What Is Six Sigma? And Will It Save GE's New CEO?

Reader Comments from The Fray:


[Notes from the Fray Editor: Most of the replies to this article were from people with direct experience of Six Sigma: what a great Fray, the signal-to-noise ratio was exceptionally high. Read through the bolded items for some real-life stories. Bob Atherton helpfully read them all, and wrote the post below in reply. Paul Decker also discussed the statistical basis of Six Sigma in the full version of his post. And 5Beta also has a reprehensible question about black belts, here.

Oh, and Charlie Heath is hoping for some Six Sigma in the election business.Why was that again, Charlie?]


Why doesn't everyone use Six Sigma? Because it isn't a silver bullet that will solve all problems! One of the disadvantages is that a process that works well may still be the wrong process. See, for example, Motorola's struggles due to its failure to recognize the shift from cellular to digital wireless networks and its misplaced investment into satellite phone systems.

Another disadvantage is that a product or even a company may be placed in jeopardy if a trusted supplier pretends to be following this philosophy but really isn't. See, for example, the result of Firestone's failure to follow Six Sigma on the Ford Explorer. (Ford, by the way, had two advantages that most companies in its position won't have--the ability to prove to consumers that the fault rested with the supplier, and customer awareness of the difference between suppliers. Had the problem part been, say, a sensor, Ford could have screamed until all its executives turned blue and the general public would still have blamed Ford and not a sensor supplier.)

Six Sigma is a worthwhile management tool, but it won't plot GE's direction for the next twenty years. That still remains the major task of CEO leadership, and any new CEO who follows a superstar probably lacks the network of contacts that helped his predecessor stay on top. Would Jack Welch have bought Honeywell without the insights he received from Larry Bossidy? Ultimately, Six Sigma helps a company run better, but it doesn't help a CEO lead better.

--Paul Decker

(To reply, or to read a fuller version of this post, click here.)


Perhaps Six Sigma is a boon to GE as a whole, but it sure seemed silly when Welch and Co. tried to apply it to broadcasting via NBC (my former employer). 3.4 misspelled chyrons (on-screen superimposed text) per million? 3.4 inaccurate news stories per million? We had more than that during the average six o'clock newscast!

Add that to the endless "team meetings" and managers forced to divide their time between actually managing and being "green belts" (along with "black belts," Six Sigma reveals its infatuation with martial-arts terminology), and we wondered why: why Six Sigma, when morale-boosting would be more productive at reducing error.

Welch's earnings and NBC's record profits were always trumpeted in our employee emails--but in 1998 we were banned from ordering staples, paper clips, pens, and other things you need in an office. Camerapersons are being displaced by robots. Even the fluffiest of on-camera news folks are chafing under the no-time-for-news news format, especially as more and more scripts need "lawyering" by the paranoids down at 30 Rock.

--Jed

(To reply, click here.)


After reading the full public responses to the subject article, it is clear that following the introduction of multitudes of "Quality Improvement" programs (i.e. Motorola's Six Sigma) across this great country, the fundamental issues remain solid--and unchanged. For many reasons employees deeply distrust the motivation of any management attempt to change an existing job (process). Both sides share the blame for that inability to change. Management fails to communicate the realistic and obvious reasons--fundamentally competitive survival--while workers fail to realize they are doing a good job today, the very best they can, precisely the way they were trained/taught! It is that trained process that needs new analysis and improvement. Individual performance is not the issue here, never was. Six Sigma and all the other programs provide methods for mapping and validating each and every step of how our job/tasks are performed--eliminating those out-of-date steps, and improving the efficiency of those retained. Efficiency means a lower cost (and probably less time) to produce the resulting products of your individual tasks. Most important though is recognition that the workers (people actually doing the job) are the only experts available for any analysis of their job!

Management has absolutely no way of knowing every job task performed by the individual. The key to any changes begins with the Manager communicating the need, in clear terms each individual worker can personally relate to their job and company. So, the team of Management (show workers how to map and analyze each step of their jobs) and Workers (the job experts to detail real, actual steps performed for each task) develop a new job process for each task. Workers truly design the new more efficient way to perform each job. Management establishes their true task as Facilitators of the processes they manage. Everybody wins (Efficiency, Less Time, Lower Cost) with the resulting Process changes.

I would think your readers would benefit most by realizing that "Process Change" is the true benefit of initiating a "Six Sigma" type of Quality Improvement program: not simply a statistical achievement of limiting errors to a few out of a million repetitious tries. Indeed if the literal objectives are not met, the beneficial achievements of initiating the process will remain.

--Bob Atherton

(To reply, click here.)


Other than quantifying defects through statistical analysis, how does Six Sigma reduce defects and improve product quality? For example, if defects are being caused by a poorly-designed process, low quality purchased part, or simply by a poorly-designed product, does Six Sigma force the company to redesign the job, find a new vendor, or go back to the drawing board? Shouldn't common sense do pretty much the same thing? In reality, product quality issues often occur because American managers have been taught to sell the sizzle rather than the steak. It's much cheaper and easier to sell an image rather than a first class product, and hey, you're doing a bunch of selling--at least until your reputation is destroyed. The U.S. automakers found this out the hard way. Some of them still haven't learned their lesson.

--5Beta

(To reply, click here.)

(11/30)