Vishwadeep Khatri

Many people think Six Sigma works for repetitive processes and has no application for project situations. When I say project situations, I mean industries that work primarily with projects. Project situations are common in companies and functions that carry out construction, commissioning and installations, software development, plant and machinery development and manufacture, research & development etc. Although these sectors have significant differences in challenges that they face, the common element is that they carry out projects frequently and by definition, each project is quite unique in itself. To understand the applications of Six Sigma in companies that carry out projects, let us take example of construction industry (as most people have some familiarity with this sector) In the construction industry, Six Sigma usage can be understood with following points. Recurring problems exist at each stage of construction. When I say recurring, it means recurring for the company (maybe -not for individual projects) If you study a construction project, it comprises of a large number of individual processes ranging from soil testing to landscaping to structural designs to foundations, superstructure, interiors and exteriors. There are a whole lot of purchase and logistic processes as well. A good number of these processes are common to all projects. If processes were robust many of the individual problems would not occur at the first place. The remaining can be reduced. The idea in Six Sigma is about making the processes robust ( so that the results are right the first time, every time) Not all processes are equally important. Processes that matter are those that relate closely to pain areas (for customers/ management). These processes need improvement. In each project, individual project managers, site engineers face a whole lot of problems that they solve. These problems do get solved in the project (after they have caused a delay or cost in the specific project). Normally there is no mechanism to aggregate learning from the experiences of these managers and use it for process improvement. Also, companies do not have structured mechanism to use tried and tested techniques to eliminate or reduce such issues in future projects. To be able to study and improve management systems one needs a structured approach that should include- Identifying individual problem areas (or focus areas) and prioritizing them. Next, we need techniques to identify the root cause of the problem. Once we identify the root cause, we need to generate solution alternatives, compare them and select the best. We then need to implement the best solution and see how it works. If successful, we wish to institutionalize the solution. Six Sigma provides tried and tested techniques for five bulleted steps in a team-based approach which converts each problem area into an individual "improvement project" When processes improve, there is a reduction in problems and defects. Primary defects in the construction industry (and most of the project driven industries) are DELAY, REWORK and COST OVERRUNS and Six Sigma can be used to reduce any of these defects. This is not all. In addition to usage in improvements in existing processes (as explained above), Six Sigma is also used to design new processes (or redesign existing processes that contribute to project success (with a better predictability that ever before). Comments welcome.

One of my friends is a Sales Wiz with wonderful selling skills with little Six Sigma knowledge. In his previous job, he was leading Sales in an IT company. His job profile rotated mainly around closing deals initiated by junior Sales Executives. He spent a lot of time in resolving quotation related issues with clients. Issues arose almost everyday because Clients used to call different Sales persons in the company and used to get different pricing or discount offers. These different quotes for the same models to clients were within the discount authority available to Salespersons. Even after lot of counselling sessions, these issues continued and were accepted as a way of life. My friend as a Sales Head, had a challenging job of reaching each disilllusioned client (some of them feigned it to get an advantage) >>>explaining why the difference in quotations arose>>>>doing some numbers jugglary and >>>finally getting the Order. He used to get most Orders as he was too good with his Sales pitch and relation building abilities and the product was quite good. This sequence of tasks also provided him a feeling that he was doing a really worthwhile job resolving some big issues and an achievement feeling almost every day. He was made to feel special by juniors who honestly respected and admired him for his special abilities that succeeded in bringing them out of troubles so many times. He recently joined a process driven (Six Sigma implementing) company where some good Six Sigma projects had been done. One Six Sigma project had ensured that there was absolutely no possibility of different quotes landing up with a clients for the same model, even if different Sales persons are reached by the client. He found the new job boring as the entire fascination in his previous job was due to troubleshooting and firefighting which was a daily affair. Here the scope was little as he found the working to be quite streamlined. There were no quotation disputes, no erroneous invoices, no delayed invoicing, lesser delays in shipments, rare mismatches between order and delivery to name some of the areas. (All this was achieved through persistent Six Sigma afforts project by project) After some time with this new company, this person realized that the only way he could use his creative energies was by working on some futuristic tasks. This led him to work and succeed with some big deals which were reached with collaborative efforts with associate companies. He had to spend very little time here with juniors. And whatever time he spent went into discussions about strategic clients and deals. He realized that this was impossible in his previous job as his creativity was being utilized in firefighting issues (those issues did need a lot of creativity as each case had to be managed in a unique fashion). This brings us to some important questions - Are their ways by which we can spend more of our time in futuristic tasks that can bring success and laurels for self/ company/ nation? Are we using our creative energies in furturistic tasks (like worthwhile projects and improvement activities)? or are we losing ourselves in repetitive work? Coming back to my friend's example, it is not difficult to visualize the benefits he and his company could have realized if they had utilized the power behind Six Sigma early? (To share with you, the company he left still continues to provide the same job profile to Sales leaders and they derive the same kind of daily appreciation from juniors for doing great troubleshooting. Sales folks at that place still think that there is no better way of working.)