Reflection on “Winning Pair by Swanson, July 2011”
The article “Winning Pair” discusses one of the most popular philosophes in the market these days; Six Sigma. Six Sigma is a statistical approach that aims to near quality perfection through making significant quality improvements. It is a philosophy that emphasizes commitment toward excellence and reducing the negative chain reactions along the supply chain, such as greater levels of safety stock, lost time, less productivity, etc. It is a method to maximize the productivity of the workplace. By building better process capabilities to improve customers’ satisfaction, firms can reduce defects, which in turn lower costs. However, the article suggests that Six Sigma techniques alone would not ensure project success.
From what I read, after introducing Six Sigma to the market place, many people though it will replace Lean production, but on the contrary, it merged with it and now we have the Lean Six Sigma approach that is used by firms around the globe. Six Sigma was introduced to the production sector, but shortly in moved to the service industries as well. Another useful merge for Six Sigma was with the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide); it was found later that both of those offer lessons for project professionals, so combining the two philosophies can enhance their usefulness even further.
It makes a lot of sense that these two strategies will work perfectly together, because Six Sigma’s statistical and quantitative techniques are very important weapons that the project manager can use to ensure the success of their projects, in addition to understanding what the customer is looking for in the product or service that being designed. The article also discussed the Six Sigma problem solving approach, DMAIC which stands for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. Additionally, Six Sigma institutions, offer several certificates/levels for Six Sigma practitioners, such as the yellow, green and black belt.
Some of the lesson learned from this article is that in order to have the desired results, project managers should remove misconception and the narrow perspectives about the two of them by educating people and providing the right training, and that for sure requires a certain level of maturity before firms can fully and successfully adopt these philosophies.
Personally, one of the topics that I enjoy the most when it comes to quality management using Six Sigma is the theory of the Butterfly Effect; I find it really interesting to see how a small thing or things that we believe to be small, can develop in the organizational system affecting the revenue, operational efficiency. One of the stories that I read is a typo did cost USPS a 7 million dollars. The typo was similar to (Main St, and Mian St), and because of that, very important chemical material, was sent to the wrong address, and lead to a major customer dissatisfaction problem that made USPS pay 7 million dollars to that customer who was a medical company. I also believe that when you have a weak data processing system you will lose your faith in the data that you have and that will have a very negative impact on the enthusiasm for the new projects. Six Sigma can help project manager gain that faith back in their own systems.
