Thursday, December 4, 2008

Six Sigma and GE: A Case Study of Success

By Craig Calvin

A lot of people have wondered how Six Sigma has been implemented in bigger companies. A prime example is General Electric. This corporation morphed into a lean, efficient business through the use of the Six Sigma training process. GE has Six Sigma to thank for making them a success and not a failure.

GE was once your typical American company--the type you see on the evening news every night. They were ran by a bureaucratically fashioned board and hierarchy of corporate management. This was leading the company astray, and dramatic moves were made to keep GE from becoming yet another example of corporate waste and greed. The first step was Six Sigma training. Many corporate level employees underwent Six Sigma black belt certification, and lower level employees attended Six Sigma training. Once they were adequately trained, GE took the principles of Six Sigma and applied them methodically to their company structure.

Every process was reduced to a set of quantifiable steps. Processes were evaluated and re-evaluated until all waste was eliminated. Executive level employees were taught to ask for input from employees at every level and open lines of communication. This created an atmosphere of maximum efficiency, maximum customer service, and maximum creativity. This change has had a huge impact on productivity and morale, which has continued to set GE apart in their field.

The process through which Six Sigma delivers such excellent results is quite simple. The employees who have passed the Six Sigma black belt training now identify the aspects that are Critical to Quality (CTQ's). Identifying defects, and measuring the process capabilities is then performed.

They then compile all of this data, and are then taught to identify variation, which is when processes do not deliver the outcome expected. The process will then be redesigned and controlled in order to prevent variation. Six Sigma is ,in essence, all about altering processes to make an efficient, streamlined company.

If higher efficiency and better customer service sounds good to you, then Six Sigma can be the single most important thing to help change your company. You might just found you cannot afford not to use Six Sigma. - 15246

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