1. Six Sigma Overview
2.5 Project Team Activities
Second, Six Sigma can begin with proper education for all levels of the company’s employees. The education should begin with the top management and directors (Champions). If Champions do not understand the real meaning of Six Sigma, there is no way for Six Sigma to be disseminated within the company. Following the educa- tion of Champions, the training for GB, BB, and MBB (Master Black Belts) must be conducted in that sequence.
However, the MBB education is done usually by profes- sional organizations.
Third, Six Sigma can be divided into three parts according to its characteristics. They are Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) for the R&D area, Six Sigma for manufacturing processes, and Transactional Six Sigma (TSS). DFSS is often called R&D Six Sigma. It is not easy to introduce Six Sigma to all areas at the same time. In this case, the CEO should decide the order of introduction to those three areas. Usually it is easy to introduce Six Sigma to manufacturing processes first, followed by the service areas and the R&D areas. However, the order really depends on the circumstances of the compa- ny at the time.
Fourth, GB and BB educations are the most important ingredients for Six Sigma success.
Fifth, deploy CTQs for all departments concerned. These CTQs can be deployed by policy management or by manage- ment by objectives. When the BBs are born, some important CTQ problems should be given to these BBs to solve. In prin- ciple, the BB should be the project leaders and work as full- time workers for quality innovation.
Sixth, in order to firmly introduce Six Sigma, some basic infrastructure is necessary. The tools required include SPC, MRP (material requirement planning), KM, and DBMS. In particular, efficient data acquisition, data storage, data analy- sis and information dissemination systems are necessary.
Lastly, a “Six Sigma Day” each month must be designated.
On this day, the CEO must check the progress of Six Sigma
project teams personally. On this day, all types of presenta- tions of Six Sigma results can be made, and rewards can be given to the persons who performed excellent jobs in support of the Six Sigma initiative.
(2) Problem-solving processes for project activities
The original Six Sigma process developed for problem-solv- ing at Motorola is MAIC, which means measurement, analy- sis, improvement, and control. Later, DMAIC instead of MAIC was advocated at GE where D stands for definition.
MAIC or DMAIC is mostly used as a unique problem-solving process in manufacturing areas. However, with DFSS, there are several proposed processes as follows.
1) DMADV (Define – Measure – Analyze – Design – Ver- ify). MADV was suggested by Motorola for DFSS, and D was added to it for definition. DMADV is similar to DMAIC.
2) IDOV (Identify – Design – Optimize – Validate). This was suggested by GE and has been used most fre- quently in practice.
3) DIDES (Define – Initiate – Design – Execute – Sustain).
This was suggested by Qualtec Consulting Company.
It seems that the above problem-solving processes for man- ufacturing and R&D are not quite suitable for service areas.
The author believes that DMARIC (Define – Measure – Analyse – Redesign – Implement – Control) is an excellent problem-solving process of TSS for non-manufacturing ser- vice areas. Here, the “redesign” phase means that the system for service work should be redesigned in order to improve the service function.
(3) Difference between project teams and quality circles In Six Sigma, the project teams leading by BBs are the backbone of group activities. However, in TQC or TQM, quality circles constitute the backbone of group activities.
There are some basic differences between these two teams as shown in Table 1. In the old management strategies of TQC and TQM, there are usually two types of team efforts, namely, the task-force-team and the quality circle team. The task-force-team mainly consists of engineers and scientists, and the quality circle team consists of the line operators. However, in Six Sigma, these two teams are merged into one, called the “project team,” whose leader is usually a BB. For theme selection and problem-solving flow, the differences are also listed in Table 1.
Depending on management policy, it is permissible for a company to have project teams and quality circle teams at the same time under the banner of Six Sigma. However, care should be exercised in controlling the two types of teams.
Table 2.1. Differences between project team and quality circle
(4) How to select project themes?
As shown in Table 2.1, the project themes are selected essen- tially by a top-down approach, and company CTQs are nomi- nated as themes most of the time. The deployment method in order to select project themes is shown in Figure 2.5.
Classification Project team Quality circle
Organization
Engineers (or scientists) + operators one BB
+ several GBs
Operators
Theme selection Top-down,
company CTQs Bottom-up, self-selection Problem-solving, flow DMAIC, DMADV,
IDOV, DMARI PDCA
Figure 2.5. Deployment for selection of project themes For example, suppose that one of the company’s manage- ment goals is to improve production capability without further investment. For this particular goal, each division must have its own CTQs. Suppose that the manufacturing division has such CTQs as machine down-time and rolled throughput yield (RTY). For instance, for the machine down-time, there may be more than two sub-CTQs: heating machine down-time, cool- ing machine down-time, and pump down-time. For the sub- CTQ of heating machine down-time, process CTQ1 (theme 1) could be “reduction of heating machine down-time from 10 hours/month to 5 hours/month,” and process CTQ2 (theme 2) could be “10% improvement of heating process capability.”