Originally, Six Sigma was designed to help create smooth manufacturing processes, especially in large manufacturing plants and reduce waste. Processes of waste reduction would be tracked from the time of obtaining raw materials, transportation, value addition, storage, and delivery.
Later, the model was adopted by every business field, although it’s still widely used in the manufacturing sector. Apart from waste reduction, the model helps eliminate defects, reduce errors, and improve manufacturing processes to help increase value, efficiency, and quality.
Six Sigma background
In the mid-1980s, a communications gadgets manufacturer put in place a series of measures that would help make its production processes better. Ten years later, more mainstream manufacturing industries had started to use the Lean Six Sigma model.
At the close of the 20th century, over 250 of the fortune 500 organizations were already using this strategy. Today, about 30 years later, all the fortune 500 companies are using this model and another large number of manufacturing and non-manufacturing businesses are already using the Six Sigma model.
How Six Sigma helps improve manufacturing processes
The main purpose of Six Sigma is to help manufacturing plants identify defects in products and their sources. Businesses in this sector use a series of methods and tools that help the strategy work.
The overall mission is to eliminate pollution, save product cycle time, and reduce the production cost in an entire manufacturing process. Using the strategies of Six Sigma, some manufacturers like Motorola have reported saving up to $17 billion of production costs.
The processes of Six Sigma on improving manufacturing
In its early phase, the model helped prove some processes that were believed to be too difficult to . Some, or most manufacturers, had a false belief that the better the quality of a product, the greater its production cost. As a result, most manufacturers produce lower-quality products to help save on cost. The higher quality products would cost far much more in the market.
Using the Six Sigma model, the pioneer businesses proved this belief wrong. They proved it was possible to produce high-quality products at a significantly reduced cost. The pioneer manufacturers used metrics that could be measured and incorporated in the processes of product production, customer service, and finance. These processes adopted four different implementation phases.
Systems measurement: The current manufacturing systems were measured to help determine which system was the primary baseline of the entire process.
System analysis: The baseline system is deliberately analyzed to detect any sources of defects and eliminate them.
System improvement: In this phase, the entire system undergoes improvement to help improve and optimize production.
System control: This process involves ongoing measures that help eliminate losses due to wastes, inefficiency, and defects. It may involve a change of policies, strategies, and improving instructions on operations.
Strategies for adopting Six Sigma techniques
Application of the six sigma techniques is easy, but it requires detailed training to effectively implement it. Organizations can focus on training their key human resource, who can then train others on the ground to help make the technique a success.
The training uses martial arts techniques where trainees receive a belt after every successful level. There is the white belt, green belt, and the Six Sigma masters black belt, which is the highest level of training. Trainees who achieve the green belt are considered highly productive because they can effectively help analyze, identify, measure, enhance and control processes.
The manufacturing sector uses three strategies when adopting the Sigma Six model.
The need of the customer: The focus on the current need of the customer and then use effective internal strategies to meet that need.
Optimized processes: When manufacturing processes are optimized, the manufacturing business can meet its financial obligations and make a profit.
Quality controls: Through quality controls, customers’ needs can be met through measurable actions that can help improve product quality, processing time, and cost, making each product unique.