customer complaints.
Conformance Problem
characterized by unsatisfactory performance that causes dissatisfaction from
the standpoint of noncustomer stakeholders, such as managers of financial or supply chain functions.
Efficiency Problems
characterized by unsatisfactory performance by processes that are not well-specified or understood.
Unstructured Performance Problem
involve designing new products or redesigning existing products to better satisfy customer needs.
Product Design Problems
involve designing new processes or substantially revising existing processes.
Process Design Problems
Six Sigma methods are most applicable to ___________________ because the processes that create the problems can be easily identified,
measured, analyzed, and changed.
conformance problems
For efficiency problems, _________ are generally used
lean tools
vehicles that are used to organize and to implement Six Sigma.
Projects
One of the challenges of implementing Six Sigma projects is to __________ them with normal work activities.
coordinate
Projects fail for a variety of reasons
- not adhering to schedules
- poor planning
- scope creep
- mismatching of skills
- insufficient
knowledge transfer
___________ vital to Six Sigma projects because of the interdisciplinary nature of such projects.
Teams
Six Sigma teams are comprised of
several types of individuals:
- Champions
- Master Black Belts
- Black Belts
- Green Belts
- Team Members
Senior-level managers who promote and lead the deployment of Six Sigma in a significant area of the business
understand the philosophy of Six Sigma, select projects, set objectives, allocate
resources, and select and mentor teams.
own Six Sigma projects and are responsible or their completion and results
Champion
Full-time Six Sigma experts who are responsible for Six Sigma strategy, training,
mentoring, deployment, and results.
Master Black Belts
Fully trained Six Sigma experts with extensive technical training who perform much of the
technical analysis required in Six Sigma projects, usually on a full-time basis. They have advanced knowledge
of tools and DMAIC methods, and often act as project team leaders.
Black Belts
Functional employees who are trained in introductory Six Sigma Tools and methodology and work on projects on a part-time basis, assisting Black Belts while developing their own knowledge and
expertise.
Green Belts
Individuals form various functional areas who support specific projects.
Team members
There are two ways for an organization to generate Six Sigma projects
top-down and bottom-up
generally are tied to business strategy and are aligned with customer needs. Their major weakness is that they are often too broad in scope to be completed in a timely manner.
top-down projects
Black Belts (or Master Black Belts) choose the projects that are well-suited to the capabilities of teams.
Bottom-up approach
Factors that should be considered when selecting Six Sigma projects include the following:
- Financial return
- Impacts on customers and organizational effectiveness
- Probability of success
- Impact on employees
- Fit to strategy and competitive advantage
Six Sigma projects are driven by expected ______________
financial returns
Balancing quality costs against expected revenue gains
return on quality (ROQ)
ROQ is based on four main principles:
- Quality is an investment.
- Quality efforts must be made financially accountable.
- It is possible to spend too much on quality.
- Not all quality expenditures are equally valid.
often used to estimate effects and the financial implications.
Sophisticated statistical methods
One of the _______ experienced in organizations new to Six Sigma is a lack of ability of senior managers to estimate what the resources they allocate (or fail to allocate) to Six Sigma projects will “buy” in the way of bottom-line returns.
pitfalls
projects that are easy to accomplish, or even can be completed by a single individual in order to
show early successes
“low-hanging fruit
Finally, Six Sigma projects should ________ the organization’s vision and competitive strategy
support
refers to approaches that originated at the Ford Motor Company in the early 1900s, but which were refined and modernized
by the Toyota Motor Corporation later in the century.
Lean production
Simple way of defining lean approaches
getting more done with less
Some of the key tools used in lean production include
- The 5S’s
- Visual controls
- Pull production.
- Single minute exchange of dies (SMED)
- Total productive maintenance
- Source inspection.
- Continuous improvement
- seiri (sort),
- seiton (set in order),
- seiso (shine),
- seiketsu (standardize),
- shitsuke (sustain)
indicators for tools, parts, and production activities that are placed in plain sight of all workers so that everyone can understand the status of the system at a glance.
Visual Controls
In this system (also known as kanban or just-in-time), upstream suppliers do not produce
until the downstream customer signals a need for parts.
Pull Production
refers to rapid changeover of tooling and fixtures in machine
shops so that multiple products in smaller batches can be run on the same equipment.
Single minute exchange of dies (SMED)
designed to ensure that equipment is
operational and available when needed
Total productive maintenance
Inspection and control by process operators guarantees that product passed on to the
next production stage conforms to specifications.
Source inspection
provides the link to Six Sigma. In order to make lean
production work, one must get to the root causes of problems and permanently remove them.
Continuous improvement
integral part of continuous improvement in lean environments
Teamwork
can be defined
as an integrated improvement approach to improve goods and services and operations efficiency by reducing
defects, variation, and waste.
Lean Six Sigma
Both exploit data and logical problem-solving analysis
Six Sigma and lean
Services are generally driven by four key measures of performance
- Accuracy
- Cycle time
- Cost
- Customer satisfaction
those places where the defective “product” is sent to be reworked or scrapped (revised, corrected, or discarded in nonmanufacturing terms).
“hidden factories,”
Find the hidden factory and you also find
_____________ to improve the process.
opportunities
