Six Sigma And Variability Reduction
Six Sigma is a data driven business strategy that
seeks to streamline production processes to
constantly generate quasi perfect products and
services in order to achieve Breakthrough ROI. One
of the pillars of Six Sigma is the pursuit of the
elimination of production process variation. For a
production process to generate perfect products, the
process itself has to be perfect, therefore, in the
design phase of the production process, the process
engineers need to precisely and accurately determine
all the Critical-To-Quality Characteristics of the
products or services they are about to produce in
order to minimize the possibility for variations to
occur. Variation is said to have occurred every time
a product does not exactly match its predetermined
CTQ characteristics; therefore the corrective
actions require the identification of the sources of
variation and their elimination.
The strategy used by Six Sigma to improve production
processes is called DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze,
Improve and Control) and very specific tools are
used at every step of the DMAIC Roadmap.
Define
Since it would be hard to fix what is not known,
the first step in a Six Sigma project will
consist in defining the goals of the project,
identifying the Ys (the problem being addressed)
Define the purpose and the scope of the project.
Determine the resources needed
Determine who are the customer of the project
Map the SIPOC (Suppliers- inputs-Process-Customer
–Output-Customer)
Develop the project planning
Measure
Identify the Xs ( the factors that are thought
to cause the problem being addressed) and collect
data
Identify the business processes that generate the Xs
and the Y
Perform a regression analysis to measure the
correlation between the Y and the Xs
Identify the Critical-To-Quality requirements (CTQ)
Define the metrics used to measure the CTQs
Measure the current process capabilities
Analyze
Identify what inputs affect the output and to
what extent they do so
Identify the root causes of the problem
Using Pareto Analysis, determine the vital few
factors that contribute to the problem
Determine the new metrics needed to monitor
performance
Improve
Based on the results obtained from the Analyze
phase; develop and implement plans for
process changes that lead to an improvement of the
vital factors that impact the issue at hand.
Control
Determine the standard process to be followed,
monitor the process, communicate and train the
employees.
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