Bettering the Process

“We Ought to be Better than we Are.”

These are the words of a German quality specialist; they were spoken in reference to Motorola’s product quality. At this time Motorola was one of the largest suppliers of electronics to Japan and the United States. When you’re supplying for such a large population, quality should be of great importance. In 1986 they came up with the concept of six sigma. Six sigma is just a method used to improve process outputs. It does this by first identifying and removing causes of defects/errors. It then tries to minimize the variability in manufacturing processes. Basically it is a way to use different things like quality management and statistical methods to create a special solution to a particular company’s problem.

There are five different components to fixing a process. First you have to make sure you know what you want to accomplish, identify the problem. Then start gathering information or collecting samples. From here you analyze your data. You have to recognize things that are not working properly and identify problem areas. Identifying the problem areas will outline what improvements are needed. Then only thing left is to make sure the environment where the process is being run is a controlled one. An input of random activity can cause alterations to the established desired outputs.

Six sigma means that a particular process is hovering between plus or minus six standard deviations from the mean. This means that a product being outputted by the process is 99.999998% from the mean. What makes this very appealing is that if calibrated correctly using this method a manufacturing process can be spitting out very identical parts. This increases the chances of ability to use the parts in other systems, this makes them interchangeable increasing efficiency and automation in the process.

  
 An individual system can be changed in many ways that are unique to that system.  Although industrial engineers are always looking to optimize, the techniques used have not really changed since the late 80’s. 

For example take a classroom on test day. What is the fastest way to distribute the test? The professor can hand them out to each individual as they walk in, go row by row or perhaps down the aisles. So what is the fastest way to distribute them? You can apply the concept of six sigma. We could run all three scenarios collect data, analyze and determine the process that would take less time and strain on the professor.

This method of optimization is pretty neat because like others before it, it’s applied to various situations and still produces an outcome that satisfies it. Because it is very versatile it sets the foundation for many manufacturing issues that arise. Six sigma is very straight forward and can be easily adjusted.

 Another quality production method worth comparing to six sigma is the Lean procedure. Lean principles identify the value of something relative to what the customer wants and then determines the most time effective way to get the customer to that value. These principles help you get to the actual solution that you want where Six Sigma just points out areas of improvement.

Before principles like Six Sigma production was very inefficient. The ability to make production lines interchangeable was not there. They lacked the vision of what an integrated system could do. Now what used to be single assembly lines what become automated and are able to produce high quality product.

Being able to identify the problems is very important in manufacturing but using Six Sigma alone would not be very productive. The effectiveness of identifying an issue definitely there. Huge quality improvements have been made in different companies, but a combination of different methods is required in order to better a system. 

These set of principles have allowed use to manufacture varying product using basically the same assembly line. Perfecting what we already were doing well is what Six Sigma allowed us to do.