The goal of this book is to provide you
with the guidance and direction necessary to realize Six Sigma's promise, while
avoiding traps and pitfalls commonly encountered. In this book you will find a
complete overview of the management and organization of Six Sigma, the
philosophy which underlies Six Sigma, and those problem solving techniques and
statistical tools most often used in Six Sigma.
The book begins with a discussion of leadership issues. Unfortunately, this
book cannot provide the leadership of a Bob Galvin or a Jack Welch. Nor is it a
substitute for the years of study and experience required to reach the technical
proficiency of a Black Belt or Master Black Belt. However, with top management's
commitment and the efforts of the right people, the information in this book can
help your organization achieve its goal of becoming a world-class operation.
In Leading Six Sigma, it is important to understand that it is primarily a
new approach to management, not a technical program. The goals of Six Sigma are
so ambitious--a 100X quality improvement every two to three years--as to
constitute a completely different way of running the business. True, there is a
significant technical component involved. But all the technical expertise in the
world will fail to produce results unless the working environment is receptive
to the ideas and changes that Six Sigma recommends. Six Sigma can also be viewed
as a creativity program. The activities undertaken by Six Sigma teams are
designed to discover new and better ways to do things. Often, the biggest
obstacle faced by an organization is dealing with the destructive nature of
creativity. It is difficult to abandon a comfortable routine or an investment in
existing technology just because a better way has been discovered. However, this
is precisely what Six Sigma demands. Understanding what it takes to allow
"creative destruction" to flourish is a primary responsibility of Six Sigma
leaders. The leadership section of the book describes the "Six Sigma
Organizational Paradox" which faces leaders, namely the need to encourage
variation, slack, and redundancy within the organization while simultaneously
working to eliminate these same things in processes. Also covered are the
various levels of technical proficiency required for Six Sigma, along with
criteria for selecting personnel for Six Sigma training. Finally, Chapter One
provides a simple Six Sigma Readiness Evaluation checklist.
Chapter Two presents the basic principles of customer-centered organizations.
Six Sigma requires customer-focus that is rigorous and data based, mere
platitudes will not suffice. The statistical meaning of the term "Six Sigma" is
contrasted with the old three sigma quality. This is followed by a discussion of
transforming customer requirements into internal requirements. Chapter Two
concludes with an overview of the serial nature of business processes and the
need for virtually perfect process performance to assure that customers
experience Six Sigma quality levels.
Chapter Three examines principles of good metrics and how these metrics are
applied in Six Sigma. Particular emphasis is placed on financial metrics.
Chapter Four discusses management of individual Six Sigma projects. The
project is the basic unit of activity within Six Sigma. It is the vehicle by
which leadership's vision becomes reality. Every aspect of project management is
described in depth and detail.
Chapter Five provides an overview of the fundamental principles of good
measurement. Both "hard" and "soft" measurements are covered, reflecting the
recognition that Six Sigma performance levels require quantifying such things as
customer satisfaction and aesthetics as well as physical properties of products
and processes.
The discussion proceeds in Chapter Six to an overview of the problem solving
tools most often used in Six Sigma. These include check sheets, Pareto analysis,
cause and effect diagrams, scatter plots, process flow charts and maps, and many
others. The role of on-line analytic processing (OLAP) in Six Sigma is
described. The emphasis of Chapter Six is on descriptive methods of analysis.
The goal of descriptive methods is orientation of the individual or team. At
this stage of analysis and problem solving, it is vital to get an overall idea
of the nature and scope of the opportunity.
Chapter Seven covers the use of intermediate-level statistical tools. The
chapter opens with a discussion of exploratory data analysis (EDA). While
descriptive methods are typically applied to raw data, EDA allows the
re-expression of this data through numerous transformations, as well as
providing simple, graphical methods of summarizing the data with minimal loss of
information. Next, the chapter describes such enumerative statistical methods as
hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, tests for the mean, variance and
standard deviation, etc. The chapter concludes with a presentation of the
analytic statistical tools of control charts, including the usual attributes and
variables control charts as well as exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA)
charts and control of short and small run processes.
Chapter Eight covers more advanced topics in Six Sigma, including design of
experiments (DOE), response surface methods (RSM), chi-square contingency table
and cross-tab analysis. The role of data mining in Six Sigma is discussed, as
well as some commonly used data mining techniques such as artificial neural
networks. The relationship between data mining and the traditional quality
methods is discussed; for example, how to use neural nets to conduct "soft DOE."
An overview of reliability engineering applied to Six Sigma is provided,
including reliability calculation for series systems using the exponential
distribution, reliability apportionment, and computer simulation using Monte
Carlo. The use of risk assessment tools is described, including FMEA and fault
tree analysis. Product safety issues are discussed and safety calculations
described. Finally, the issue of statistical tolerancing is discussed.
