08-08-2012, 01:10 PM
six sigma ebook
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About Us
Silicon Beach Training is one of the UK’s leading providers or IT, Project Management and Six Sigma Training. Our Six Sigma trainers are among the best in the UK, and bring a host of real-word Six Sigma process improvement experience to the courses.
We run regular public Lean & Six Sigma Training courses at our Brighton training centre, including:
• Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt Training
• Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Training
• Six Sigma Black Belt Training
• Lean Awareness Training
• Lean Processes and Tools training
In addition to our schedule of public courses, we also provide bespoke on-site training and consultancy. You can read more about how we provided bespoke training to help implement Lean & Six Sigma at Hachette UK in our case study here.
What is Six Sigma?
Six Sigma is a methodology, a statistical analysis tool and a management system designed to streamline business processes by eradicating defects. The implementation of Six Sigma aims to improve and sustain quality, eliminate waste and raise profits. This is achieved by the:
• Reduction of variations in processes
• Measuring, analysis, improvement and control of processes
• Involvement and dedication from the whole organisation including top level management.
Processes are measured and defects recorded, the aim of Six Sigma is to operate processes with less than 3.4 defects per one million opportunities. The implementation of these processes can enable vast savings for the organisation. Motorola claims that the implementation of Six Sigma has saved the company in excess of 17 billion American dollars.
Originally developed for the manufacturing industry Six Sigma is now applied to the service industry. This means, however that rather than measuring manufacturing processes for defects, organisations need to look to their staff. Streamlining staff performance may cause problems; the human factor needs to be taken into consideration. It may look good on paper to have fewer employees serving more customers, but customer and employee satisfaction may suffer. To improve the Six Sigma system for the service industry, more emphasis is needs to be placed on:
• Understanding and managing customer needs
• Adapting business processes to meet those needs
• Using data analysis to minimise variation in those processes
• Using the above to quickly improve existing processes using sustainable practices
The Six Sigma Management System
From experience, large companies such as Motorola have found that the use of metrics (statistics) alone is not enough to sustain improvements over time. In order to achieve sustainable results the methodology must be linked to the overall company strategy. This is why it is necessary to implement Six Sigma from the top-down.
Those companies making the biggest savings have implemented Six Sigma practices throughout their organisation and fundamentally changed their management approach. These businesses train lots of people and make continuous improvement a way of life. Companies that have not applied Six Sigma throughout the organisation have not achieved the same level of results.
Define
In order to implement the Six Sigma Methodology and Management System it is crucial to define:
• The Customer – who is the customer, what do they want and what are their expectations? This will involve looking at quality control issues and core business processes
• The project boundaries – Where does the process begin and end?
• The process to be improved