The Peerless approach to quality

Six Sigma fills the gaps left by other quality initiatives, says C Y Ajgaonkar, Principal Consultant, ECS, in an interview with Priya Rao.

What is Six Sigma? Could you provide a historical perspective to its implementation in industry?

Sigma is a statistical term, which measures how far a process varies from perfection. Quantitatively, Six Sigma is a stretch goal of achieving less than 3.4 defects per million opportunities in servicing the customer and culturally, it is about learning to build processes that deliver flawless quality of output continuously. Different companies have initiated Six Sigma for diverse business compulsions and each one has achieved significant business results. Six Sigma pioneer Motorola initiated the programme for achieving premium quality and innovations. GE initiated Six Sigma to sustain its market leadership and increase shareholder value. Today many organizations in the world including several in India have realized the power of Six Sigma and are in the process of implementing it.

How does Six Sigma compare with existing quality improvement tools, like for instance, Zero Defects?

Over the last few decades, corporates have implemented many quality improvement initiatives like Quality Circle, Just in Time, ISO 9000, Total Quality Management, Business Process Reengineering etc and derived various kinds of benefits from them. But Six Sigma has proven itself in filling the gaps left by these initiatives and has proved to be brutally effective in creating breakthrough improvements in:

How difficult is it to get Six Sigma into an industrial set up? How should a manufacturer initiate Six Sigma?

Six Sigma is not difficult. It works because of its rigour and discipline though people tend to associate it more with complex statistics. Six Sigma is a continuous improvement process. It doesn’t matter where you are in terms of sigma levels. What Six Sigma does is to improve the capability, reliability and consistency of manufacturing processes and assets.

Over last two decades manufacturing companies have implemented various improvements initiatives to improve on cost, quality, delivery and flexibility. Six Sigma should be initiated as a build on initiative under the umbrella of already implemented initiatives. Creating common understanding and commitment within the top management is a key success factor for any organization. The uniqueness of Six Sigma is metrics. Hence a proper measurement system and Management Information System (MIS) should be in place before initiating it.

The first step is a successful pilot sigma project and development of competent critical mass. Pilot projects should be from all the areas of the company viz. manufacturing, non-manufacturing and support services. Change management should be one of the enablers in an organization-wide roll out of Six Sigma. For the success of Six Sigma in manufacturing industries, the involvement of employees across all levels and the participation of suppliers is very important.

Drawing on your experiences, what have been the major challenges encountered while initiating Six Sigma in Indian companies?

There is always the fear that Six Sigma is a high level of statistical expertise across the organization. We have to prepare ourselves for initiating Six Sigma and this is the major challenge. Understanding Six Sigma as a business system rather than just tools and technique is another key challenge. Availability of data, top management ‘involvement’ rather than mere ‘commitment’ and makes Six Sigma a part of daily work are the other challenges.

Six Sigma is a methodology for improving process capability and process performance. With a given technology, there is enough scope to improve both process performance and process capability and it make no difference whether one is initiating it in semi-automated or automated industry. The difference is only in the targeted levels of achievement.

When you say that a company has attained Six Sigma level does it mean that every department or function has attained that level?

In a Six Sigma company, every department or function is in the process of implementing Six Sigma. The projects are both functional and cross-functional. The achievements on sigma scale vary in different departments and processes. To be a Six Sigma company it is not necessary that all the departments, processes and functions have attained sigma levels. However, the company has to decide first the critical processes and measures wherein Six Sigma level should be achieved. At the same time, there should be an organization-wide implementation.

The key to the measurement of success of Six Sigma is the definition of defects and opportunities. So what are the pitfalls that should avoided while framing these definitions?

It is said, ‘What you measure gets focused, what gets focused gets improved.’ The uniqueness of Six Sigma is measurement and establishing metrics is critical. A defect is anything that dissatisfies the customer. Understanding the voice of a customer is very important. Else, there may be a possibility of measuring a defect, which is not perceived by the customer. Defect reduction should improve both the effectiveness and efficiency of the process. While defining the opportunities, one should keep in mind defect reduction and not ‘defective’ reduction.

You had stated in your presentation at NITIE that one should start with critical processes when initiating Six Sigma. You went on to say that there is a process capability index as well as process performance index. Could you elaborate on these points?

In an organization resources are always limited, hence fixing priorities becomes a must. Initiation of Six Sigma in critical processes means priority fixation. Over a period of time though, the organization needs to roll out Six Sigma to all the processes. Process capability is about achieving the targeted performance while process performance is about the variations in targeted performance when the process is capable but not performing; the DMAIC methodology (Define Measure Analysis Improve & Control) is used to improve the sigma level. When process is both non-capable and non-performing, the DFSS methodology (Design for Six Sigma) is used to achieve quantum jumps in sigma level.

Does Six Sigma requires huge investments?

Six Sigma is huge only in terms of commitment of time. The definite thing about Six Sigma investments is that the returns are huge and very fast. Most of the organistions have got returns 10 to 20 times returns on their investment over a period of three to five years.

Formerly known as Eicher Consultancy Services Limited, ECS is a consulting organization aimed at developing a new mindset amongst business leaders of India.