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GEs Big Ys
So lets recollect GEs strategic quality objectives or Big Ys for 2008-09. Theyre:
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In any organization, the leader must know how to grow the business, how to get
productivity out of its people, and how to drive change. Lean Six Sigma plays an
important role in developing these leadership qualities.
So now you can make out the big picture of how the four conditions; clear strategy,
engaged leadership, motivated workforce and use of effective management tools nurture
the change in organizations.
Lets move on to understand the implementation of GEs Management tools over the
years.
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(Now go ahead and verify your answer with the answer key provided in the next page.)
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Answer Key
1.
2.
3.
4.
Clear strategy
Engaged Leadership
Motivated Workforce
Effective Management Tools
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The implementation procedure started with the Work-OutsTM and Town Meetings in the
year 1989. The agenda was to:
Consider employees empowerment
Promote expert driven decision-making
Practice Action Work-Outs and Customized Work-OutsTM
From there, it moved onto Productivity or Best Practices by benchmarking external
organizations and sharing the best practices.
Next follows the Process Improvement stage with Process-mapping, Re-engineering,
and Bullet Train Approach.
To increase success and accelerate change, the Change Acceleration Process (CAP)
was initiated in the year 1992. CAP represented a key stone in a solid foundation of
ongoing cultural change. It is important to note here that CAP does not stand alone. To
be effective, it requires the mindset and behaviors inherent to Work-Out and the other
initiatives. Else, it is only a set of tools and exercises that will frustrate leaders and
followers alike.
Post CAP, the tools for key strategic initiatives were framed, including:
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As the utmost quality initiative, the Lean Six Sigma process was deployed in the year
2005 for improving speed and quality.
(Now go ahead and verify your answer with the answer key provided in the next page.)
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Answer Key
It is a measure of quality
It is an enabler for culture change
It is a process for continuous improvement
Lean Six Sigma is a measure of quality, is an enabler for culture change, and is a
process for continuous improvement. Any organization that desires to be customer
centric and wants to have a competitive edge should implement effective management
tools. Lean Six Sigma is one such effective tool implemented by GE.
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thats the performance of the best airline in the world way over here to the right and
connect the defects and sigma points. And way over here, all by itself, is the best airline
in the industry in the 6 sigma band.
Now Lucky knows if it wants to match the performance of the best airline in the industry,
just how much it has to improve its performance by.
The linear graph will help us in identifying the influence of sigma on the number of
defects produced, and the results. The general rule is as the sigma capability goes up,
defects go down. From the graph, you can infer that improving the process capability to
a six sigma level will result in just 3.4 defects per million opportunities.
So, that's how quality is measured on the Sigma scale of 1 to 6. Quality is measured as
1 sigma, 2 sigma, and so on. For now, just remember that as the sigma goes up, the
defects go down. So, 4 sigma is better than 3 sigma, which is better than 2 sigma.
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Kevin who are getting frustrated at the delayed connection. You want to rememberthe
customer feels the variation more than the mean.
So, the statistical objective of using Six Sigma is primarily to reduce the variation. It is
also to shift the mean, and center the process, so the result is fewer defects in a
process.
When you're using Six Sigma, for example, as a first step, you need to identify the cause
of variation in the process. If the variation is due to the connecting device, install a better
device than the existing one.
Secondly, shift the mean by identifying factors that impact call connection time. Hey! The
idea looks great but is it possible?
Remember there were two customers. There was poor Kevin who was put on hold
listening to inane music for 34 seconds, and there was Joe who got through to the
service associate in 8 seconds.
The goal is to center the process around 20 seconds and reduce the variation. By
reducing the variation the call connecting time for Kevin drops from 34 seconds to less
than 25 seconds. Reducing variation also ensures that all customers have a consistent
experience in the performance of the call center.
The next step would be to shift the mean so that we can meet our target of 20 seconds.
This way we have centered the process and reduced the variation. To summarize: there
are two ways to improve the sigma for the process: reduce the variation and shift the
mean. This is easier said than done! How do we do it? This brings us to the next feature
of Six Sigma: the enabler of culture change.
Check Your Understanding
Lets answer this simple question before we move forward. Write your answers in the
space provided below.
State the statistical objectives of Lean Six Sigma.
(Now go ahead and verify your answer with the answer key provided in the next page.)
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Answer Key
Statistical objectives of Six Sigma to:
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Before we actually begin to learn how to use Lean Six Sigma, there's one more thing you
need to know about it: the importance of having a common Lean Six Sigma culture in an
organization.
Next is the Process of Continuous improvement.
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Consider a customer complaining about the inconsistent cycle time and product quality.
To address the customer's concern, we'll subject the problem to the steps of PDCA
process.
As the first step, important questions to ask here for the plan phase are:
Next is to implement or do these plans. Some important questions to ask here are:
Finally, based on the findings from the audits, we need to take action for the
improvement of the project. Some important questions to ask here are:
Did we eliminate the root cause and drive continuous improvement using Lean Six
Sigma?
Let's take a closer look at the Six Sigma process of continuous improvement.
False
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Answer Key
1. False
2. False
3. True
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Now we'll take this a step further. Until now we've covered Lean Six Sigma in context to
the DMAIC methodology. Lets review further additional Lean Six Sigma tools available
as part of Lean. They are: Value, Value Stream, Flow, Pull, and Perfection.
Jim Womack, father of Lean manufacturing in US, played a significant role in translating
the Lean concepts from Japanese to English through his book "Lean Thinking".
You might wonder how Lean principles participate in improving a process.
Let's understand it with the help of a TV manufacturing example.
Value - Is always defined from the customer's point of view. Your choice to buy a
particular TV set will be determined by the good quality audio and video features, rather
than its packaging, or assembling. It is the same with every customer; everyone wants to
pay for the value of the product and nothing else!
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While in a TV manufacturing process, the amount of time spend on making the television
or in other words adding value to the products is usually 5%, the remaining 95% of the
time that the TV spends before reaching the customer is called waste or non-value
added time. These wastes can be in seven forms, which are: Transportation, Inventory,
Motion, Waiting, Over Processing, Over Production, and Defects.
All these wastes are part of the process that the
customer does not care about and constitutes on an
average to 95% of the cost. The objective is to use or
eliminate this non-value added time.
A Value Stream is a series of all actions required to fill
a customers request both value-added and non valueadded.
Value Stream Map creates a picture of the complete
material and information flow from the customer
request to order fulfillment for an operation. This map
helps the organization in identifying the wasteful
processes and plan for eliminating them.
A key point to reflect here is that many times organizations end up in fixing value added
time versus eliminating non-value added items.
Value Stream focuses only on the steps that are required to bring a product or service
from the customer request to customer satisfaction. This is a perfect process where
every step is valuable, capable, available, adequate, and repeatable.
Flow - Keeps the process moving from one
point to another. For example, in establishing
the assembly line for a TV manufacturing
process, all the operations are sequenced
such that the television while being
assembled does not have to wait for an
operator. The process just keeps flowing
without bottle-neck thus reducing non valueadded time in assembly.
Pull - You can relate the process for serving
fast foods like burrito or sandwich with the Pull principle. If you look at the way in which
the food is prepared, you notice that the server pulls the product from the prior step and
the preparations starts at the time requested by the customers. This helps to have fewer
inventories on the shelf and reduces wastages. Similarly, a process with the Pull
principle would use customer requirement as a trigger to start the production and will
have least amount of inventories between stations.
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1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
(Now go ahead and verify your answer with the answer key provided in the next page.)
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Answer Key
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Define
Measure
Analyze
Improve
Control
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Module - Summary
You have reached the end of this module. Lets recollect some of the key points that we
covered here:
CAP, Workouts, Innovation and Growth, and Lean Six Sigma are the various quality
initiatives taken by GE.
Statistical objectives of Lean Six Sigma are to shift the mean, reduce the variation,
and center the process. Customer feels the variation in a process.
Characteristics of Six Sigma process are; Process, Correlation, Discipline, and Data,
and the principles of Lean are Value, Value Stream mapping, Flow, Pull, and
Perfection.
Five steps of Lean Six Sigma methodology are Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve
and Control.
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