working Lean

5S USERS GUIDE

noreply@blogger.com (مهندس : حسام عبد الجليل) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 06:10:00 +0000

What is 5S ?
If your company is like most organizations today, you’re searching for a competitive edge. Something that will reduce costs, increase sales and make you more agile in a changing business environment. Well you’ve found it.
Simply put, 5S is a systematic approach to workplace organization. But it’s also much more than that. 5S is about efficiency, competitiveness and survival.

It is a deceptively simple system that creates an organized and productive workplace.
But it’s not just about cleaning up and eliminating toolboxes. 5S creates a workplace environment that can adapt and succeed in these turbulent times.

Chaos and unproductively are your enemies; organization and efficiency are your allies.
If implemented correctly and followed diligently, 5S will lead to:
• Lower costs
• Better quality
• Improved safety
• Increased productivity
• Higher employee satisfaction

From the offices of upper management to the workstations in the factory, the power of this system will quickly reveal itself in your bottom line.
5S is sometimes called the five pillars because just like the physical pillars that hold up a structure, 5S has five elements that support the effectiveness of the system. And just like the pillars of a building, if one was to weaken or fail, the entire structure would fall.

THE FIVE PILLARS OF 5S
• Sort (Seiri) – Eliminate all the things in the workspace that are not being used and store them away.
• Set in Order (Seiton) – Arrange the items used on a daily basis so that they can be easily accessed and quickly stored.
• Shine (Seiso) – Everything is cleaned and functioning properly.
• Standardize (Seiketsu) – Develop a routine for sorting, setting and shining.
• Sustain (Shitsuke) – Create a culture that follows the steps on a daily basis.

Originally developed by Hiroyuki Hirano for manufacturing companies in Japan (the original Japanese names of the five pillars are in parentheses), the principles of 5S translate well to the laboratory, the repair facility, and even the corporate office. Almost any workplace environment will benefit from the structure and
efficiency that this model provides.

5S is a system, a philosophy and a culture. The true power of 5S reveals itself when your whole organization embraces its ideals and your employees see that your business is transforming itself.

SORT
The first pillar of the 5S system is Sort. Sort is the process of removing all the items that are not needed for current production from the workspace. The goal is to eliminate all of the unneeded tools and materials and to create a space that is free of clutter- this allows for a workflow free from distraction.
Identifying unneeded parts and tools is not always an easy task. Employees and managers get so used to the chaos that they don’t even see it anymore. 5S has an effective tool that will help you with your sort – it’s called the Red-Tag Strategy.
The red-tag strategy is a great way to identify all of the objects that need to be removed from the workplace. When you see something that you think may need to be removed, you literally put a red tag on it. This is a flag that lets everyone know that this item needs to be evaluated.

SET IN ORDER
You begin the next phase of 5S only when the Sort phase is complete. The Set in Order phase will be useless if there is unnecessary clutter in the workspace. Set in Order is the process of putting everything in a place so that it is easy to get to and easy to put away. Everything should have a home and it should be clearly marked so that anyone could easily find its place.
Some guidelines to consider:
• If items are used together, store them together.
• Put the frequently used items closest to the user.
• If possible, devise a let-go system in which tools are attached to a retractable cord and automatically go back to stored position.
• Place items so that the user’s twisting and bending is kept at a minimum when accessing them.
• Arrange tools and materials in order of use.

The Set in Order pillar utilizes several different strategies to accomplish its goals.
1. The Signboard Strategy uses signboards to indicate where the workplace items are to be stored, which items are to be stored there, and exactly how many items belong there. Shelves, tubs, drawers – any storage place or container should be clearly labeled.
2. Painting Strategy is used to clearly mark walkways from working areas.Separating operational areas from walking areas allows for a safer and smoother flow of goods in the facility.Although it is called the painting strategy, most often colored tape is used for versatility. Divider lines can be used indicate aisle direction, door range, portable equipment storage locations and hazardous areas.
3. Outlining Strategy creates a visual home for your tools. Each tool has an outline drawn of the tool so that you know exactly where it goes, and so that you also know when a tool is missing.

SHINE
In this step, Shine literally means to remove all the dirt and the grime and to keep it that way on daily basis. You want to get it clean and keep it clean.When you implement this step, two things will happen. First, your employees will love coming to work in such a clean and bright environment. And second, because you are keeping the equipment and your surroundings in such great shape, you will have fewer injuries and fewer equipment breakdowns. And that means greater productivity and fewer costs.

STANDARDIZE
The clutter is gone. You’ve created a great system of organization. Your shop is spotless. Now you need a system that will integrate the first three pillars and make sure that they get done correctly.
Standardize creates a system of tasks and procedures that will ensure that the principles of 5S are performed on a daily basis.
We all have our own way of doing things. This kind of individuality is great in our personal lives because it makes life much more interesting and fun.
But non-conformity can be unproductive in the workplace. If your employees started doing things their own way, then things will start to get missed and conditions will slowly start to deteriorate.

The Standardize pillar seeks to create a set of schedules and checklists that can be easily followed so that each step is performed exactly the same way every day. Each employee knows what he needs to do, when he needs to do it, and exactly how to do it. There is no room for uncertainty.

SUSTAIN
Once you start the 5S model in your place of business, you will see the improvements very quickly. But the key to key to long term success is simple – diligence.
Sustain is the final pillar of the 5S system and its chief objective is to give your staff the commitment and motivation to follow each step, day in and day out.

Have you ever gone on a diet to lose a few pounds? In the beginning, you really keep at it. You stay away from those French fries, eat more fruits and veggies, and may even go for a jog a couple of days a week. You lose six pounds in two weeks.
But inevitably, you start to slip. You’re out with friends and you indulge in dessert. Or you hit your favorite fried chicken joint. It’s only this one time, you say. Before you know it, you’re back to your old bad habits and have gained all of your weight back.
That’s just human nature. If there is nothing to keep you motivated, you will start to cut corners and slip. The fifth pillar, Sustain, is designed to keep your staff motivated and on track.

Here are some great techniques to keep your staff motivated:

Assign the time to do it. Give your staff the time to do the steps correctly. For example, designate the fifteen minutes before lunch and shift end as Shine time. During this time, their main focus is cleaning and organizing according to their checklists.
Start from the top. Your whole organization must be on board if 5S is going to work in the long run. If your employees see that management is not following the steps, do you think that they will continue to do it?
Create a reward system. Have friendly competitions between departments each month and reward the winner. Buy them lunch, let them go early one day, or give them priority parking. It doesn’t have to break the bank; you just want to show them your appreciation for a job well done.
Get everyone involved. Form a committee made up of employees and supervisors of different departments. Their job will be to oversee the implementation of 5S for a fixed period, maybe six months. Then you can rotate in new members.
Let them see it. Posters, banners and newsletters can be a constant reminder of the importance of 5S.

That’s it. With these five pillars you will see a remarkable change in your workplace.

JAMES P.WOMACK, Ph.D.

noreply@blogger.com (مهندس : حسام عبد الجليل) — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 07:40:00 +0000

JAMES P.WOMACK, Ph.D.
President and Founder of Lean Enterprise Institute

James Womack, Ph.D. is the founder and president of the Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI), a nonprofit training, publishing, and research organization founded in August, 1997, to advance a set of ideas known as lean production and lean thinking, based initially on the Toyota Production System and now extended to an entire Lean Business System.

The intellectual basis for the Institute is described in a series of volumes and articles co-authored by Womack over the past twenty years.

The most widely known of these are :

The Machine That Changed the World (Macmillan/Rawson Associates, 1990)
Lean Thinking (Simon & Schuster, 1996)
Seeing the Whole Mapping the Extended Value Stream (Lean Enterprise Institute 2002)
From Lean Production to the Lean Enterprise , Harvard Business Review, March-April, 1994,
"Beyond Toyota: How to Root Out Waste and Pursue Perfection", Harvard Business Review, September-October, 1996
“Lean Consumption”, Harvard Business Review, March 2005. His latest book with coauthor Daniel Jones on streamlining the provision and consumption value streams will be published in fall 2005.

THEORY OF CONSTRAINTS

noreply@blogger.com (مهندس : حسام عبد الجليل) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 11:02:00 +0000

Theory of constraints is a problem-solving methodology that focuses on the weakest link in a chain of processes. Usually the constraint is the process that is slowest.
Flow rate through the system can not increase unless the rate at the constraint increases. Theory of constraints lists five steps to system improvement:
1. Identify.
Find the process that limits the effectiveness of the system.
2. Exploit.
Use kaizen or other methods to improve the rate of the constraining process.
3. Subordinate.
Adjust (or subordinate) the rates of other processes in the chain to match that of the constraint.
4. Elevate.
If the system rate needs further improvement, the constraint may require extensive revision (or elevation). This could mean investment in additional equipment or new technology.
5. Repeat.
If these steps have improved the process to the point where it is no longer the constraint, the system rate can be further improved by repeating these steps with the new constraint.
The strength of the theory of constraints is that it employs a systems approach, emphasizing that improvements to individual processes will not improve the rate of the system unless they improve the constraining process.

Armand V. Feigenbaum

noreply@blogger.com (مهندس : حسام عبد الجليل) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 08:47:00 +0000

Armand Vallin Feigenbaum (born 1922) is an American quality control expert and businessman. He devised the concept of Total Quality Control, later known as Total Quality Management (TQM).
Feigenbaum received a bachelor’s degree from Union College, and his master’s degree and Ph.D. from MIT. He was Director of Manufacturing Operations at General Electric (1958-1968), and is now President and CEO of General Systems Company of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, an engineering firm that designs and installs operational systems. Feigenbaum wrote several books and served as President of the American Society for Quality (1961-1963).
His contributions to the quality body of knowledge include:

“Total quality control is an effective system for integrating the quality development, quality maintenance, and quality improvement efforts of the various groups in an organization so as to enable production and service at the most economical levels which allow full customer satisfaction.”
The concept of a “hidden” plant—the idea that so much extra work is performed in correcting mistakes that there is effectively a hidden plant within any factory.
Accountability for quality: Because quality is everybody’s job, it may become nobody’s job—the idea that quality must be actively managed and have visibility at the highest levels of management.
The concept of quality costs.

Genichi Taguchi

noreply@blogger.com (مهندس : حسام عبد الجليل) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 08:44:00 +0000

Gen’ichi Taguchi (born January 1, 1924 in Tokamachi, Japan) is an engineer and statistician. From the 1950s onwards, Taguchi developed a methodology for applying statistics to improve the quality of manufactured goods. Taguchi methods have been controversial among some conventional Western statisticians but others have accepted many concepts as valid extensions to the body of knowledge.

Life
Taguchi was raised in the textile town of Tokamachi where he initially studied textile engineering with the intention of entering the family kimono business. However, with the escalation of World War II, in 1942, he was drafted into the Astronomical Department of the Navigation Institute of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
After the war, in 1948, he joined the Ministry of Public Health and Welfare where he came under the influence of eminent statistician Matosaburo Masuyama who kindled his interest in design of experiments. He also worked at the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, during this time, and supported experimental work on the production of penicillin at Morinaga Pharmaceuticals, a Morinaga Seika company.
In 1950, he joined the Electrical Communications Laboratory (ECL) of the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation just as statistical quality control was beginning to become popular in Japan under the influence of W. Edwards Deming and the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers. ECL was engaged in a rivalry with Bell Labs to develop cross bar and telephone switching systems and Taguchi spent his twelve years there in developing methods for enhancing quality and reliability. Even at this point, he was beginning to consult widely in Japanese industry, with Toyota being an early adopter of his ideas.
During the 1950s, he collaborated widely and in 1954-1955 was visiting professor at the Indian Statistical Institute where he worked with R. A. Fisher and Walter A. Shewhart.
On completing his doctorate from Kyushu University in 1962, he left ECL, though he maintained a consulting relationship. In the same year he visited Princeton University under the sponsorship of John Tukey who arranged a spell at Bell Labs, his old ECL rivals. In 1964 he became professor of engineering at Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo. In 1966 he began a collaboration with Yuin Wu who later emigrated to the U.S. and, in 1980, invited Taguchi to lecture. During his visit there, Taguchi himself financed a return to Bell Labs where his initial teaching had made little enduring impact. This second visit began a collaboration with Madhav Phadke and a growing enthusiasm with his methodology in Bell Labs and elsewhere, including Ford Motor Company, Xerox and ITT.
Since 1982, Genichi Taguchi has been an advisor to the Japanese Standards Institute and executive director of the American Supplier Institute, an international consulting organisation. Contributions
Loss functions
Taguchi’s reaction to the classical design of experiments methodology of R. A. Fisher was that it was perfectly adapted in seeking to improve the mean outcome of a process. As Fisher’s work had been largely motivated by programmes to increase agricultural production, this was hardly surprising. However, Taguchi realised that in much industrial production, there is a need to produce an outcome on target, for example, to machine a hole to a specified diameter or to manufacture a cell to produce a given voltage. He also realised, as had Walter A. Shewhart and others before him, that excessive variation lay at the root of poor manufactured quality and that reacting to individual items inside and outside specification was counter-productive.
He, therefore, argued that quality engineering should start with an understanding of the cost of poor quality in various situations. In much conventional industrial engineering the cost of poor quality is simply represented by the number of items outside specification multiplied by the cost of rework or scrap. However, Taguchi insisted that manufacturers broaden their horizons to consider cost to society. Though the short-term costs may simply be those of non-conformance, any item manufactured away from nominal would result in some loss to the customer or the wider community through early wear-out; difficulties in interfacing with other parts, themselves probably wide of nominal; or the need to build-in safety margins. These losses are externalities and are usually ignored by manufacturers. In the wider economy the Coase Theorem predicts that they prevent markets from operating efficiently. Taguchi argued that such losses would inevitably find their way back to the originating corporation (in an effect similar to the tragedy of the commons) and that by working to minimise them, manufacturers would enhance brand reputation, win markets and generate profits.
Such losses are, of course, very small when an item is near to nominal. Donald J. Wheeler characterised the region within specification limits as where we deny that losses exist. As we diverge from nominal, losses grow until the point where losses are too great to deny and the specification limit is drawn. All these losses are, as W. Edwards Deming would describe them, …unknown and unknowable but Taguchi wanted to find a useful way of representing them within statistics. Taguchi specified three situations:
1. Larger the better (for example, agricultural yield);
2. Smaller the better (for example, carbon dioxide emissions); and
3. On-target, minimum-variation (for example, a mating part in an assembly).
The first two cases are represented by simple monotonic loss-functions. In the third case, Taguchi adopted a squared-error loss function on the following grounds:
* It is the first symmetric term in the Taylor series expansion of any reasonable, real-life loss function, and so is a “first-order” approximation;
* Total loss is measured by the variance. As variance is additive, it is an attractive model of cost; and
* There was an established body of statistical theory around the use of the least-squares principle.
The squared-error loss function had been used by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern in the 1930s.
Though much of this thinking is endorsed by statisticians and economists in general, Taguchi extended the argument to insist that industrial experiments seek to maximise an appropriate signal to noise ratio representing the magnitude of the mean of a process, compared to its variation. Most statisticians believe Taguchi’s signal to noise ratios to be effective over too narrow a range of applications and they are generally deprecated.

Off-line quality control
Taguchi realised that the best opportunity to eliminate variation is during design of a product and its manufacturing process (Taguchi’s rule for manufacturing). Consequently, he developed a strategy for quality engineering that can be used in both contexts. The process has three stages:
1. System design;
2. Parameter design; and
3. Tolerance design.
System design
This is design at the conceptual level involving creativity and innovation.
Parameter design
Once the concept is established, the nominal values of the various dimensions and design parameters need to be set, the detail design phase of conventional engineering. Taguchi’s radical insight was that the exact choice of values required is under-specified by the performance requirements of the system. In many circumstances, this allows the parameters to be chosen so as to minimise the effects on performance arising from variation in manufacture, environment and cumulative damage. This is sometimes called Robustification.
Tolerance design
With a successfully completed parameter design, and an understanding of the effect that the various parameters have on performance, resources can be focused on reducing and controlling variation in the critical few dimensions (see Pareto principle).
Design of experiments
Taguchi developed much of his thinking in isolation from the school of R. A. Fisher, only coming into direct contact in 1954. His framework for design of experiments is idiosyncratic and often flawed but contains much that is of enormous value. He made a number of innovations.
Outer arrays
Unlike the design of experiments work of R. A. Fisher, Taguchi sought to understand the influence that parameters had on variation, not just on the mean. He contended, as had W. Edwards Deming in his discussion of analytic studies, that conventional sampling is inadequate here as there is no way of obtaining a random sample of future conditions. In R. A. Fisher’s work, variation between experimental replications is a nuisance that the experimenter would like to eliminate whereas, in Taguchi’s thinking, it is a central object of investigation.
Taguchi’s innovation was to replicate each experiment by means of an outer array, possibly an orthogonal array that seeks deliberately to emulate the sources of variation that a product would encounter in reality. This is an example of judgement sampling. Though statisticians following in the Shewhart-Deming tradition have embraced outer arrays, many academics are still skeptical .
Later innovations in outer arrays resulted in ‘compounded noise’. This involves combining a few noise factors to create two levels in the outer array. First, noise factors that drive output lower and second, noise factors that drive output higher. This still emulates the extremes of noise variation but with fewer test samples required.
Management of interactions
Many of the orthogonal arrays that Taguchi has advocated are saturated, allowing no scope for estimation of interactions. This is a continuing topic of controversy. However, this is only true for ‘control factors’ or factors in the ‘inner array’. By combining an inner array of control factors with an outer array of ‘noise factors’, Taguchi’s approach provides full information on control-by-noise interactions. His concept is that those are the interactions of most interest in achieving a design that is robust to noise factor variation. In this sense, the Taguchi approach provides more complete interaction information than typical fractional factorial experiments.
* Followers of Taguchi argue that the designs offer rapid results and that interactions can be eliminated by proper choice of quality characteristic and by transforming the data. That notwithstanding, a confirmation experiment offers protection against any residual interactions. If the quality characteristic represents the energy transformation of the system, then the likelihood of control factor by control factor interactions is greatly reduced, since energy is additive.
Analysis of experiments
Taguchi introduced many methods for analysing experimental results including novel applications of the analysis of variance and minute analysis. Little of this work has been validated by Western statisticians.
Assessment
Genichi Taguchi has made seminal and valuable methodological innovations in statistics and engineering, within the Shewhart-Deming tradition. His emphasis on loss to society; techniques for investigating variation in experiments and his overall strategy of system, parameter and tolerance design have been massively influential in improving manufactured quality worldwide. Much of his work was carried out in isolation from the mainstream of Western statistics and, while this may have facilitated his creativity, much of the technical detail of Taguchi methods and its benefits to experimentation and research is only now being studied in the West.
Honours
* Indigo Ribbon from the Emperor of Japan
* Willard F. Rockwell Medal of the International Technology Institute
* Honorary member of the Japanese Society of Quality Control
* Shewhart Medal of the American Society for Quality, (1995)
* Honored as a Quality Guru by the British Department of Trade and Industry (1990)

Joseph M. Juran

noreply@blogger.com (مهندس : حسام عبد الجليل) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 08:42:00 +0000

Joseph Moses Juran (December 24, 1904 – February 28, 2008)

He was a 20th century management consultant who is principally remembered as an evangelist for quality and quality management, writing several influential books on those subjects.
He was the brother of Academy Award winner Nathan H. Juran.
Early life
Juran was born to a Jewish family in 1904 in Brăila, Romania, and later lived in Gura Humorului. In 1912, he immigrated to America with his family, settling in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Juran excelled in school, especially in mathematics. He was a chess champion at an early age and dominated chess at Western Electric. Juran graduated from Minneapolis South High School in 1920.
In 1924, with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota, Juran joined Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works. His first job was troubleshooting in the Complaint Department. In 1925, Bell Labs proposed that Hawthorne Works personnel be trained in its newly-developed statistical sampling and control chart techniques. Juran was chosen to join the Inspection Statistical Department, a small group of engineers charged with applying and disseminating Bell Labs’ statistical quality control innovations. This highly-visible position fueled Juran’s rapid ascent in the organization and the course of his later career.
Juran was promoted to department chief in 1928, and the following year became a division chief. He published his first quality related article in Mechanical Engineering in 1935. In 1937, he moved to Western Electric/AT&T’s headquarters in New York City.
As a hedge against the uncertainties of the Great Depression, he enrolled in Loyola University Chicago School of Law in 1931. He graduated in 1935 and was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1936, though he never practiced Law.
During the Second World War, through an arrangement with his employer, Juran served in the Lend-Lease Administration and Foreign Economic Administration. Just before war’s end, he resigned from Western Electric, and his government post, intending to become a freelance consultant. He joined the faculty of New York University as an adjunct Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering, where he taught courses in quality control and ran round table seminars for executives. He also worked through a small management consulting firm on projects for Gilette, Hamilton Watch Company and Borg-Warner. After the firm’s owner’s sudden death, Juran began his own independent practice, from which he made a comfortable living until his retirement in the late 1990s. His early clients included the now defunct Bigelow-Sanford Carpet Company, the Koppers Company, the International Latex Company, Bausch & Lomb and General Foods.
Japan
The end of World War II compelled Japan to change its focus from becoming a military power to becoming an economic one. Despite Japan’s ability to compete on price, its consumer goods manufacturers suffered from a long-established reputation of poor quality. The first edition of Juran’s Quality Control Handbook in 1951 attracted the attention of the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) which invited him to Japan in 1952. When he finally arrived in Japan in 1954
Working independently of W. Edwards Deming (who focused on the use of statistical quality control), Juran-who focused on managing for quality-went to Japan and started courses (1954) in Quality Management. The training started with top and middle management. The idea that top and middle management need training had found resistance in the United States.
For Japan, it would take some 20 years for the training to pay off. In the 1970s, Japanese products began to be seen as the leaders in quality. This sparked a crisis in the United States due to quality issues in the 1980s.

Contributions
Pareto principle
In 1941 Juran stumbled across the work of Vilfredo Pareto and began to apply the Pareto principle to quality issues (for example, 80% of a problem is caused by 20% of the causes). This is also known as “the vital few and the trivial many”. In later years Juran preferred “the vital few and the useful many” to signal that the remaining 80% of the causes should not be totally ignored.
Management theory
When he began his career in the 1920s the principal focus in quality management was on the quality of the end, or finished, product. The tools used were from the Bell system of acceptance sampling, inspection plans, and control charts. The ideas of Frederick Winslow Taylor dominated.
Juran is widely credited for adding the human dimension to quality management. He pushed for the education and training of managers.
Juran’s vision of quality management extended well outside the walls of the factory to encompass non-manufacturing processes, especially those that might be thought of as service related.
Juran’s Trilogy
He also developed the “Juran’s trilogy,” an approach to cross-functional management that is composed of three managerial processes:

quality planning,
quality control
quality improvement

Books
* Quality Control Handbook, New York : McGraw-Hill, 1951, OCLC 1220529
* Managerial Breakthrough, New York, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964
* Management of Quality Control, New York, New York: Joseph M. Juran, 1967, OCLC 66818686
* Quality Planning and Analysis, New York, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970
* Upper Management and Quality, New York, New York: Joseph M. Juran, 1980, OCLC 8103276
* Juran on Planning for Quality, New York, New York: The Free Press, 1988, OCLC 16468905

Kaoru Ishikawa

noreply@blogger.com (مهندس : حسام عبد الجليل) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 08:40:00 +0000

Kaoru Ishikawa (Ishikawa Kaoru) (1915-1989) was a Japanese University professor and influential quality management innovator best known in North America for the Ishikawa or cause and effect diagram (also known as Fishbone Diagram) that are used in the analysis of industrial process.

Biography
Born in Tokyo, the oldest of the eight sons of Ichiro Ishikawa. In 1939 he graduated University of Tokyo with an Engineering degree in applied chemistry. His first job was as a naval technical officer (1939-1941) then moved on to work at the Nissan Liquid Fuel Company until 1947. Ishikawa would now start his career as an associate professor at the University of Tokyo. He then undertook the Presidency of the Musashi Institute of Technology in 1978.
In 1949, Ishikawa joined the Union of Japanese Scientist and Engineers (JUSE) quality control research group. After World War II Japan looked to transform its industrial sector, which in North America was then still perceived as a producer of cheap wind-up toys and poor quality cameras. It was his skill at mobilizing a lot of people towards a specific common goal that was largely responsible for Japan’s quality-improvement initiatives. He translated, integrated and expanded the management concepts of Dr. Deming and Dr. Juran into the Japanese system.
After becoming a full professor in the Faculty of Engineering at The University of Tokyo (1960) Ishikawa introduced the concept of quality circles (1962) in conjunction with JUSE. This concept began as an experiment to see what effect the “leading hand” (Gemba-cho) could have on quality. It was a natural extension of these forms of training to all levels of an organization (the top and middle managers having already been trained). Although many companies were invited to participate, only one company at the time, Nippon Telephone & Telegraph, accepted. Quality Circles would soon become very popular and form an important link in a company’s Total Quality Management System. Ishikawa would write two books on quality circles (QC Circle Koryo and How to Operate QC Circle Activities).
Among his efforts to promote quality were, the Annual Quality Control Conference for Top Management (1963) and several books on Quality Control (the Guide to Quality Control was translated into English). He was the chairman of the editorial board of the monthly Statistical Quality Control. Ishikawa was involved in international standardization activities.
1982 saw the development of the Ishikawa diagram which is used to determine root causes.
Awards and recognition
* 1972 American Society for Quality’s Eugene L. Grant Award
* 1977 Blue Ribbon Medal by the Japanese Government for achievements in industrial standardization
* 1988 Walter A. Shewhart Medal
* 1988 Awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasures, Second Class, by the Japanese government.
Books
* QC Circle Koryo
* How to Operate QC Circle Activities
* Ishikawa, Kaoru (1990); (Translator: J. H. Loftus); Introduction to Quality Control.

Walter A. Shewhart

noreply@blogger.com (مهندس : حسام عبد الجليل) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 08:37:00 +0000

Walter Andrew Shewhart (pronounced like “Shoe-heart”, March 18, 1891 – March 11, 1967) was an American physicist, engineer and statistician, sometimes known as the father of statistical quality control.
W. Edwards Deming said of him:

As a statistician, he was, like so many of the rest of us, self-taught, on a good background of physics and mathematics.
Early life and education
Born New Canton, Illinois to Anton and Esta Barney Shewhart, he attended the University of Illinois before being awarded his doctorate in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1917.
Work on industrial quality
Bell Telephone’s engineers had been working to improve the reliability of their transmission systems. Because amplifiers and other equipment had to be buried underground, there was a business need to reduce the frequency of failures and repairs. When Dr. Shewhart joined the Western Electric Company Inspection Engineering Department at the Hawthorne Works in 1918, industrial quality was limited to inspecting finished products and removing defective items. That all changed on May 16, 1924. Dr. Shewhart’s boss, George D Edwards, recalled: “Dr. Shewhart prepared a little memorandum only about a page in length. About a third of that page was given over to a simple diagram which we would all recognize today as a schematic control chart. That diagram, and the short text which preceded and followed it, set forth all of the essential principles and considerations which are involved in what we know today as process quality control. Shewhart’s work pointed out the importance of reducing variation in a manufacturing process and the understanding that continual process-adjustment in reaction to non-conformance actually increased variation and degraded quality.
Shewhart framed the problem in terms of assignable-cause and chance-cause variation and introduced the control chart as a tool for distinguishing between the two. Shewhart stressed that bringing a production process into a state of statistical control, where there is only chance-cause variation, and keeping it in control, is necessary to predict future output and to manage a process economically. Dr. Shewhart created the basis for the control chart and the concept of a state of statistical control by carefully designed experiments. While Dr. Shewhart drew from pure mathematical statistical theories, he understood data from physical processes never produce a “normal distribution curve” (a Gaussian distribution, also commonly referred to as a “bell curve”). He discovered that observed variation in manufacturing data did not always behave the same way as data in nature (Brownian motion of particles). Dr. Shewhart concluded that while every process displays variation, some processes display controlled variation that is natural to the process, while others display uncontrolled variation that is not present in the process causal system at all times.
Shewhart worked to advance the thinking at Bell Telephone Laboratories from their foundation in 1925 until his retirement in 1956, publishing a series of papers in the Bell System Technical Journal.
His work was summarized in his book Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product (1931).
Shewhart’s charts were adopted by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) in 1933 and advocated to improve production during World War II in American War Standards Z1.1-1941, Z1.2-1941 and Z1.3-1942.
Later work
From the late 1930s onwards, Shewhart’s interests expanded out from industrial quality to wider concerns in science and statistical inference. The title of his second book Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control (1939) asks the audacious question: What can statistical practice, and science in general, learn from the experience of industrial quality control?
Shewhart’s approach to statistics was radically different from that of many of his contemporaries. He possessed a strong operationalist outlook, largely absorbed from the writings of pragmatist philosopher C. I. Lewis, and this influenced his statistical practice. In particular, he had read Lewis’s Mind and the World Order many times. Though he lectured in England in 1932 under the sponsorship of Karl Pearson (another committed operationalist) his ideas attracted little enthusiasm within the English statistical tradition. The British Standards nominally based on his work, in fact, diverge on serious philosophical and methodological issues from his practice.
His more conventional work led him to formulate the statistical idea of tolerance intervals and to propose his data presentation rules, which are listed below:
1. Data has no meaning apart from its context.
2. Data contains both signal and noise. To be able to extract information, one must separate the signal from the noise within the data.
Walter Shewhart visited India in 1947-48 under the sponsorship of P. C. Mahalanobis of the Indian Statistical Institute. Shewhart toured the country, held conferences and stimulated interest in statistical quality control among Indian industrialists.
He died at Troy Hills, New Jersey in 1967.
Influence
In 1938 his work came to the attention of physicists W. Edwards Deming and Raymond T. Birge. The two had been deeply intrigued by the issue of measurement error in science and had published a landmark paper in Reviews of Modern Physics in 1934. On reading of Shewhart’s insights, they wrote to the journal to wholly recast their approach in the terms that Shewhart advocated.
The encounter began a long collaboration between Shewhart and Deming that involved work on productivity during World War II and Deming’s championing of Shewhart’s ideas in Japan from 1950 onwards. Deming developed some of Shewhart’s methodological proposals around scientific inference and named his synthesis the Shewhart cycle.
Achievements and honours
In his obituary for the American Statistical Association, Deming wrote of Shewhart:
As a man, he was gentle, genteel, never ruffled, never off his dignity. He knew disappointment and frustration, through failure of many writers in mathematical statistics to understand his point of view.
He was founding editor of the Wiley Series in Mathematical Statistics, a role that he maintained for twenty years, always championing freedom of speech and confident to publish views at variance with his own.
His honours included:
* Founding member, fellow and president of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics;
* Founding member, first honorary member and first Shewhart Medalist of the American Society for Quality;
* Fellow and President of the American Statistical Association;
* Fellow of the International Statistical Institute;
* Honorary fellow of the Royal Statistical Society;
* Holley medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers;
* Honorary Doctor of Science, Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta.
Quotes
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Both pure and applied science have gradually pushed further and further the requirements for accuracy and precision. However, applied science, particularly in the mass production of interchangeable parts, is even more exacting than pure science in certain matters of accuracy and precision.
Progress in modifying our concept of control has been and will be comparatively slow. In the first place, it requires the application of certain modern physical concepts; and in the second place it requires the application of statistical methods which up to the present time have been for the most part left undisturbed in the journal in which they appeared.
Shewhart’s propositions
1. All chance systems of causes are not alike in the sense that they enable us to predict the future in terms of the past.
2. Constant systems of chance causes do exist in nature.
3. Assignable causes of variation may be found and eliminated.
Based upon evidence such as already presented, it appears feasible to set up criteria by which to determine when assignable causes of variation in quality have been eliminated so that the product may then be considered to be controlled within limits. This state of control appears to be, in general, a kind of limit to which we may expect to go economically in finding and removing causes of variability without changing a major portion of the manufacturing process as, for example, would be involved in the substitution of new materials or designs.
The definition of random in terms of a physical operation is notoriously without effect on the mathematical operations of statistical theory because so far as these mathematical operations are concerned random is purely and simply an undefined term. The formal and abstract mathematical theory has an independent and sometimes lonely existence of its own. But when an undefined mathematical term such as random is given a definite operational meaning in physical terms, it takes on empirical and practical significance. Every mathematical theorem involving this mathematically undefined concept can then be given the following predictive form: If you do so and so, then such and such will happen.
Every sentence in order to have definite scientific meaning must be practically or at least theoretically verifiable as either true or false upon the basis of experimental measurements either practically or theoretically obtainable by carrying out a definite and previously specified operation in the future. The meaning of such a sentence is the method of its verification.
In other words, the fact that the criterion we happen to use has a fine ancestry of highbrow statistical theorems does not justify its use. Such justification must come from empirical evidence that it works.
Presentation of Data depends on the intended actions .
Rule 1. Original data should be presented in a way that will preserve the evidence in the original data for all the predictions assumed to be useful.
Rule 2. Any summary of a distribution of numbers in terms of symmetric functions should not give an objective degree of belief in any one of the inferences or predictions to be made therefrom that would cause human action significantly different from what this action would be if the original distributions had been taken as evidence.
Books
* Shewhart, Walter A[ndrew]. (1917). A study of the accelerated motion of small drops through a viscous medium. Lancaster.
* Shewhart, Walter A[ndrew]. (1931). Economic control of quality of manufactured product.
* Shewhart, Walter A[ndrew]. (1939). Statistical method from the viewpoint of quality control.

William Edwards Deming

noreply@blogger.com (مهندس : حسام عبد الجليل) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 07:49:00 +0000

William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993)

Early life
He was an American statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and consultant. Deming is widely credited with improving production in the United States during the Cold War, although he is perhaps best known for his work in Japan. There, from 1950 onward he taught top management how to improve design and thus service , product quality, testing and sales through various methods, including the application of statistical methods.
Deming made a significant contribution to Japan’s later reputation for innovative high-quality products and its economic power. He is regarded as having had more impact upon Japanese manufacturing and business than any other individual not of Japanese heritage. Despite being considered something of a hero in Japan, he was only just beginning to win widespread recognition in the U.S. at the time of his death
Deming received

a BSc in electrical engineering from the University of Wyoming at Laramie (1921),
an M.S. from the University of Colorado (1925),
a Ph.D. from Yale University (1928).
Both graduate degrees were in mathematics and physics.

Deming had an internship at Bell Telephone Laboratories while studying at Yale.
He later worked at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Census Department. While working under Gen. Douglas Mac Arthur as a census consultant to the Japanese government, he famously taught statistical process control methods to Japanese business leaders, returning to Japan for many years to consult and to witness economic growth that he had predicted as a result of application of techniques learned from Walter Shewhart at Bell Laboratories. Later, he became a professor at New York University while engaged as an independent consultant in Washington, D.C.
In 1927, Deming was introduced to Walter A. Shewhart of the Bell Telephone Laboratories by Dr. C.H. Kunsman of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Deming found great inspiration in the work of Shewhart, the originator of the concepts of statistical control of processes and the related technical tool of the control chart, as Deming began to move toward the application of statistical methods to industrial production and management. Shewhart’s idea of common and special causes of variation led directly to Deming’s theory of management. Deming saw that these ideas could be applied not only to manufacturing processes but also to the processes by which enterprises are led and managed. This key insight made possible his enormous influence on the economics of the industrialized world after 1950.
Deming was the author of Out of the Crisis (1982–1986)
The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education (1993), which includes his System of Profound Knowledge and the 14 Points for Management (described below).
Deming played flute & drums and composed music throughout his life, including sacred choral compositions and an arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner.
In 1993, Deming founded the W. Edwards Deming Institute in Washington, D.C., where the Deming Collection at the U.S. Library of Congress includes an extensive audiotape and videotape archive. The aim of the W. Edwards Deming Institute is to foster understanding of The Deming System of Profound Knowledge to advance commerce, prosperity, and peace.
Deming edited a series of lectures delivered by Shewhart at USDA, Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control, into a book published in 1939.
Deming developed the sampling techniques that were used for the first time during the 1940 U.S. Census.
During World War II, Deming was a member of the five-man Emergency Technical Committee.
Deming offered fourteen key principles for management for transforming business effectiveness. The points were first presented in his book Out of the Crisis
1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and stay in business, and to provide jobs.
2. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for massive inspection by building quality into the product in the first place.
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move towards a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
6. Institute training on the job.
7. Institute leadership (see Point 12 and Ch. 8 of “Out of the Crisis”). The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company. (See Ch. 3 of “Out of the Crisis”)
9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
11. a. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
b. Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
12. a. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
b. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia,” abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objective (See Ch. 3 of “Out of the Crisis”).
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job.
Seven Deadly Diseases
The “Seven Deadly Diseases” include
1. Lack of constancy of purpose
2. Emphasis on short-term profits
3. Evaluation by performance, merit rating, or annual review of performance
4. Mobility of management
5. Running a company on visible figures alone
6. Excessive medical costs
7. Excessive costs of warranty, fueled by lawyers who work for contingency fees
Deming’s advocacy of the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, his 14 Points, and Seven Deadly Diseases have had tremendous influence outside of manufacturing and have been applied in other arenas, such as in the relatively new field of sales process engineering.

LEAN SIX SIGMA

noreply@blogger.com (مهندس : حسام عبد الجليل) — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 14:25:00 +0000

Lean Six Sigma combines the two most valuable methodologies focusing on performance improvement which are Six Sigma and Lean principles. Six Sigma is a tool leading people to make work better, and Lean concepts teach workers to work faster.

Six Sigma is a business management strategy, originally developed by Motorola that today enjoys wide-spread application in many sectors of industry.

Six Sigma seeks to identify and remove the causes of defects and errors in manufacturing and/or service delivery and business processes. It uses a set of management methods, including statistical methods, and creates a dedicated infrastructure of people within the organization who are experts in these methods.

Six Sigma aims to deliver “Breakthrough Performance Improvement” from current levels) in business and customer relevant operational and performance measures.

Business or operational measures are elements like:

• Customer Satisfaction Rating Score

• Time taken to respond to customer queries or complaints

• % Defect rate in Manufacturing

• Cost of executing a business process transaction

• Yield (Productivity) of service operations or production

• Inventory turns (or) Days of Inventory carried

• Billing and Cash Collection lead time

• Equipment Efficiency (Downtime, time taken to fix etc.,)

• Accident / Incident rate

• Time taken to recruit personnel and so on…

Six Sigma initiatives are planned and implemented in organizations on “Project by Project” basis. Each project aims not only to improve a chosen performance metric but also sustain the improvement achieved.

Each Six Sigma project carried out within an organization follows a defined sequence of steps and has quantified financial targets (revenue increase, cost reduction or profit increase)

How is Six Sigma different?

Features that differentiate Six Sigma apart from previous quality

improvement initiatives include :

• A clear focus on achieving measurable and quantifiable financial

returns from any Six Sigma project.

• An increased emphasis on strong and passionate management leadership and support.

• A special organization infrastructure of "Champions," "Master Black Belts," "Black Belts”, “Green Belts” etc. to lead and implement the Six Sigma approach.

• A clear commitment to making decisions on the basis of verifiable data, rather than assumptions and guesswork.

• The term "Six Sigma" is derived from a field of statistics known as process capability study. It refers to the ability of processes to produce a very high proportion of output within specification. Processes that operate with "Six sigma quality" over the short term are assumed to produce (long-term) defect levels below 3.4 defects per million opportunities (DPMO).Six Sigma's implicit goal is to improve all processes to that level of quality or better.

In recent years, Six Sigma has sometimes been combined with lean manufacturing (management) to yield a methodology named Lean Six Sigma.

Lean is a philosophy and set of management techniques focused on continuous “eliminating waste” so that every process, task or work

action is made “value adding” (the real output customer pays for!!) as viewed from customer perspective. Lean “waste elimination” targets

the “Eight Wastes” namely:

• Overproduction – Making more than what is needed by customer / market demand

• Over-processing - Doing more to a product/service (but not perceived as

value by customer)

• Waiting – For material, information, people, equipment, procedures, approvals and more

• Transportation – Movement of products / items during or after production

• Defects – Errors, mistakes, non-complying products, services, documents, transactions

• Rework and Scrap – Products, transactions or outputs not meeting specifications and have to be fixed, redone, rectified, marked down or scrapped / unusable.

• Motion – Mainly people, document movement, searching etc.

• Inventory – Buffer stocks or resources (Raw, Work in process, FG, Bench staff etc.,)

• Unused Creativity – People knowledge and skills that are not utilized by the company.

Wastes make the organization slow, inefficient and uncompetitive. Lean methods help to remove / reduce waste and contributes to driving “business agility” (velocity) through smooth work flow across the organization resulting in rapid fulfillment of customer needs in an

optimum manner.

Why Lean and Six Sigma Integrate?

We knew we wanted to have Six Sigma Tools, that was clear.

But we also decided that what really makes change in a factory

are some of the Lean tools.

Putting in a pull system, reducing batch sizes, significantly changing setup times, all of a sudden everything starts to flow.

Those are the types of things we saw over time that really made a difference in our factories .

Six Sigma with Lean Is the Integration of Two Powerful Business Improvement Approaches

Six Sigma (Precision + Accuracy +VOC )	Lean (Speed + Low Cost +Flexibility )
• Voice of the Customer (VOC) • Statistical Process Control • Design of Experiment • Error-proofing • Measurement Systems Analysis • Failure Modes Effect Analysis • Cause and Effect Analysis • Hypothesis Testing	• Value stream mapping • Bottleneck identification and removal • “Pull” from the Customer • Setup and queue reduction • Process flow improvement • Kaizen • Supply Chain Strategy • 5S • S&OP

Integrating Lean and Six Sigma Initiatives

Lean and Six Sigma can co-exist independently, but the benefits of integration are tremendous...

• Single channel for employing limited resources

• One improvement strategy for the organization

• Highly productive and profitable synergy …while the pitfalls of not integrating them are formidable.

• Divided focus of the organization

• Separate and unequal messages for improvement

• Destructive competition for resources and projects

Six Sigma is the “Unifying Framework”

Six Sigma provides the improvement infrastructure

• CEO Engagement

• Deployment Champions

• Green Belts, Black Belts, Master Black Belts

Over-riding methodology: DMAIC, DMEDI, DMADV

Lean provides additional tools and approaches to “turbo-charge” improvement efforts

• Tools: Set-up reduction, 5S, Kanban, Waste Reduction

• Approaches: Kaizen, Mistake

LEAN ENTERPRISE

noreply@blogger.com (مهندس : حسام عبد الجليل) — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 11:18:00 +0000

Achieving what is known as a lean enterprise requires a change in attitudes, procedures, processes, and systems. It is necessary to “zoom out” and look at the flow of information, knowledge, and material throughout the organization.

In any organization there are multiple paths through which products, documents, and ideas flow. The process of applying lean thinking to such a path can be divided into the following steps:

1. Produce a value stream map (VSM).
This is also referred to as a value chain diagram. This diagram is described in detail by Rother and Shook (1999). It has boxes labeled with each step in the process. Information about timing and inventory is provided near each process box.

2. Analyze all inventory notations with an eye toward reduction or elimination.

Inventory tends to increase costs because:
• Storage space may be expensive (rubber awaiting use in a tire factory is stored at 120°F; wood inventory may need to have humidity control).
• Quality may deteriorate (rust, spoilage, and so on)
• Design changes may be delayed as they work their way through the inventory.
• Money invested in inventory could be used more productively elsewhere.
• Quality problems that are not detected until a later stage in the process will be more expensive to correct if an inventory of defective products has accumulated.

One company refers to its racks of safety stock as the “wall of shame.”

3. Analyze the entire value stream for unneeded steps.
These steps are called non-value-added activities.

4. Determine how the flow is driven.
Strive to move toward value streams in which production decisions are based on the pull of customer demand. In a process where pull-based flow has reached perfection, a customer order for an item would trigger the production of all the component parts for that item. These components would arrive, be assembled, and delivered in a time interval that would satisfy the customer. In many situations this ideal has not been reached and the customer order will be filled from finished goods inventory. The order will, however, trigger activities back through the value chain that produce a replacement part in finished goods inventory before it is needed by a customer.

5. Extend the value stream map upstream into suppliers’ plants.
New challenges occur regarding compatibility of communication systems. The flow of information, material, knowledge, and money are all potential targets for lean improvements.

If you’re just starting out, here are the books to look at first. Click each entry to preview details, see ratings by other customers and more.
Lean Production Simplified: A Plain-Language Guide to the World’s Most Powerful Production System, Second Edition
Pascal Dennis
Lean Strategies for Product Development: Achieving Breakthrough Performance in Bringing Products to Market
Clifford Fiore

Kaizen

noreply@blogger.com (مهندس : حسام عبد الجليل) — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 10:37:00 +0000

Kaizen is a Japanese word for the philosophy that defines management’s role in continuously encouraging and implementing small improvements involving everyone. It is a method of continuous improvement in small increments that makes processes more efficient, effective, under control, and adaptable.

Improvements are usually accomplished at little or no expense without sophisticated techniques or expensive equipment. Kaizen focuses on simplification by breaking down complex processes into their subprocesses and then improving them.

The kaizen improvement focuses on the use of:

1. Value-added and non-value-added work activities.
2. Muda, which refers to the seven classes of waste—overproduction, delay, transportation, processing, inventory, wasted motion, and defective parts.
3. Principles of motion study.
4. Principles of materials handling.
5. Documentation of standard operating procedures.
6. The five S’s for workplace organization, which are five Japanese words that mean proper arrangement (seiko), orderliness (seiton), personal cleanliness (seiketso), cleanup (seiso), and discipline (shitsuke).The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) through the Manufacturing Extension Partnership uses sort, set in order, shine, standardize, and sustain.
7. Visual management by means of (visual) displays that everyone in the plant can use for better communications.
8. Just-in-time principles to produce only the right units in the right quantities, at the right time, and with the right resources.
9. Poka-yoke to prevent or detect errors.
10. Team dynamics, which include problem solving, communication skills, and conflict.

Kaizen relies heavily on a culture that encourages suggestions by operators who continually try to incrementally improve their job or process. An example of a kaizen – type improvement would be the change in color of a welding booth from black to white to improve operator visibility. This change results in a small improvement
in weld quality and a substantial improvement in operator satisfaction.

Collecting Data and Identifying Required Teams

noreply@blogger.com (مهندس : حسام عبد الجليل) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 15:19:00 +0000

Collecting Data
Remember that within a Six Sigma culture, decisions are made and programs are established based on data. If you don’t have the data that you need, establish some way to start collecting it. Keep files of why customers are complaining. If you lose a customer, follow up and get the real answer to why they went to one of your competitors.

You need data to identify where your problems are. You need data to establish a baseline of your historical performance. From this baseline, you need to set a goal of ten-fold improvement every two years. This is the Six Sigma rate of improvement standard. Then you need to monitor your performance against your goal. If you are meeting or exceeding your goal, stay the course. If you are not meeting your goal, regroup and redesign your programs.

Identifying Required Teams
You must take a cross-functional view of all parties involved in delivering product or service. If customers are chronically receiving product late, who is involved? It starts with sales receiving the order and communicating a realistic delivery date. Order entry personnel are responsible for
getting it into production. Production control people are responsible for scheduling it properly. Production is responsible for operating a predictable factory flow. Factory engineering must design the factory layout and machine centers for optimum performance. Manufacturing Engineering
must design processes that are controllable and predictable. Maintenance must keep equipment running.
Warehousing must have a system that allows product to flow through quickly. Logistics must maintain an efficient delivery system.

So, if one of your prioritized programs is to improve customer on-time delivery, then you need to form a team that includes members from sales, order entry, production control, production, factory engineering, manufacturing engineering, maintenance, warehousing, and logistics.

If this team decides that none of them are at fault, that the real problem is the lousy product design that engineering gave them to build, then you need to add a representative from design engineering to the team. Any time a team starts using the term “them,” someone from “them” needs to be added to the team.

Things that must be done prior to creating your Six Sigma program are:
❑ Determine what you want to accomplish
❑ Decide who will be black belts and green belts
❑ Define the training programs required for black belt and green-belt candidates
❑ Select the initial projects targeted for improvement
❑ Establish the required data collection systems
❑ Identify the required teams

How to Selecting Projects ?

noreply@blogger.com (مهندس : حسام عبد الجليل) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 15:06:00 +0000

Start with your customer data. Typically, every company has file cabinets, or the electronic equivalent, full of historical complaints and returns from customers. It is also typical that very few companies use this data. The first step is to convert this data into information. Go through the data and determine the chronic reasons for the complaints. The useful tool to use here is a Pareto diagram.
This is an excellent way to prioritize your programs. Usually you will find three to six big reasons why your customers are unhappy with your product or service.

Once you know the reasons for customer dissatisfaction, determine what departments and work units are involved in providing the product and service.

Identify the teams that will be needed to improve the performance, and recruit team members from every unit involved.

Provide the required training. Charter the teams with eliminating errors and defects.
Another tool for gathering customer information is an annual customer satisfaction survey, best conducted by a third-party service provider experienced in interviewing customers. These surveys will yield information that otherwise will go unknown. Many customers will not complain, often because they do not like the confrontation associated with complaining. They quietly drift away to one of your competitors.

A third-party provider can offer anonymity and put customer representatives at ease. Experienced third-party providers also can digest the information and deliver a report with prioritized issues that you need to improve.
An annual customer satisfaction survey contains both closed ended questions and open-ended questions. A typical closed-ended question may be, “Compared to other suppliers, the timeliness and professionalism from Customer Service is: (excellent (good (average (fair (poor.” Using 5 for excellent, 4 for good, 3 for average, 2 for fair, and 1 for poor, the numerical scores for each of the questions are summed.

This provides the information necessary to prioritize customer satisfaction improvement projects.
A typical open-ended question may be, “What three things do you like least about doing business with XYZ?”
The patterns and issues in the subjective information contained in the responses to such questions will provide additional information, leading to customer satisfaction improvement projects.

You also need to look at your financial performance.
Determine where you are spending too much money due to poor quality. For example:
❑ How much of your cost-of-manufacturing is caused by rework and repair?
❑ How much of your cost-of-manufacturing is caused by in-process scrap?
❑ How much of your customer service budget is used for doing damage control
following customer complaints?
❑ How much money are you spending on final inspections because you can’t trust your
operation to produce defect-free product?
❑ How much business have you lost because of poor service or product?
❑ How much could improved quality increase your market share?

Every line item on your balance sheet is affected, either positively or negatively, by your quality performance. Capture your costs of poor quality and prioritize the need for continuous improvement teams.

What Do You Want?

noreply@blogger.com (مهندس : حسام عبد الجليل) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 15:02:00 +0000

Before you embark on a major campaign to improve your company and the skill levels of your employees, you need to ask what it is that you are trying to accomplish and what is required to get you there.

So, it is best to determine that this is really something that you want to do.
Meet with the senior management team, and decide what you want your culture to be. If you decide that you want a Six Sigma–based culture, you need to be aware of the essence of Six Sigma. A Six Sigma culture is one that focuses on the voice of the customer. Your decisions, programs, and operating systems will be geared to total customer satisfaction. Service, administration, and production operating systems will be designed with the belief that the customer is always right. Compensation and corrective actions for substandard product or unsatisfactory service will be done quickly and in the customers’ favor. Customers asking for satisfaction will not have to hear “no” followed by the that’s-not-our-policy mantra. Six Sigma cultures include teaming and empowerment.

When committing to a Six Sigma culture, you are committing to releasing a great deal of the historically centrally held information and power. Employees at all levels will have access to the information they need to make sound judgments, and they will be trusted to do so.
Time will be made available during working hours for employees to meet and work on continuous improvement programs.
The required training will be identified and funded. You need to determine and communicate the level of empowerment to which you are willing to go.

Before you launch a Six Sigma program, you need to complete your organizational development. Vision, mission, objectives, strategies, and tactical expectations all need to be documented and communicated. It is an excellent idea to complete a cross-functional mapping .

Identify what it is that you do now, the “As Is” situation. Then identify what you would like the system to look like to be a more efficient, user-friendly system, the “Should Be” situation. Then identify all of the actions that must take place to transition from the “As Is” to the “Should Be.” Complete these actions with urgency.
Determine who will be your initial green belts and black belts. As the program grows, every employee within your company should be targeted to become a green belt.
This is the best way to create an environment where everyone is a positive change agent. You need to identify the skill levels and training required to create your army of green belts and your cadre of black belts. Regardless of company size or markets served, green belts need to learn the tools, techniques, and model presented in Section Two.

All enterprises require black belts with interpersonal, teaming, coaching, facilitation, and basic problem-solving skills.
The type of business that you are in determines additional skills required by black belts. If your manufacturing operations are highly technical and controlled mainly by variable data, then you will need black belts that have been trained in experimental design and advanced process control techniques.
You need to identify where you are going to get the resources required to train and facilitate the establishment of your Six Sigma culture. Internal resources need to be identified and developed. External, experienced resources are required during the first year or two.

The program should be designed so that external resources are utilized to develop the internal resources. As the internal resources are developed, the dependency on external resources should be phased out.

Requirements for Change

noreply@blogger.com (مهندس : حسام عبد الجليل) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 13:33:00 +0000

In the late 1980s, Motorola received many requests from conference organizers and individual companies for a briefing on what was entailed in establishing a Six Sigma culture,
on how the mathematics worked for determining a Sigma level, and on the tools and techniques that led to the company’s success. In those briefings we initially presented the “Required Components” fishbone diagram expanding on each of the six components required for a Six Sigma cultural change. We also spent a lot of time on how to measure defects and on the mathematics of how to convert a defect rate into a Sigma value.

By the early 1990s, these companies realized that a transition to Six Sigma would require changes and that they would need to manage the change. We then began getting questions about how we had managed this complex change.

The elements of that chart are explained as follows:
• Vision. Vision is established by creating the vision statement that sets the framework for the mission, objectives, and strategies. All of this provides everyone with a clear view of what is to be accomplished and how it is to be accomplished. It is recommended that each division, department, and work unit create their own mission statement to indicate their role in fulfilling the company’s mission and their contributions toward accomplishing the objectives. This will ensure that they understand the vision as defined and communicated by senior management.

• Skills. Skills are instilled through training. Training is perhaps the most important aspect of managing change. People need to be taught the language, expectations, and rules of the new culture. Technologists and engineers need to be taught experimental designs and process control techniques. Everyone needs to learn basic problem-solving tools and a logical model for how to apply them to continuously improve performance. Everyone must learn teaming and interpersonal skills. Managers at all levels need to be taught leadership skills—how to transition from control management to facilitating leadership.

• Incentive. Incentive is instilled in senior management by tying bonuses to the objectives and creating the new culture within their infrastructures. Within senior management incentive plans, a minimum of 30 percent of their bonus potential should be dependent on achieving quality goals. For everyone within the middle ranks, pay raises can be attached to how well their work units complete action plans and meet their goals. Incentive for work unit members is accomplished through a reward and recognition system. The system should not include monetary rewards. At Motorola we learned this lesson. It was virtually impossible to create a monetary reward system that was equitable. For every employee who was motivated by receiving a bonus, at least ten employees who didn’t receive a bonus were demotivated.

• Resources. Resources required to establish teams are minimal. Members of continuous improvement teams need to be provided one hour a week for team meetings and an additional hour to work on team-specific projects. When first confronted with losing their workers for two hours each week, most managers are concerned about productivity. In fact, in all cases that I was involved with, productivity actually went up. One manufacturing group that had 90 percent participation on teams actually saw a 30 percent increase in productivity. An analysis showed that some gains were attributable to improvements identified and implemented by the teams. However, the greatest gains were achieved because people were working more efficiently and were making better use of their discretionary time. Resources include expert help. In the early stages you will require consultants, either internal or external, to assist the teams with start-up. People will need to be trained. Teams will need to be facilitated. Managers will need to be coached.

• Action Plans. Action plans are part of the organizational development plan. Divisions, departments, and work units are required to generate action plans. As part of their continuous improvement programs, teams are required to issue action plans. Once these action plans are created, they must be worked and completed to schedule. Action plans are “living documents.” This means that as actions are completed, they are removed from the action plan and archived. As new information is attained, new action items need to be added. The operational structure must provide for weekly and monthly reviews on how well each entity is doing on completing their action items on schedule and achieving the desired results.

Six Sigma Culture

noreply@blogger.com (مهندس : حسام عبد الجليل) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 13:24:00 +0000

How to create a culture that thinks and operates in terms of complete customer satisfaction. How to build a workforce that is engaged and committed to the success of the company.

During the Cold War two American submarines sank; there were no survivors. Now, shift this to your work situation.
- Is there a hierarchy of command and responsibility?
- Is the workforce diverse, with different levels of education, training, and knowledge?
- Is everyone well trained and qualified for their respective assignments?

The answer to these three questions is most likely yes. However, if documentation of the training needs and job certification requirements for a qualified employee at all job assignments is lacking, you must define them and commence remedial action to bring the incumbent
workforce up to minimal requirements.

- Do all of the employees realize that they are part of a larger whole?
- Do the employees realize what their roles are and how they contribute to the success of the company?
- Does everyone have respect for each member of the workforce?
- Is there a sense among all employees that they will succeed or fail as a unit?

Unless you have already established a Six Sigma, or equivalent, culture, the answer to these questions is probably no.

Six Sigma is about creating a culture where all of these things are established and deployed throughout the entire workforce.
Six Sigma is about providing a structure in which everyone knows what is expected of them, what their contributions are, and how to measure their own success.
Six Sigma is about creating an environment where people feel good about themselves.
Six Sigma is about providing the training and tools that everyone will need to maximize their and their team’s performance.
Six Sigma is about being results oriented, fueled by continuous improvement, and focused on customer satisfaction.

A Six Sigma culture contains:
❑ A diverse workforce with varying levels of education
❑ Training programs to teach the required skills
❑ An understanding by everyone of their roles for success
❑ A unified workforce where everyone feels like part of a greater whole
❑ Mutual respect for everyone’s knowledge and skills
❑ A commitment to succeed
❑ A focus on customer satisfaction

Black Belts and Green Belts
Within the high-tech manufacturing operations within Motorola, the practice of training some engineers and technologists in advanced forms of experimental design, data analysis, and process control was initiated in the early 1980s—prior to the introduction of Six Sigma. These individuals were known as local statistical resources (LSR).
Usually, they came from the process engineering or manufacturing engineering groups. I was on the leading edge of these initiatives at Motorola. Typically, one out of ten engineers was trained as statistic resources for the engineering and technical community. These individuals are referred to as black belts.
During this same time, factory workers were formed into teams based on the Japanese model of quality circles.
These team members received some training and coaching in problem-solving methods and in the interpersonal behaviors expected of team members.
As the improvement efforts within Motorola evolved, and following the introduction of Six Sigma, these teams evolved into the total customer satisfaction, or TCS, teams. Team members were trained on problem solving tools, continuous improvement models, and teaming skills. These individuals were the precursors of green belts.

The terms “black belt” and “green belt” were not applied to the Six Sigma program at Motorola until the 1990s. Since that time, as Six Sigma has grown to become recognized as a leading-edge standard for companies in manufacturing, service, and retail, many programs include special-assignment employees with the title of black belt or green belt.

A highly effective and cost-beneficial method for deploying green-belt and black-belt skills throughout an enterprise is to not create specialists with the title of black belt and green belt, but rather to consider all of your employees as potential green belts.

All employees are capable of learning the skills and techniques required to become a
green belt. From this “army” of green belts, select those individuals who will receive the additional training required to become your black belts.
Your first-line supervisors and middle management associates are ideal candidates; however, you will discover that some frontline workers also exhibit the aptitude for becoming black
belts. These individuals who have an aptitude for facilitating and leading teams will require additional training in influence management skills, coaching, teaming techniques, program management, and running effective meetings.

Typically, 5 to 10 percent of the employees will be needed as black belts. In high-tech operations, a small number of individuals trained in advanced statistical analysis and experimental design will be needed. These individuals can also be called black belts.

The goal of any enterprise should be to get all of its employees trained in the techniques required to become a green belt, including the seven problem-solving tools, the six-step model for continuous improvement, and the interpersonal skills required to effectively participate on a team.

One of the lessons learned at Motorola was that the direct labor teams drove the majority of the cost savings, quality improvements, and higher customer satisfaction levels. The people who actually perform the tasks are the experts on the task.
They have a sense of what is preventing them from doing a better job, and by utilizing the six step continuous improvement method, they can come up with the solutions. Also, when the workers take on responsibility for their own performance, there is a sense of ownership and accountability. When they determine the fixes and the changes that are necessary for improving their operation, buy-in is a given. This pride of ownership and improved performance leads to greater worker efficiency and high morale.

According to Joyce Wycoff:
When an organization commits to creating an environment
which stimulates the growth of everyone in the organization,
amazing things start to happen: ideas pop up everywhere, people
start to work together instead of “playing politics”; new opportunities
appear; customers begin to notice service and attitude
improvements; collections of individuals begin to coalesce into
teams.”

The Required Six Sigma components are:

Reward and Recognition is a system for celebrating the accomplishments of a team or work unit, including a way to be honored in front of the workforce. Executive bonuses must be tied to the success of the Six Sigma program.

Training must be provided to teach everyone the new skills and knowledge required to implement Six Sigma.

Uniform Measurement requires that all work units in manufacturing, administration, and service determine what is acceptable delivery to the customers. Unacceptable deliveries are counted and converted to a defect rate measurement.

Facilitators are the employees who have the aptitude and receive the training required to work with others and assist them in the transition to Six Sigma.

Communication must be provided so that everyone understands what is expected of them.
Senior Executive Behavior must model the expectations of Six Sigma.

Creating the Cultural Structure

Senior Management Roles and Engagement

A good way to understand a Six Sigma–based total quality management system is by defining the words in terms of:
TOTAL Everyone committed
QUALITY Meeting the customers’ expectations
MANAGEMENT Collaborative focus

Stated another way: Within a Six Sigma system, everyone is committed to meeting the customers’ expectations through the use of a collaborative focus.

Benchmarks for companies that have effective systems in place are the winners of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. A study of the winning companies from the first years of that award showed that they all had many aspects of Six Sigma in place.

Commonalities of Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipients are:
1. All operations and functions concentrate on total customer satisfaction. This applies whether serving internal or external customers.
2. There are mechanisms in place to determine customer satisfaction levels. Customer satisfaction is constantly monitored, and programs are in place to improve it.
3. The Quality Culture is cascaded down from the senior management leadership team. They have defined the corporate vision and have deployed it throughout the company.
4. Senior management is involved with monitoring, mentoring, and encouraging the new culture. They constantly reinforce positive performance.
5. Supplier relations have changed from simply buying based on price alone to buying from the lowest cost-to-do-business-with suppliers. Suppliers are expected to have systems in place to ensure delivery of defect-free parts or service on time.
6. The role of middle management is changed. Middle management is often the most threatened group of employees. At the same time, they are often the group expected to be most instrumental in facilitating and driving cultural changes.
7. There are internal controls in place to identify defects and mistakes. There are active programs to eliminate errors.
8. Benchmarking is used as a tool to drive improvement of the company in all aspects of doing business.
9. There is some form of employee empowerment. Or, at least, there is a system that allows and encourages employees to use their intelligence and take the initiative required to make things better.
10. There are metrics in place to measure the quality levels of all operations and functions. Attached to these are programs for continuous improvement.
11. Training, training, training. As employees are asked to assume new roles, to redefine what makes them successful, to learn new skills, and to learn the new cultural norms, training is imperative.
12. There are aggressive goals. People are challenged to work more efficiently. They are taught the skills and techniques required to achieve higher levels of performance.
13. Teams are abundant. In some cases there are cross-functional and multilevel teams. At the very minimum, work units are identified as teams and are taught the interpersonal skills required to function as a team. Supervisors transition from the traditional
command-and-control role to the role of coach mentor-facilitator.
14. There is a reward and recognition system in place. As new behaviors are expected from everyone, positive examples are recognized and celebrated.
First and foremost, senior management must determine and create the culture that will enable all of these things to happen. They must set the vision for the enterprise.

Senior management must be resolved to do whatever it takes to make the new culture work. They must be willing and able to modify their own behaviors to model the new rules and norms. They must be committed to the long haul. The course must be set and held steady. It took the Japanese twenty years to realize the benefits of their quality programs.

Organizational Development
A key to the success of Six Sigma is that :
- Everyone in the company must know what they contribute to the success of the company.
- Everyone must have a clear understanding of why they are employed and receiving a paycheck.
- Everyone must understand this in light of how their actions affect the customers.

The leadership of the company must complete an articulate framework of how the company will function to serve its customer base. One easy model for an Organizational Development framework is the acronym MOST, which represents Mission, Objectives, Strategies, and Tactics.
Mission
The company must make a clear and concise statement ofwhy it exists and the customers that it serves. The mission statement may also include how the company serves the
customers’ customers. A good mission statement must contain a description of what success will look like when you are fulfilling it.
A mission statement is more concrete than a vision statement. Whereas the vision has an ethereal quality, the mission statement must be reach-out yet achievable.
A vision has a sense of “In my next life I want to be. . . .”A typical vision may read, “To be recognized by everyone worldwide as the best company to work for.”

Objectives
Objectives are the quantifiable high-level goals of the company.
- They are the statements of how you will determine and measure your success.
- They must be statements of what you are striving to achieve; however, the numerical targets
should not be published.
- The company should hold the actual performance to objectives in tight security.
Objectives might look like this:
•Increase market share
•Reduce manufacturing costs
•Increase new product introductions
•Reduce cycle times for product delivery and service response
•Zero safety incidents
•Reduce water and air emissions
•Improve profit
•Improve quality in product, service, and administrative functions

The number of objectives should be between five and eight. If the list is too large, it becomes a laundry list of wishes. If the list is too small, it can be limiting.

Strategies
Strategies are the means that you will use to accomplish the objectives. Strategies define the expectations of your culture. From these strategies your employees should have a clear understanding of what is expected behavior.
Strategy statements may include:
❑ Respect for all people
❑ Cross-functional teaming
❑ Continuous improvement programs
❑ Superior services to our community, customers, and employees
❑ State-of-the-art technology
❑ Open communication between employees at all levels
❑ Training and personal growth for all employees
❑ Innovative manufacturing techniques
❑ High integrity
❑ A clean and safe work environment
❑ Exceeding customers’ expectations in all aspects of doing business with us

The mission statement, objectives, and strategies are typically generated by the senior management team at an off-site location. A two-day session facilitated by an organizational
development facilitator is an effective means to accomplish this. Mission, objectives, and strategies must come from the company leadership team.

These are a top-down communication of what is to be accomplished, how success will be determined, and what means are to be used.

Tactics
Tactics are the actions that will be taken, within the strategy guidelines, to accomplish the objectives and fulfill the company’s mission. Once the mission, objectives, and strategies have been communicated throughout the company, each department and division must provide a detailed
action plan containing:
-What will be done
-Who is responsible for doing it
-When it will be completed

These action plans form the foundation for what each work unit is expected to get done daily, weekly, and monthly throughout the year.
These plans need to be tied to at least one of the company objectives. In this way, every
employee throughout the company will have a clear understanding of what is expected of them, what their value to the overall success of the company is, and why they are employed.

A good action plan is posted and distributed to all affected employees. Work units must review their performance and progress on a regular time interval. Depending on the volume and cycle time of work, work units should review their performance weekly, biweekly, or monthly.
Division or department heads should review each work unit at least once a month. This gives an opportunity to provide feedback and to identify where barriers may need to be removed, what resources need to be added, and where management may need to spend more time assisting
their subordinates.

The elements of a Six Sigma culture are:
❑ Active and visible senior management involvement
❑ A mission statement defining success
❑ Objectives and strategies
❑ Action plans detailing tactics
❑ A methodology for managing change
❑ Training
❑ Teams

The Roots of Six Sigma

noreply@blogger.com (مهندس : حسام عبد الجليل) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 10:25:00 +0000

Why It Had to Be Invented
In the mid-1980s Motorola was losing ground in every market that they served. Customer dissatisfaction and frustration with Motorola were epidemic. Operating costs were too high, which led to dismal profits. In all cases the lost market share was being taken over by Japanese competitors.
Bob Galvin, Motorola’s CEO from 1970 to 1988 and chairman of the board from 1964 to 1990, saying that if the Japanese had not existed, we would have needed to invent them. I interpreted this to mean that someone had to give us a wake-up call.
Throughout its customer base, Motorola had a reputation for being arrogant. Bob Galvin was chagrined by an article in one of the trade magazines, in which the head of purchasing of one of our major customers for communications equipment was quoted as saying about Motorola, “Love, love, love the product; hate, hate, hate the company.”
Bob cited this quote several times to his leadership team.
Motorola’s systems for doing business were not designed for customer satisfaction. Contract reviews, responses to requests for quote, invoicing, responses to customer complaints, and most other administrative and service operations were victims of a system that allowed for apathetic management and disinterested workers. The internal bureaucracy fed on itself with little regard for serving the customers.
Response times were long, and responses usually were not designed to satisfy the customer.
The quality and reliability of Motorola’s product were also not what they should have been. Customers were receiving too many out-of-box failures. After the product passed their incoming requirements, they often suffered high levels of early-life failures. Warranty returns were a major drain on profits.
A wireless communications division was suffering huge losses, threatened lawsuits, and lost business with a major customer. The division quality manager was tasked with determining what was causing such poor field performance. His study of early-life failures discovered that they were predominately units that had failed at final test and had to go back through a rework cycle.
Fortunately, the same Japanese that were destroying Motorola in the marketplace also provided a benchmark for how things could be done better. A group of senior managers and executives were sent on a benchmarking tour of Japan to study operating methods and product quality levels. They discovered that Japan had a national program for employee involvement and teaming, focused on improving operations to better serve the customers.
The Japanese had managed to use not only the muscle that their employees provided but also their brains and knowledge.
They also discovered, no surprise here, that the more complicated a product, the higher the opportunities for failure.
Motorola’s problems were present in all of their business units and product lines. Something had to happen, and it had to be major, and it had to get positive results quickly. Thus was born the need to create Six Sigma.

The Birth of Six Sigma
From its customers Motorola learned that they needed to change their systems in all operations—manufacturing, service, administration, and sales-to focus on total customer satisfaction. From the Japanese they learned that including all of your employees in the company brain trust was an effective means of increasing efficiency and morale.
From the Japanese they also learned that simpler designs result in higher levels of quality and reliability. From the early-life field failure study they learned that they needed to improve manufacturing techniques to ensure that products were built right the first time.
Motorola’s leaders pulled this together to establish the vision and set the framework for Six Sigma. Posters were hung up, and small cards were given to all employees .

Thus was Six Sigma launched in 1987. The corporate leaders toured the world to all Motorola sites to explain that this new initiative is going to be the operating mantra of Motorola for the future. Bob Galvin personally traveled to most major sites worldwide. Of course, there was a lot of skepticism. This looked like another program .
“We’ll get excited about it, and two months from now nobody will remember” was typical of the statements you heard at all levels.
However, the corporate leaders did a very thorough job of deploying Six Sigma throughout Motorola around the globe. They asked for Six Sigma reports, and they expected quality levels to be the first agenda item at all operational reviews. Soon it became the modus operandi throughout Motorola.
A key figure in all of this was Bill Smith. Bill was a high level quality leader who is credited with developing the mathematics of Six Sigma. The arithmetic of Six Sigma was created as a way of leveling the playing field throughout Motorola.

In Total Quality Control, Armand Feigenbaum defines :
“total quality management” (TQM) as follows:
A quality system is the agreed on, companywide and plant wide operating work structure, documented in effective, integrated technical and managerial procedures, for guiding the coordinated actions of the people, the machines, and the information of the company and plant in the best and most practical ways to assure customer quality satisfaction and economical costs of quality.

In 1989 Bill Smith defined Six Sigma as:
Organized common sense.

THE ORIGINS OF SIX SIGMA

noreply@blogger.com (مهندس : حسام عبد الجليل) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 10:38:00 +0000

Sigma is the letter in the Greek alphabet used to denote standard deviation, a statistical measurement of variation, the exceptions to expected outcomes. Standard deviation can be thought of as a comparison between expected results or outcomes in a group of operations, versus those that fail.
The term "six sigma process" comes from the notion that if one has six standard deviations between the process mean and the nearest specification limit, as shown in the graphic, there will be practically no items that fail to meet specifications. This is based on the calculation method employed in process capability studies.
In a capability study, the number of standard deviations between the process mean and the nearest specification limit is given in sigma units. As process standard deviation goes up, or the mean of the process moves away from the center of the tolerance, fewer standard deviations will fit between the mean and the nearest specification limit, decreasing the sigma number and increasing the likelihood of items outside specification.
The measurement of standard deviation shows us that rates of defects, or exceptions, are measurable. Six Sigma is the definition of outcomes as close as possible to perfection. With six standard deviations, we arrive at 3.4 defects per million opportunities, or 99.9997 percent.
This would mean that at Six Sigma, an airline would lose only three pieces of luggage for every one million that it handles, or that the phone company would have only three unhappy customers out of every one million who use the phone that day. The purpose in evaluating defects is not to eliminate them entirely, but to strive for improvement to the highest possible level that we can achieve.

Role of the 1.5 sigma shift

Experience has shown that in the long term, processes usually do not perform as well as they do in the short. As a result, the number of sigmas that will fit between the process mean and the nearest specification limit is likely to drop over time, compared to an initial short-term study. To account for this real-life increase in process variation over time, an empirically-based 1.5 sigma shift is introduced into the calculation. According to this idea, a process that fits six sigmas between the process mean and the nearest specification limit in a short-term study will in the long term only fit 4.5 sigmas – either because the process mean will move over time, or because the long-term standard deviation of the process will be greater than that observed in the short term, or both.

Hence the widely accepted definition of a six sigma process is one that produces 3.4 defective parts per million opportunities (DPMO). This is based on the fact that a process that is normally distributed will have 3.4 parts per million beyond a point that is 4.5 standard deviations above or below the mean (one-sided capability study). So the 3.4 DPMO of a "Six Sigma" process in fact corresponds to 4.5 sigmas, namely 6 sigmas minus the 1.5 sigma shift introduced to account for long-term variation. This is designed to prevent underestimation of the defect levels likely to be encountered in real-life operation.

Sigma levels

The table gives long-term DPMO values corresponding to various short-term Sigma levels.

Note that these figures assume that the process mean will shift by 1.5 sigma towards the side with the critical specification limit. In other words, they assume that after the initial study determining the short-term sigma level, the long-term Cpk value will turn out to be 0.5 less than the short-term Cpk value. So, for example, the DPMO figure given for 1 sigma assumes that the long-term process mean will be 0.5 sigma beyond the specification limit (Cpk = –0.17), rather than 1 sigma within it, as it was in the short-term study (Cpk = 0.33). Note that the defect percentages only indicate defects exceeding the specification limit that the process mean is nearest to. Defects beyond the far specification limit are not included in the percentages.