Six Sigma

[KABOOKIE]

I don’t know who came up with this horsechit but, I do know they have created possibly the worst system to analyze and solve problems. The whole basis of process improvement is to put the tools and knowledge to solve problems in the hands of those people WITH the problem. No one likes some office flunkie who couldn’t manage an outhouse coming into an area and telling people that the square root of theta will fix your problem. Here’s my idea for process improvement. Fire all these Six Sigma dorks and gimme someone who can think and make good sound decisions without having to look at a flow chart. :mad: :mad: :mad:

[BlondeSoonerGirl]

Yeah - it helps if the Black Belt is actually familiar with the process(es) being analyzed.

If they're not all they have is the basic SS methodologies they were trained on and that makes things very difficult. Not to mention makes things move very slowly.

:les: HI-YA!!!

[sooner_born_1960]

Worse than worthless.

[crawfish]

The 80's called, they want their failed process-improvement schemes back.

[skycat]

Oh... but they've fixed it by adding "digital".:mad:

****tards

[sooner_born_1960]

The should have added "rectal".

[IB4OU2]

The 80's called, they want their failed process-improvement schemes back.

That's was called TQM ( Total Quality Management), LEAN/Six Sigma is the Cadillac of CI systems these days.....:rolleyes:

:mad: I'm glad they don't let me bring guns to work.

[I_SMELL_FEAR]

Im not very familiar with it, but a buddy of mine works for a company that is starting to use it. From what little he has talked about it, it sounds like it will replace the current productive people after a few years, and the current non-productive people will get advanced???????

[KABOOKIE]

Im not very familiar with it, but a buddy of mine works for a company that is starting to use it. From what little he has talked about it, it sounds like it will replace the current productive people after a few years, and the current non-productive people will get advanced???????


Your buddy is exactly right. Here’s what happens when a company is infested with Six Sigma. First they totally scrap any process improvement plan the company has regardless if it’s a proven and cost effective method. Then, they create actual positions for these so called “process improvers” where their entire job is to find things that don’t work, throw money at it, and then when that doesn’t fix the problem blame those who work in the department. The problem with creating these positions is nobody in their right mind wants to be the white collared ninnys sticking their noses into people’s business. So as a manager you usually pick your least productive employee to send to become a Six Sigma geek. Said stuckee (i.e. group moron) then goes on to rub elbows and brown nose senior leadership. Senior leadership thinks Six Sigma produces smart individuals because they say fancy things like, strategery, total globalization, focal point task assignment and my favorite “THIS IS HOW I SAVED THE COMPANY XXXX DOLLARS.” :rolleyes: Senior leadership then promotes retard to upper management and company ceases to fall apart with stupidization.

[TopDaugIn2000]

I agree.

WORTH.....LESS

[BlondeSoonerGirl]

Wow.

That ain't how we use it.

[yermom]

like anything else, when the management just sees a bunch of new buzzwords and implements something like this badly, it just makes things worse

i'd imagine if someone that knew what they were doing, and using a holistic approach could actually do some good

when all you are changing is the crap below middle management and going for low hanging fruit to save money, then i see this causing some problems

[crawfish]

Executives implement process improvement strategies using the following criteria:

1) It must not impede their personal ability to earn gobs of money
2) It must not require any changes by upper management
3) It must not give them any extra work to do

[BlondeSoonerGirl]

like anything else, when the management just sees a bunch of new buzzwords and implements something like this badly, it just makes things worse

i'd imagine if someone that knew what they were doing, and using a holistic approach could actually do some good

when all you are changing is the crap below middle management and going for low hanging fruit to save money, then i see this causing some problems

Word.

[Ike]

see...I have no idea what the business model of six-sigma is...In science we ususally terms like 2-sigma, 3-sigma, etc to mean either the number of standard deviations a signal is away from zero (or some other number that means something), or the statistical significance of a signal with respect to background...(like 5-sigma above background, which would mean that for background to fake the signal would require it to fluctuate up 5 standard deviations, which has a probability of roughly 3x10^-7)...

generally, 5-sigma is considered the threshold for discovery.


But in business, I have no idea how they use this. probably badly.

[sooner_born_1960]

Remember, a broken clock has the correct time twice a day.

[Mjcpr]

see...I have no idea what the business model of six-sigma is...In science we ususally terms like 2-sigma, 3-sigma, etc to mean either the number of standard deviations a signal is away from zero (or some other number that means something), or the statistical significance of a signal with respect to background...(like 5-sigma above background, which would mean that for background to fake the signal would require it to fluctuate up 5 standard deviations, which has a probability of roughly 3x10^-7)...

generally, 5-sigma is considered the threshold for discovery.


But in business, I have no idea how they use this. probably badly.

Beat me to it.

[Vaevictis]

But in business, I have no idea how they use this. probably badly.

What they mean is that they want their products to be good "six sigmas" out on a normal distribution. Basically, it's a buzzword that says that they want a very high percentage of reliability off the manufacturing line.

As far as who came up with the horsechit, it was Motorola. And they seem to like it very much, claiming that it's provided them with double-digit billions of savings since implementing it. Apparently GE, Honeywell and Raytheon like it too. Of couse, for every successfull instance, there are probably many failed or underachieving ones.

As usual, this is one of those things that can be implemented well, or implemented poorly. It sounds like you're getting one of the poor implementations.

[royalfan5]

This thread is giving me flashbacks to my org behavior class which was taught by one of the key pioneers in the field. Fun times.

[Widescreen]

Beat me to it.
Yeah, right. :D

[Frozen Sooner]

Six sigma is an interesting process management theory. I like that it provides a moving target model for error reduction.

However, I prefer the Mike Rich process management school:

"Do **** correctly the first time. If you screw it up, fix the problem. If you don't know the correct way to do something, do what seems reasonable then be prepared to defend the way you did it."

You'd be surprised at how many process changes came out of that last bit.

[TheHumanAlphabet]

Actually, the engineering principles and the statistics and control charts are quite powerful and useful in the right context and by educated people. The problem (herein lies the rub) is that they "developed" this "process" (i.e. copyrighted it to get bunches of money) and sold people that this is the second coming and will fix all the problems you have because you either have incompetent people or have no clue what your problems are and assign real engineering tasks to people who don't have the inclination or the education and background to solve engineering/math related problems...

[Oldnslo]

http://host.businessweek.com/businessweek/GR-D-MOT-16-0-1-0-2600-495-232-s_104_d_d_d_d_-65FC798077D33FC9584DFEFD6B51B3E2025E01D9.gif

Looks like 6-sigma is working out for Motorola. Um. When was it developed?

[jkm, the stolen pifwafwi]

i've had it up to here with these stupid process improvement systems. i've been TQM'd, ISO'd, PSP/TSP'd, RAD'd, SCRUM'd, AGILE'd to death. i've drawn the line on SS and refuse to go to training on it.

signed
the ****ed off consultant

[sooner_born_1960]

I don't see the Capability Maturity Model listed there.

[BlondeSoonerGirl]

i've had it up to here with these stupid process improvement systems. i've been TQM'd, ISO'd, PSP/TSP'd, RAD'd, SCRUM'd, AGILE'd to death. i've drawn the line on SS and refuse to go to training on it.

signed
the ****ed off consultant

Yes, but have you been SOX'd yet?

:norm:

[mrowl]

Yes, but have you been SOX'd yet?

:norm:

:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

and CHANGE MANAGEMENT CONTROL. :mad: :mad: :mad:

soooooo, glad I am out of that BS.

[skycat]

I can tell you that Motorola wasn't heavily using Six Sigma from 2001-2004. Or at least parts of Motorola weren't.

[1stTimeCaller]

never been involved with any of this. It sounds as if these fancy name thingys are a way for upper management to shield themselves if production slips. They can say" Hey, maybe that Six Sigma guy was wrong, let's hire a different consultant and see what she says."

If it works they say "Hey look at me I brought this SS program in here. Look what I did!!"

[yermom]

Yes, but have you been SOX'd yet?

:norm:

no love for ITIL?

[jkm, the stolen pifwafwi]

SOX is a gubment requirement, not vaporspeak. i've been on several SOX compliance projects internally, most of which consists of me laughing at processes and telling them that if they ever do that again, i've got teh whistleblower hotline on speeddial.

*shiver*ITIL*shiver*, you should get baned for that... ;)

[Mixer!]

http://www.devilsdue.net/covers/sigma6/Sigma_Six_01_00.jpg