Vishwadeep Khatri

SJ has explained this in detail. Two more lines to summarise - In a two sided specification limit, Cpk multiplied by three is the smaller of the two sigma levels (sigma level upper and sigma level lower) In the example above Cpk = 1 and Cpk multiplied by three is Sigma Leval (Upper).

The main idea is that losses do not start suddenly at specification limit, They gradually increase as you move away from the target. This can be visualised for a broadband connection (or for a manufactured car with compnents which do not meet the target - shall have a break down on the road probably in few months of driving if not immediately and may damage some other components or balance as well). His concept was we should try to be as close to target as feasible. On the lighter side, losses do happen just beyond specification limit when you have penalty's defined by client based on the spec limits. However, if you see the bigger picture with the end user perspective (for both sided spec limits) the more you match your promise and his expectation, the better it is for everyone in the longer run. Here is Taguchi Loss Function explained with a visual. In this visual you can note that as the variation reduces, loss reduces. http://elsmar.com/Taguchi.html

Hello Shantanu, Interesting questions there. It would have been interesting to view responses from members. Today, one participant mentioned to me that he is waiting for answers to these questions. I am sure there are many others who want to see answers. It may be a good idea for you to respond to these and then we can have more discussions on responses. Regards, VK

Can you please mention your problem statement? Once your problem and objective is clear, it shall be easier to visualise the best measurement in your case. Regards, VK

Dear Anish, Let me try and understand your objective. It seems you want to calculate the sigma level of the process. To answer your question on normality, this data is not expected to follow normality as this is defectives data and not continuous data. If you highlight the specific analysis that you wish to carry out, it shall be easier for me to answer your question. Regards, VK

Dear Dr. Emam and Uttara Joshi, The Six Sigma schedule can be seen at www.benchmarksixsigma.com/cal.html The benefits in Healthcare are too many to list in a small post. To give you an idea, I can provide you some examples. 1. Patients and Relatives Satisfaction - One area where hospitals have benefited a lot is in cutting down non value adding time (wait times) for patients. For a patient, the best hospital (assuming everything else is same) is one which does not make him/her wait too much. Patient wait times range from less than 10 minutes (in Max Healthcare) to several hours (in AIIMS). Is the difference because of the fact that AIIMS serves masses and Max is for the rich? Partly, yes. But the other fact is that AIIMS has not made conscious efforts with Six Sigma to cut wait time for patients. When wait times are cut short - more patients can be treated, there shall be less chaos and confusion, Doctors can work with better peace of mind and less irate patients, timely re- visits shall be more (which so important to ensure completion of treatment many a times). I am sure you may be aware about patients at AIIMS waiting for their turn for surgery without food for entire day and being told to come back next day. If administrators could look at the processes at AIIMS and find ways of involving staff in improvement projects using Six Sigma, wonders can happen. The Good can be made Better. 2. Efficiency in Healthcare and Success - Whether we look at healthcare as a business or as a social objective, the success is highly dependent on efficiency being high, waste being minimised, faster turn around time for treatments and surgery (without adversely affecting quality), Doctor's professional needs being met well, patient treatment and care being the best feasible. Each of the above can be converted into a Six Sigma improvement project with tangible benefits to hospital. Six Sigma provides management techniques and soft skills on "HOW TO" bring about these changes in a scientific way. Last month I conducted a green belt training for a batch for about 25 participants in Hyderabad where 80% participants were from Healthcare and Pharma sector. You can join the program with confidence that you shall realise significant practical learning for healthcare sector and shall derive very good value for money and time invested.

PLEASE IGNORE THIS MESSAGE IF YOUR PHOTO IS ALREADY UPLOADED Instructions for uploading a photo Adding a photo will give your profile greater impact and make your contributions to the Benchmark Six Sigma OPEN FORUM more accessible. The image you upload will appear alongside other info about you, visible to other users on the FORUM. [*]Take a photo of yourself (or find one that you have already) Tip: Save the image on your computer's Desktop so it's easy to find later [*]Click on the MY SETTINGS tab (located in the navigation at the top of the page) [*]Click on the link that says My Profile (see image below): [*]Make your professional profile "VISIBLE" using the drop down. [*]Click on Professional Photo, the following screen will appear: [*]Click on ADD A NEW PHOTO [*]Following screen will appear [*]Select your image by clicking on the Browse button, then navigating to the picture you're using [*]Choose Use this photo in "my professional profile" [*]Click on the UPLOAD button [*]That's it! Your picture will now be visible on your profile

Hello Vikas, You are right. Process Capability finds a specific and detailed focus in Six Sigma. Please remember that the concepts of capability indices did exist before Six Sigma methodology was put together by professionals at Motorola. Also, it would not be wise to say that Toyota (from where Lean emerged) practitioners do not work on process capability they do. However, as far as training and project focus is concerned, Six Sigma has brought process capability to the fore and we do insist that the concept should be clear even at Green Belt level. Regards, VK

Dear Gaurav, Have a look at http://www.benchmarksixsigma.com/institutes-students for more information on this subject.

It is difficult for me to comment whether using P75 alone is sufficient. P75 is similar to median (which is P50). As you have outliers, it may be good to look at P75. There may be opportunities to focus on primary reasons for those extreme values which are hurting the predictability in your process. You may like to convert such reasons into Six Sigma projects. Working project by project, you may be able to improve the situation substantially.

To add to this discussion, Six Sigma is about PROCESS FOCUS. India is far behind China in Olympics medals tally because India lacks in processes that produce world class athletes, while China has many of those processes in place. Several Institutions (like the ones in China) do not call it Six Sigma but do use a systematic approach with usage of statistics to provide useful progressive inputs to coaches and players at the right stage and time.

Dear Gargi, Six Sigma Green Belt is specially useful for those pursuing Management Courses. For training details have a look at www.benchmarksixsigma.com/cal.html We at benchmark Six Sigma have trained more than 5500 professionals on Six Sigma (including management students)

There are several people who moved into full time Six Sigma roles after going through our training. Green Belt is the start of a journey and As you pursue Black Belt and MBB you can be a specialist in this field. You shall need to do projects along the way. To be more specific, you should be able to do Green Belt project at your current profile after attending the Green Belt training. Once you upgrade to Black Belt, you may be able to do some cross functional projects in your current company or with a future employer. Six Sigma projects in different companies shall be feasible once you develop multi-functional competence (and join a consulting organisation) To read success stories of our past participants in Information Technology and to see how they progressed over time, click here

Dear Arijit Shome, It seems you are trained on lean. You need to look for presence of any or combination of the seven wastes and attack them systematically. For advanced aspects of simulation and queuing theory, you can go through MBB program which requires Lean and Black Belt as pre-requisites. Regards, VK

To quote Miles above "The only ideas that we havent had the time or man power to carry out in depth would be, costings of the system, monitoring and reducing energy usage, spend/payback of environmental projects" This statement indicates that the focus has been on reduction on Non-Conformance reduction but (probably) not on business benefits. Miles, please do correct me if I am wrong here. I have conducted 400 plus third party ISO audits in multiple industries myself and know how the system works. Six Sigma is about equipping the best people in the company with the best techniques to tackle biggest pain/reward areas for the biggest business benefits. Most of the times ISO 14001 focus is limited to conformance to requirements (and that is what it is supposed to do). The big business benefit areas require ability to carry out projects with laser sharp data driven focus. Such ability is provided by DMAIC Green Belt and Black Belt programs. Another interesting point is Six Sigma is about putting in more of preventive mechanisms in place so that there is reduced need for detective mechanisms (like audits) Six Sigma learning and implementation is definitely not easy and shall require persistent effort in identifying good projects that make business sense, assessing current performance with reasonable accuracy, finding the critical causes and confirming them with scientific approaches, bringing the change in the critical causes and validating plausibility of business benefits, setting up controls so that the sustained and benefits can be realized repeatedly. I look forward to reply and comments from Miles who initiated this discussion.

Dear Deepti, One may derive the benefits of Six Sigma by either Getting into Six Sigma Role - Here the job profile shall be cross-functional Six Sigma projects (some projects within functional areas) within the company. This type of role is handled by most Black Belts and few Green Belts. Utilizing Six Sigma for getting better results than before in the current profile - In the approach one would carry out Six Sigma projects while handling a functional role. This kind of role is with most Green Belts and few Black Belts. I hope I have answered your question. Do post your response if you have another question.

Vaidehee, To get the answer to your question, click on the link:http://forum.benchmarksixsigma.com/topic/696-six-sigma-for-hr-professionals/

Being at a thermal power plant, you may explore following areas. The electric efficiency of a conventional thermal power station, considered as saleable energy (in MWe) produced at the plant busbars as a percent of the heating value of the fuel consumed, is typically 33% to 48% efficient. Improvement in this efficiency could be an objective of a Six Sigma Black Belt project. Improvement in waste heat utilization (cogeneration) can be another project. If freshwater production and electricity are co-products, then the objective of enhancement of these could be taken up as Six Sigma projects. Since the efficiency of the plant is fundamentally limited by the ratio of the absolute temperatures of the steam at turbine input and output, efficiency improvements require use of higher temperature, and therefore higher pressure, steam. Ensuring consistency in high temp and resulting high pressure could be taken up as Six Sigma project as well. Maintenance improvement in terms of the following are additional projects Improving OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) Reducing MTTR (Mean Time to Repair) Increasing MTBF (Mean Time between Failures) Regards, VK

Hello Uma, Some of the important elements in database management for an event management company are - Improving accuracy of contact mobile numbers. Reducing duplicates Improving data quality of documents --completeness Improving data quality - correctness Improving data quality - timeliness. Ensuring zero errors in contact detail updates. Ensuring zero errors in document version control Improving effectiveness of direct response communication Improving correctness of contact email addresses I am not sure how many of the above are included in your profile. Let me know more about the activities in your profile. I am sure you should be able to find opportunities for applying some of the techniques straight away.

Six Sigma example projects in shipping Improved handling of hazardous materials Reducing Loading and Unloading Turn Around Time including container arrivals, unloading by crane, loading into the ship. Improving the CHA processes including the following Accuracy and turn around time improvement in preparation of various kinds of bill of entry and shipping bill. Eliminating errors in tariff classification and rates of duty. Ensuring first time right in nature and description of documents to be filed with various kinds of bills of entry and shipping bill. Ensuring first time right in procedures for assessment and payment of duty.

Our MBB program requires Black Belt background. Benchmark Six Sigma Black Belt requires Green Belt as a pre-requisite. If you wish to understand more, you may contact us at 09810919501 or at 18001023003 Best Regards, VK

Hello Jyotiram, The key is to know about normality. If the data is normally distributed, mean and standard deviation shall give you sufficient information about the process performance. However, if the data is not normally distributed, median and range may be used to understand the performance. If you get quartile values (P75, P50, P25) in addition to max and min, you get additional information about the data. Now coming to your question, P75 provides you a number that has 75% values below it (or 25% values above it). This is limited information. If P75 (Q3) is 20 minutes, you know that 75% values are within 20 minutes in pizza delivery process. This however does not tell you how many values are say, beyond 30 minutes (which may be the promised delivery time). Even if you know that data is normally distributed, P75 value alone does not give you enough meaningful information to reach any inference. I hope I have answered your question. Do get back if you need any further information.

Some feedbacks from participants from this sector can be seen here

Very good six sigma projects have been taken up in American Education Establishments. These include(but are not limited to) Reducing time for fee collection and administrative processes. Improving productivity in education support processes. Reducing lag in education delivery. Improving parent and student feedbacks Improving staff satisfaction and retention. Designing education delivery processes. Improving efficiency in canteen, parking and security related processes. Reducing administrative costs. Improving student engagement. Improving placement processes. Reducing time for admissions process.

Some feedbacks from participants from Hotel and Travel Sectors can be seen by clicking here