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The Big Idea: Six Stigma

KEN HUNT

From Friday's Globe and Mail

Latest comment posted at 9:23 PM EST 18/09/07

The Six Sigma backlash has begun ...Read the full article

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  1. Vic Hotte from Kettleby, Canada writes: Whenever a statistical concept gets a glitzy corporate make-over, expect a lot of over-hyped banalities and a new generation of textbooks, manuals and high-priced seminars from those who push the original concept well beyond statistical possibilities. Basic statistics tells us the normal population of whatever activity falls within two standard deviations of the mean. The philosophy of 'Six Sigma' is supposed to push manufacturing or service standards to the absolute limits along with profits. Take related concepts like JIT (just-in-time manufacturing), continuous improvement and KAIZAN lean manufacturing and link them to completely unrelated titles from the stratified martial arts, such as Master Black Belt, Black Belt right down to Green Belt, and anyone can guess this effort will border on nonsense, leaving realistic target efficiencies in the dust. There have been earlier incarnations of this sort of business hype, including MBO (Management by objectives). Eventually, the whole effort gets renamed and repackaged, making it appear new, so some new bunch of management types can pretend to have discovered endless profits in the land of manufacturing/service nirvana. It gets ridiculous and expensive. One holy concept of JIT is to whittle inventories of raw inputs or finished products down to nothing on-site. Consequently, highways are clogged with trucks transporting raw materials to plants according to a very narrow delivery schedule. The raw materials are unloaded and put through the 'lean' manufacturing process so that more trucks can pick up the finished products according to another narrow timeframe and deliver them to sales outlets. No inventories on-site, but lots of stressed truckers on the roads 24/7 like hamsters forced to stay on their running wheels. Production and sales are supposed to show a never-ending upward trajectory in a finite world while costs show the opposite. No room for human beings here.
  2. Michael Arendt from United States writes: I am always a bit disappointed if I read articles like that where Six Sigma principles are compared with innovation. It shall be noted that Six Sigma is aiming at EXISTING products and/or processes. It cannot be used for something that is not there yet, e.g. an innovation.

    As for the latter, Design for Six Sigma has been added to the list. Here, tools are being added that shall help the guys to develop a process/product that meets the customer requirements by involving them right from the start. The teams comprise of inter-disciplinary resources that work jointly on the task.

    I remember reading a very similar article in the Business Week (June 11, 2007), where the author was pointing in exactly the same direction as the one of this article. However, on the next two pages following this article, they were writing about Philips' Norelco razor which was successfully developed using Design for Six Sigma techniques.

    As being a Black Belt myself, I would therefore very much appreciate if you could clearly distinguish between those tools applied to existing products/processes and those that fit better to innovation.

    Thanks!
  3. Geoff Trimpol from Vancouver BC, Canada writes: I'm surprised that more leading companies in Canada using Six Sigma were not mentioned. Air Canada was given the system by GE when they got bridge financing from GE Capital, yet we hear virtually nothing about it since emerging from bankruptcy... at the fees indicated to train a green belt, it sound like a lot of money to spend for a company that gets a big hit every time the price of oil goes up by a dollar a barrel. Air Canada has made money when oil was low and lost money when oil was high (until they invented surcharges); yet management triumphed their skill in managing those years. The years where oil was high, and they lost money, it was blamed on high union wages, competition or a bad economy....
  4. Sandy Clark from Toronto, Canada writes: Six Sigma's allure is in the practice of ensuring that statistics do not outweigh common sense. The Sigma score or 'z' score provides a common quality measure that allows comparison regardless of process. Hail common sense and hail common measure. Let those unwilling to measure up continue the 'why we can't do it here' mantra. This common refrain is the antithesis of innovation and entrepreniership.
    'What is not measured, is not managed'.

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