Lean Six Sigma
Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma
What is it?
Anyone know the basics?
Stories of successes or failures?
What is it?
Anyone know the basics?
Stories of successes or failures?
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It can work but it takes everyone support. Change is not painless for management or labor. 0 -
Six Sigma is a further extension of TQM(Total Quality Management) principles pertaining mostly to quality.
LEAN
I can tell you that LEAN does work, and very well indeed in a manufacturing environment. If you are making 300,000 widgets, following lean principles will save time and money and therefore make your customer happier.
It does not work very well in an overhaul environment. Unfortunately, the government is forcing LEAN down all departments throats regardless of mission requirements. I have had turn-around time increase by 32% after having several LEAN events in our division. Long lead time parts that we always kept enough on hand for 2 systems are now only ordered when needed, etc.
There is some good info in the links from mango....after reading it if you still have any questions, let me know.0 -
manufacturing theory developed by toyota in japan
it works! companys are saving alot of money using it
to be effective ALL personel need to contribute, engineers and operators0 -
Remember- no one LIKES change- except a baby with a wet dieaper! 0 -
It will work if you have an order for ten billion widgets.It will not work if your doing r&d.Its kind of like just in time.Nothing ever arrives just in time, if man has anything to do with it. 0 -
The problem, as stated several times previously, is EVERYBODY has to participate.
From the supplier of raw material, supplier of parts, supplier of machining/painting/assembly/etc, shippers throughout the process, and, and, and... ONE hickup in this process and you just got burned by LEAN and/or Six Sigma.
Biggest problem that I see in manufacturing now, good engineers that do not have TRUE experience in any engineering field. They need to get their hands dirty and TRY to DO things outside the box, not just rely on computer modeling (with ANY FRICKIN' SOFTWARE) to do their job!!!!0 -
when talking about six sigma, you can't exclude the 5 S's and Kaizen 0 -
It was originallly designed by G.E. and their executives projected that it would save the company five billion dollars in the first five years they were using it.
As everyone else has stated it is meant to be applied to manufacturing processes, won't work in R&D, or sales type environments.0 -
quote:Originally posted by Dave W.
As everyone else has stated it is meant to be applied to manufacturing processes, won't work in R&D, or sales type environments.
I don't believe its just meant for manufacturing process. I think it does work in an office enviroment and it has worked in an office enviroment. When Deming started to put his information into GE, the first thing he wanted GE to do was fix and upgrade the restrooms and get the office enviroment to work as efficiently as possible. The top dogs at GE laughed at him, it took about 2 years before he came back and helped make GE what it is today.
The one thing that LEAN does is try to bring all the information from the great quality gurus and put them into one quality system. But managers can try to create a lean enviroment, but without the support of the people, LEAN will fail.
Six Sigma on the other hand is a way to improve different things. One example of a local company that uses Six Sigma a lot is Catepiller. Some people are set to improve something by a certain dollar ammount, if they do it they are rewarded accordingly.0 -
Deming??
Six Sigma is largely based off Ed Deming?
Read his box a few years ago and really enjoyed it. He used a lot of uncommon horse sense. A lot of it was natural farmer instinct that you don't see in large corporations.
It will be interesting how we implement this. We struggle to understand the true concepts of SPC, so taking it steps farther will be a challenge. We're just starting to rein in the Error of Over-Compensation by management and many believe if we just put more pressure on emplyees we would reduce our quality and production problems. Basically, the process is not under control.
To me all of this screams "There is room for improvement." But minds in management have to change. On the plus side, our company is no longer influenced by KKR, the evil buyout divide and concur firm. When they owned a third of the company, manager who only pushed cut costs excelled. Increasing production meant nothing. Making a profit on depreciation was the main strategy. These managers did not know the process, nor cared to know it. Lazy shiftless supervisors that sat on their rears and did nothing also excelled. (They spent no money and let their departments depreciate.) Yes, we've made progress in the last few years.0 -
quote:Originally posted by Captplaid
Deming??
Six Sigma is largely based off Ed Deming?
Deming isn't the one that started Six Sigma. Six Sigma has not be around too long. Six Sigma is a set guildline on how to improve. How its implemented can very from what I have seen and read. I believe that Demings 14 points helped create Six Sigma though. One things that Caterpiller trys to do with their Six Sigma process is ensure 99.6% quality, or + or - 3 standard deviations, or 3 bad parts in a million. That will never happen, however, striving for that goal will create better overall quality and save the company money in the long haul.
The problem I see in people buying into LEAN manufacturing is that people really are afraid to lose their jobs. It seems that whenever a company starts to put LEAN into its process, they will cut jobs. LEAN was not designed to cut jobs. If they people that are making products believe that they could lose their jobs, of course they are not going to buy into the system. A local company, that is a global leader making semi trailers, implemented LEAN several years ago. They cut several hunderd jobs in the mean time. How do you think everyone else on the line felt?
Another thing that is seen with companies that implement LEAN is that they don't stick with it for the long haul. LEAN is not something that will happen over night. It takes 2-5 years or more to fully implement it. If a company sticks with it for two years and then gives up, they have just wasted their time.
Getting suplliers to buy into your system is another problem. If your a small company it will probably be hard. I like the just in time delivery systems that some companies are utilizing. It saves everyone money. Pepsi is a large company that is utilizing just in time and it seems to be working for everyone. Pepsi gets its bottles from Plastipak. Plastipak fills orders for pepsi right off of the line. Pepsi gets the bottle and fills them then ships them to were they need to be. Warehouse space is saved and the time stacking and unstacking empty bottles is saved. Thats BIG money. Plastipak for example, stores any where between 5 and 10 million bottles at anyone time for Proctor and Gamble, this is just in their one Ohio location. Imagine the labor and space that could be saved if they were shipping directly to the P& G filling centers. Plastipak makes over a million pop bottles a shift and about a million P & G bottles a shift at the location above. Plastipak has 11 manufacturing facilities in the US.0 -
I worked as the Production Manager and eventually the General Manager for a small polyurethane injection molding (RIM for any who would care.) operation for several years. I would still be doing it but I developed a sensitivity to the isocyanates...anyway...we implemented many of the concepts of TQM/Six Sigma/LEAN/JIT. It was a small operation, only about 20 employees, but it was the perfect environment. We were able to reduce out reject rate from 10% to less than 1%, reduce lead times from months to weeks, reduced scrap rates by 90%, and more than double our annual output. We never fully implemented any of these philosophies as described in a text book but we were always working toward continuous improvement. 0 -
Elk
Do you think it worked due to the fact that you were small enough that everyone bought into the system? I am guessing that people were compensated accordingly?0 -
quote:Originally posted by shoff14
Elk
Do you think it worked due to the fact that you were small enough that everyone bought into the system? I am guessing that people were compensated accordingly?
You hit the nail on the head..compensation. I think a major problem most companies that try to implement these practices is that they forget why people work for them. It is all about the money!! Everyone has to buy into the concept. (Notice I didn't say believe in the system...) The average pay went from $9/hr to $15/hr in about 2 years. And employee turnover went from 80% annually to almost 0. Change always has a cost and we lost some employees because they didn't want to change but those that stuck with us made good money, worked hard, and took that company to another level.
Now to answer your 1st question. I think that any change is easier to implement with smaller and younger companies. In this case I was not only working with a small and young company but they were also lacking any kind of day to day leadership. Meaning there was no existing leadership structure that had to be "converted" to my way of thinking. (Keep in mind that I have always worked for smaller companies. Don't like the big boys because they would never give me the keys and leave me alone. Yes, I have problems with authority.)0 -
quote:shoff14
Advanced Member
3273 Posts
Posted - 03/05/2007 : 09:04:11 AM Show Profile Email Poster Reply with Quote
quote:Originally posted by Dave W.
As everyone else has stated it is meant to be applied to manufacturing processes, won't work in R&D, or sales type environments.
I don't believe its just meant for manufacturing process. I think it does work in an office enviroment and it has worked in an office enviroment. When Deming started to put his information into GE, the first thing he wanted GE to do was fix and upgrade the restrooms and get the office enviroment to work as efficiently as possible. The top dogs at GE laughed at him, it took about 2 years before he came back and helped make GE what it is today.
The one thing that LEAN does is try to bring all the information from the great quality gurus and put them into one quality system. But managers can try to create a lean enviroment, but without the support of the people, LEAN will fail.
Six Sigma on the other hand is a way to improve different things. One example of a local company that uses Six Sigma a lot is Catepiller. Some people are set to improve something by a certain dollar ammount, if they do it they are rewarded accordingly.
From: http://www.6sigma.us/
Six Sigma is a proven disciplined approach for improving measurable results for any organization. Six Sigma project success stories exist from organizations including manufacturing, service, nonprofit, government, research and healthcare. The key to Six Sigma is the completion of leadership sponsored projects
And lean six sigma:
Lean Six Sigma and Lean Flow initiatives go by many names, including Lean Enterprise, Lean Manufacturing, Lean Sigma, and Lean Service. These concepts are a natural complement to Six Sigma and can be applied to every type of business and process. The common thread is to identify and eliminate sources of waste and activities that do not add value, in order to create flow with maximum productivity, capacity, and throughput.0 -
quote:Originally posted by elkoholic
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You hit the nail on the head..compensation. I think a major problem most companies that try to implement these practices is that they forget why people work for them. It is all about the money!! Everyone has to buy into the concept. (Notice I didn't say believe in the system...) The average pay went from $9/hr to $15/hr in about 2 years. And employee turnover went from 80% annually to almost 0. Change always has a cost and we lost some employees because they didn't want to change but those that stuck with us made good money, worked hard, and took that company to another level.
You get two kinds of managers and owners in business. Ones that are money hungry and believe that their employees work for them and that this is his/her company. Then there are managers and owners that believe that the employees are the company and without them there would be no company. Which one will last longer?0 -
We also looked into many other ways to spend our money to become more efficent and profitable before choosing and eventually abandoning Six Sigma. (DDI, Gallup, H-works, Etc.) As noted you can't just buy the package and training and not execute the principles and expect anything to happen. Large companies are spending a fortune training ideas they haven't got the balls to follow through with. 0 -
The basics are this:
Lean is is taking the waste out of process, procedures, etc. Reducing cycle times, touch time, etc.
Six Sigma is a tool used to reduce defects in a process or procedure.
So what you get when you marry the two is this. You take a process, gather data, find out where the waste is and then apply Six Sigma to determine if removal of the waste will improve the process. Then you also use Six Sigma to control the process and measure the improvements.
It is a little more complicated than that, but those are the basics. I happen to work for GE (not that that means anything), but I will reply to the previous post about buy-in. It takes almost 100% participation for it to be truly effective.0 -
quote:Originally posted by shoff14
You get two kinds of managers and owners in business. Ones that are money hungry and believe that their employees work for them and that this is his/her company. Then there are managers and owners that believe that the employees are the company and without them there would be no company. Which one will last longer?
[/quote]
Depends on several factors,
1. The size of the company
2. The level of the manager.
3. How long the manager intends to stay at the location before being transfered or jumping ship.0
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