5.

Six Sigma

5.1 Meaning of six sigma

5.2 The seven Magnificent Quality
Tools
5.1 Meaning of six sigma
• Six Sigma (6σ) is a set of techniques and tools for process improvement. It
was introduced by American engineer Bill Smith while working
at Motorola in 1986.[1][2] Jack Welch made it central to his business
strategy at General Electric in 1995. A six sigma process is one in which
99.99966% of all opportunities to produce some feature of a part are
statistically expected to be free of defects.
• Six Sigma strategies seek to improve the quality of the output of a process
by identifying and removing the causes of defects and minimizing
impact variability in manufacturing and business processes. It uses a set
of quality management methods, mainly empirical, statistical methods,
and creates a special infrastructure of people within the organization who
are experts in these methods. Each Six Sigma project carried out within an
organization follows a defined sequence of steps and has specific value
targets, for example: reduce process cycle time, reduce pollution, reduce
costs, increase customer satisfaction, and increase profit
• The term Six Sigma (capitalized because it was written
that way when registered as a Motorola trademark on
December 28, 1993) originated from terminology
associated with statistical modeling of
manufacturing processes. The maturity of a
manufacturing process can be described by
a sigma rating indicating its yield or the percentage of
defect-free products it creates—specifically, to within
how many standard deviations of a normal
distribution the fraction of defect-free outcomes
corresponds. Motorola set a goal of "six sigma" for all
of its manufacturing.
 Six Sigma Quality
• A philosophy and set of methods companies
use to eliminate defects in their products and
processes
• Seeks to reduce variation in the processes that
lead to product defects
• The name “six sigma” refers to the variation
that exists within plus or minus six standard
deviations of the process outputs
 5.2The seven Magnificent Quality
Tools
• Quality tools focus on maximizing customer
value by removing waste, eliminating defects
and improving processes. Master the
magnificent seven quality tools to improve
your business and really make a difference.
Quality Control is about methods, measuring
and managing. It’s about uncovering a
problem and finding a solution, using the right
technique at the right time.
• Kaoru Ishikawa taught quality systems in Japan and promoted
quality management. He believed that most problems could be
solved directly by using seven quality tools.

Like the film, each of the Magnificent Seven quality tools can make
a difference in your work and life.
1Histogram,
2.Check Sheets,
3.Pareto Charts,
4.Cause and Effect,
5.Stratification,
6.Scatter Plots and
7.Control Charts
• 1. Histograms
• Graphical techniques are those that summarize
and explore data to visualize overall patterns.
What can you tell from this list of numbers?
• Of course, it is difficult to understand anything or
detect a trend just from a list of numbers.
• A histogram is a chart that graphically displays
the distribution of data in equal sized ‘bins’.
Histograms give us information about the min,
max, spread, central tendency and outliers.
2. Check Sheets
• Check sheets are a collection forms designed
to collect relevant information about a
process. Check sheets can range from a simple
tally to a more complex form with different
dimensions: defect category, material grade or
product type.
3. Pareto Chart
Pareto charts table the frequency (and percent)
of an attribute (defect) in descending
order. From the tally above, which category
makes up the highest defects? A cumulative
percentage line helps to judge the
contribution of each to focus on
improvement.
• 4. Cause and Effect
• Teams use cause and effect diagrams to explore
and display the possible causes of a problem.
Generate causes by brainstorming ideas (post it)
and look for common causes across categories:
Measurement, Material, Personnel, Environment,
Method and Machine.
• Reach a team consensus on the top three causes
to address by testing – turn off and on…
5. Stratification
• Stratification is breaking down your data into
categories to identify patterns in occurrence.
• How many coffee beans can you count that
are red, yellow and green?
• 6. Scatter Plot
A scatter plot is a method used to investigate a
relationship between two continuous variables.
The correlation coefficient is a measure for the
direction and strength of the linear relationship.
Examples: Strength and Hardness, and Defects
and Temperature.
• A scatter plot shows if there is a linear
relationship, if there is strong relationship and
the direction of the linear relationship.
• 7. Control Charts
• Statistical techniques used to chart time
ordered sample data periodically drawn from
a process. Control charts identify patterns (2)
and trends (3) along with unusual
observations or outliers (1). Control charts are
a strategy for prevention. It’s more effective to
avoid waste by not producing it. Examples:
cost, weight, temperature, or dimensions.
 Quality Circle (QC)
• Quality circle is small group of employees
in same work-area or doing similar type of
work who voluntarily meet regularly for
about an hour every week to identify,
analyze and resolve work-related
problems, leading to improvement in their
total performance, and enrichment of their
work life.
• Participatory philosophy of quality circle
go beyond limits of all barriers of culture,
language, educational levels of employee,
type of work or size of organization.
• Small group of employees: QC member
consists of a small group of employees,
optimum number of members in QC are
about 8 to 10.
• In same work-area or doing similar type
of work: QC involve employee doing similar
type of work or in same work-area.
• Homogenous group: QC is homogenous
group, members participating in QC must be
on same wavelength.
• Voluntarily: Employees decide to join QC
on their own willingness, no coercion with
them to join or not to join
• QC meet regularly for about an hour every
week to identify, analyze and resolve work-
related problems.
• Employees who work in any area day after
day know best what problems are hindering
achievement of good quality, productivity and
optimum performance as also how they can
be remedied.
• Leading to improvement in their total
performance: QC resolves work-related problems
relating to quality, productivity, cost reduction,
safety, etc. naturally that leads to improvement on
total performance of work-area.
• Enrichment of their work life: Benefits of QC to
organization include enrichment of work life of
their employees apart from attitudinal changes,
cohesive team culture etc.
Impacts of Quality Circle:
1. Improvement in human relations and work-area
morale.
2. Promotion of participative culture.
3. Enhancement of job interest.
4. More effective team-work.
5. Reducing defects and improving quality.
6. Improving housekeeping, cost-effectiveness,
safety, etc.
Impacts of Quality Circle:
7. Improvement of productivity.
8. Enhancing problem-solving capability.
9. Improving communication.
10. Promotion of personal and leadership
development.
11. Catalyzing attitudinal changes.
Tangible impacts of Quality Circle:
1. Better quality: 25-35% of problem is
usually dealt by Quality Circle.
2. Productivity improvement: Less
rejection, solves productivity problems.
3. Higher safety: Improved work place and
house keeping.
Tangible impacts of Quality Circle:
4. Greater cost effectiveness: Options
analyzed/close identification of problem.
5. Increased profitability: Quality products.
6. Waste reduction: Increased attention and
interest.
7. Reduced absenteeism and grievances:
Interest in job.
Quality Circles in Construction
• Quality circle allows employees to
become more involved in solving their
own job-related problems in organized
way.
• Quality circle is an exciting, energizing
and fresh concept
Quality Circles in Construction
• If introduced with care and skill there is no
doubt that it can contribute to the
development of healthier and more
effective organization where peoples’
abilities at all levels are recognized and
valued and there is opportunity provided
for latent talent to be used.
Quality Circles in Construction
Advantages of QC in construction are:
• Quality improvement.
• Waste reduction.
• Attitude change.
• Cost reduction.
• Safety improvement.
• Improved communication.
• Higher productivity.
• Increased job satisfaction.
• Team building.
• Improvement in skills.
Quality Circles in Construction
• Use of QC in construction often faces some
unfavorable conditions.
• Construction projects, usually being of large unit
size and with low repetition, negate multiplicative
effect of method improvement, and temporary
nature of their employment and high turnover
affect against quality circle process.
• However, following points indicate good prospects
for its implementation
Quality Circles in Construction
• Concept of QC is likely to be adopted by
construction manager and foremen, since
they are not total strangers to teamwork
and team decision making in their day-to-
day work.
• Dynamic nature of construction projects
seems to keep such circles busy most of
the time with significant and interesting
problems.
Demerits of QC in Construction
QC seems ‘unsuitable’ in construction because
of following reasons:
• Unique nature of construction project: One-of-
a-kind of large units with low repetition negates
multiple effect of method improvement.
• Short-term relevancy of problems: Highly
dynamic physical environment of construction
sites and continuous change of production
problem.
Demerits of QC in Construction
QC seems ‘unsuitable’ in construction because of
following reasons:
• Instability of workforce: Lacks group dynamics and
team spirit because of high turnover.
• Low benefit to cost ratio: Doubts on whether
workers are capable of generating sufficient valuable
and implementable suggestions to justify effort, time
and money needed to establish, run and maintain
QC.
Merits of QC in Construction
• Low initial efficiency - opportunities for
modification and improvement.
• New challenges - local conditions differ
from project to project.
• Projects are prototypical, but construction
operations are repetitious.
Merits of QC in Construction
• QC process spots problems early - timely
solution is critical.
• Authority for implementation - manager has
high decision power which is in the spirit of
QC.
• More experiments are necessary to decide
applicability of QC in construction.