Six Sigma Courses Measure and Improve Quality

Published by Jacquelyn Donner in Leadership, 1 month 3 weeks 15 hours 27 minutes 5 seconds ago

A fundamental element of Six Sigma philosophy is that unless we are prepared to invest in the measurement of quality, we cannot improve quality, if we don't measure quality, and don't follow-up on these measures, then we are sending a signal that we really don't value quality. This, in turn, affects day-to-day behaviors and activities of all employees.

Generating new measures requires new questions. If we continue to ask the same questions, we will continue to ask for and generate the same measures. It is an issue of leadership to ask new questions about the quality or our products and processes, new questions that will lead to new research and new measures.

One of the key business metric concepts of Six Sigma is the concept of the Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ). COPQ represents the visible and less visible costs of all the defects that exist in our processes. Essentially, the highest quality producer is the lowest cost producer where cost is represented by the COPQ. Every time we have a defect (which is any result that is not what the customer of a process needs) we consume time and resources to find, fix, and try to prevent these defects.

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To reduce these costs (such as scrap, rework, inspection, warranty claims, lost customer loyalty) we need to address the root issue, which is defects and process capability. Many view the increasing cost of reducing defects makes reaching Six Sigma quality (which is 3.4 defects per million opportunities for a defect) impractical. However, those companies who are striving for Six Sigma have realized that the net "cost" to reduce defects actually lowers as one approaches Six Sigma because as we dramatically reduce defects we can also dramatically redirect the resources we currently tie up in looking for and fixing defects.

Another barrier to improving quality is how we graphically display data. Most companies use linear measurement scales on their graphs. At a 2 or 3 Sigma level of performance, this is adequate, but to move performance beyond 4 Sigma, we need to use the log scale to increase our ability to see the quality improvement opportunity. Using a log scale, we can establish a learning curve of improvement, a constant percent reduction in defects year-over-year that we can hold all processes accountable to achieve, regardless of their starting defect rate.

How do new measures arise? Fundamentally, new measures arise when new questions are asked. When you go out into the operations of offices of any part of Bombardier, people are constantly asking questions. These questions trigger actions as they cause people to do work to answer the questions management is asking. The issue is, what questions are asked by management?

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If we ask questions about outputs not inputs, we get a lot of focus and measures on outputs. If we get questions on budgets, we measure budgets. How many of our questions are focused on process and product quality? How many of our questions are focused on causes and inputs versus results and outputs?

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