I agree with Rahul to great extend. The key here is what kind of "Pain" you have and how soon you want to get rid off it.

However having CEO, CFO, VP and AVP, Black Belt &, MBB certified may not be a possible and feasible option.

 

Regards,

Khalil

Yahoo!

Interesting comment. I agree with Rahul. I see lot of people busy doing fire fighting while major gains can be obtained with longer tern thinking. The balance in short term and long term efforts is always needed. 

Let us, for a while compare Nirula's and Mcdonald's

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirula's STARTED IN 1935

http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/our_company/mcd_history.html STARTED 1940

These companies like everyone had short term pressures. One of them created extra-ordinary processes and reaped the benefits. The other grew but at a much lower pace. 

This is true in most industries. Toyota Production System has the first business principle - Principle 1. Base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term financial goals. 

TOYOTA or McDonald's did not use Six Sigma but always had a long term philosophy. Long term thinking is the starting point which leads to great management systems and great results.

One of the important reasons for companies not embracing Six Sigma (or other methodologies) is inability to invest in long term. 

I have read most of the responses and all made relevant points about the senior management will, long term view, staff training and awareness.

One point I do not see being considered is - The size and scale of the organization and its processes.

I have worked in both start-up as well as in an MNC like IBM and one thing that stands out is the need for process flexibility in a start-ups vs the process conformity required in bigger teams and companies

I think six sigma is helpful where the process conformity and highly defined process will derive benefit for businesses. Areas where process flexibility needs to be high and there is a high degree of change anticipated due to business growth, applying six sigma techniques will result in very short term benefits

For companies that are in the early stages of growth, a lot of flexibility and agility is required as part of its processes. I think this is a key factor to decide whether a six sigma management and techniques could be applied at that point or not.

Level of process conformity required and organization/business maturity is often, in my experience, a key determinant on whether you would adopt six sigma management and techniques or not.

Best regards,

Sireesha Jajala

I don't agree with Mr. Rahul on his statement that the top management should be certified black belts.

In organisations, we ususally have have a project owner who monitors, guides and mentors the project. He is assisted by several project coordinators who look after various aspects of the project. The project owner is the window person who reports to and updates the top management about the project status and he may or may not be from the top management rung. The top management usually does futuristic planning and gaps identification than worry about the success and failure of a current project.

Now for effective deployment of Six-sigma, this project owner has to be a Black belt with sufficient experience in the same and the coordinators, Green belts. It is merely sufficient if other stake-holders in the project understand the importance and methodology of six-sigma approach towards achieving the results.

Now, coming to the question as to why organisations fail to implement six sigma, there are 2 issues:

1) This project owner is usually an experienced person who has risen to this positon based on:

• Experience in the organisation
  
• Understanding of the overall working of the organisation and clarity of the systems and processes in the organisation.
  
• Loyalty of the person towards the organisation
  

This person may not be having sufficient exposure to six sigma. A six sigma approach to a specific project is usually defined by this person as he is the owner of that project.

2) Other people who are selected for the project at key decision making positions are usually people who are known for their loyalty to the organisation. Organisations do not wish to hire experienced six-sigma certified people at key playing roles because of their lack of understanding of systems and processes of the organisation. Also, in such cases there may be a fear of compromising with some confidential information.

The key to sucessfully deploy Six-sigma is to train the employees in six-sigma right from the trainee stage so that the six-sigma methodology becomes the 'way of life' for the organisation to grow.

Please give feedback on this.

Regards,

M Dayal Saran,

Maruti suzuki India Ltd.

Dear Friends,

I am writing on this site, very first time. I have taken my BB training from Mr. Vishwadeep in Mumbai. I have read Mr. Khatri's response to the query and I agree to large extent the reason mentioned by him.

In addition to Mr. Khatri's answer, I would like to add my view point

1. What was the management control and improvement techniques when there were no such known methodologies like Six-Sigma, TPM, BPR, TQM etc. were non-existant?

2. I feel it has always been quest of a man to excel and in the process, he has designed many such improvement methodologies.

3. This is similar to a case when a patient wants him to be treated with and having various options available like Alopathy, Ayurveda, Homeopathy etc....But man chooses which gives him benefit or which suits to his body. So is the case in an organisation.

4. There can not be just one single reason to not adopt six-sigma as methodology for improvement.

 

I hope, I have made sense to the discussion.

 

Jitendra Malhotra

Dy. G.M. (World Class Manufacturing)

Aditya Birla Mgt Corp Limited, Mumbai

 

Dear Chandrasekhar,

The concept of sixsigma deployment is not"plug and play" model or simply use JMP or Minitab and get some facinating graphical out puts .

Primary requirement is the need for business growth combined with the ownership and commitment for continuous improvement.

cost of training and cost of implementation - change management .

For any company which has calculated the COPQ and the contribution of poor quality on the customer satisfaction would make them turn towards adopting a methodology to improve the situation and make the organisation survive in the global market.

six sigma alone will not help ,it also requires Lean to hasten up the process speed.

You will be surprised to know that, many big and small companies donot even know their current process capability , and keep continue blaming the production /service enivronment.

If a company makes a holistic approach towards improving the quality of the product by minimising  the waste and variance which could be identified and eleminated in each process, then that company will surely adopt Lean six sigma for generating more profit with out investing much on other futile efforts.

 

Best Regards

Francis,LSS-BB

 

Bcoz objectives of some organizations are not SMART