Participant Interview: Satish Tawade (Black Belt)-Plant Manager: Si Plastics.

Satish Tawade shares how he brought productivity improvement in ONIDA TV manufacturing unit with a DMAIC project.

Discussing about his career journey and growth path, Mr Tawade discusses some remarkable Six Sigma processes in manufacturing. Read on...

BSS: Tell us briefly about your career Journey so far.

Satish: I am a Plastic and Mechanical Engineer by education. I started my career with Windsor India Ltd as a testing engineer. A year later I moved to Cimmco Birla Ltd where I worked for 3 years. Then I moved to Godrej and Boyce Manufacturing Ltd for a long stint of 7 years. Along with manufacturing, here I was responsible for Business and Development and production planning. After Godrej I moved to Onida and worked there for 4.5 years where the last three years were in Six Sigma department. I have very recently moved to SI Plastic as plant head. Various functions of this organisation are reported to me and the implementation of Six Sigma continues.

BSS: At what stage of career did you decide to learn Six Sigma methods? What were the reasons behind it?

Satish: Six Sigma is a very effective tool and can reduce and eliminate the source of variation. I always preferred consistency and thought it is very important to remove any cause of variation. It is better to work on route cause and not on the symptom. That is why I took up Six Sigma in first few years of my career and now I plan to make a full fledged career in it.

BSS: Has Six Sigma impacted your career? Have you reaped any benefits from it in your personal life?

Satish: Well, more than anything, Six Sigma has impacted my career! I am a manufacturing Guy. I got to know about the power of Six Sigma tools at an early stage in my career. I managed to play a Six Sigma role and the importance of these tools was further ascertained in my career. At a personal level also, I have started suggesting Six Sigma to everyone from employee to owner. The best part is that Six Sigma can be applied not only in shop floor area but in areas like transaction and delivery.

BSS: Which Six Sigma methodologies do you use most often?

Satish: Most commonly I use DMAIC. If that does not helps, then DFSS. Here I would like to ascertain that for applying Six Sigma in a domain or project, you need not know all the Six Sigma tools.

BSS: How was your Black belt experience at Benchmark?

Satish: The Benchmark experience was no doubt very good. Apart from the style of delivery, the trainer also taught us minitab tools and techniques. The most important part was to know which method to be used when. This was very well addressed.

BSS: What sort of SS Projects have you working on in past? Kindly mention some.

Satish: Reduce the reactioning of the moulded parts: A hardcore manufacturing project, it started using DMAIC method. The plus point of the project was authentic data, good planning and coordination, competent Green Belts and most importantly, the seriousness of the top management. The outcome was plausible: the reactioning of moulded parts reduced from 33,000 PPM to 5,000 PPM.

Another project I took up was Reduction of the mould change over time. This was also a DMAIC project. While the changeover time before the Six Sigma project was 240 minutes, after the project it was reduced to 90 minutes. This was much better than our target of 120 minutes, making it a largely successful project.

BSS: Do you think anybody if willing, can learn Six Sigma? Or it is only meant for academically brilliant people?

Satish: Honestly, I have seen that at times even academically brilliant people are unable to take a systematic approach. The reason is logical thinking. Logical thinking has a direct relation with Six Sigma. Only a logical person will be able to think and identify the pain areas and apply any Six Sigma methodology. So it is not important to be academically brilliant but to be logically powerful.

BSS: Would you like to give any suggestions to us for improving our program?

Satish: While the current program is quite complete in itself, I have another suggestion for Benchmark. I have seen that all participants are not clear on basics of statistics. While they know which excel template to use in which case, many don't know the reason behind it. So I propose to start another 3 day program: "statistics and Minitab workshop". This can be useful for past belts as well as non-belts.

BSS: Would you like to tell us about your future plans? How will your Six Sigma learning benefit you?

Satish: My future plan is to actually make a career in Six Sigma. I want to become a problem solution provider through Six Sigma. I want to run Six Sigma projects in different areas like HR and Purchase and not just manufacturing.

BSS: What do you think is the right time to get exposed to Six Sigma tools/methods? In college/first job or later as you grow? Please give the reason behind your choice.

Satish: I think Six Sigma methods should be imported in the curriculum of engineering and Management colleges. That's because it is imperative for this generation to strive for process and business excellence.

BSS: Would you like to give any message for readers.

Satish: They should go for Six Sigma courses irrespective of their domain or industry.