jaideep khanduja

new sales sales targets customers lost potential business lost to competitors customer complaints service delivery failures customer visits customer support

@VK: Agreed. Thanks.

If you do Six Sigma epxertise you have a great scope in optimizing many of the weak processes in Insurance industry using six sigma tools. It will be of immense help to you at an process excellence post.

ITIL, PMP and Prince etc. are the standard guidelines to follow a fixed methodology and might not be associated with financial returns visibly. Six Sigma, on the other hand, is a flexible manner of identifying a problem, collecting relevant data, setting a fixed goal of achievement, analyzing data with the help of statistical tools to reach to that goal. It does not matter what tools you adopt and how you move towards your goals, but problem identification, data collection, proper analysis, the setting of target results, fixing time to reach to that results and then finally achieving those goals is prime.

@Vishwadeep "One of the fundamental concepts in Six Sigma is - One should identify the critical controllable input factors and then find the best combination of those for desirable output." What I learnt is that prior to identifying the critical controllable input factors we need to identify the problem. The critical input controllable factors will depend on the problem and the desirable output/ results.

Sampling plan is one of the methods used in Inspection. The choice of sampling plan depends upon the volume of rejections occurring.

1. lack of knowledge of power of 6sigma 2. fear of exposure of shortcomings/ lack of courage to face it 3. unwillingness to change

No. I would not suggest you to compromise with the data. You should have preferably last six months consistent (I repeat: CONSISTENT) data to examining, finding out the trends and analysis purposes. Remember inadequate or inconsistent data, insignificant or irrelevant analysis and unclear goals will drive your mission to 100% wrong directions. Start with a small process but do it systematically. That is very important. And since Data is the backbone of a six sigma project, no point in compromising with it.

if you have done your course what you are asking has been taught to you in that course theoretically. Now pick a real process in your workplace that needs improvement. collect data, set your goals or improvement points. follow DMAIC. start with a process, post it and let us move ahead from there.

six sigma has nothing to do with a function. it is directly related to process, process defects and improvements. so any process in any function if needs an improvement, six sigma is applicable there. the basic principle is: 1. if your customer is happy there is no need of six sigma 2. if your process are well in place and have no defects or require no improvement, you dont need six sigma 3. if you dont understand your process and/or cant identify defects, you can not do six sigma 4. if you cant define your desired improvement objectively, there is no meaning of doing six sigma cheers!

The basic fact is any person or organization who build their own principles and methodologies and strictly keep them simple and customer focused will definitely achieve extreme success. The live example is the case study in question here. Probably they never intend to achieve six sigma or lean but had their processes customer focused. I would treat it as an extreme case of discipline, innovation, risk management and collaborative participation of each single employee involved in the operations directly of indirectly with least scope of follow-ups. Since this all resulted into a zero defect system with a linear architecture, it simply fits in most of the best practices such as Lean, six sigma, or for that sake any other (Agile/Scrum etc.). This is purely a clear cut mix of vision, mission and innovation.