Six sigma is one of the most widely used management concepts in the industry today. In India, the awareness about six sigma and its usefulness is growing. Currently, it is growing in popularity in the manufacturing and the software sector. There is a common belief in the service industry that this concept is not directly applicable in the service industry. In this article, the authors demonstrate the usefulness of the six sigma concept in a service industry through an imaginative story.
Six sigma is one of the most popular
methodologies used in the industry in order to
improve quality and customer satisfaction. The
concept of six sigma has been found to be helpful
for organizations to learn from and overcome the
challenges they encounter. The other quality programs,
including seven QC tools and Total Quality
Management (TQM), have focused on directing and
correcting commercial, industrial and design defects,
whereas six sigma provides specific methods to recreate
the process, so that defects and errors never
arise in the first place. It uses some of the basic statistical
tools, such as design of experiments, response surface
methodology etc., combined with some of the TQM
tools such as Quality Function Deployment (QFD),
pareto diagram etc., to identify the areas to be
improved upon, and to reduce variability in those areas.
In India, several companies have started
implementing the concept of six sigma, and have been
able to improve their bottom line. However, most
of the success stories reported are related to the
manufacturing or software sector. There is a common
belief in the service industry that this concept will not
be effective for it. In this paper, we demonstrate the
implementation of the concepts of six sigma, using
an imaginative story related to the service industry,
which demonstrates that measurement makes one
understand where the company stands, and how to
improve the process.
It was one late evening, and Vivek1,
general manager of ABC Motors,
(an authorized dealer of Cross
Automobile Company, two and
three wheelers), was waiting for his
managers, whom he had called for
a cross-functional meeting to
discuss the report submitted by
Dheeraj, a practicing six sigma
consultant. Dheeraj had taken up
this six sigma project on the service
division of ABC Motors, and
spent two months working closely
with the managers and staff of this
organization.
With intense competition in the
market, and the falling customer
satisfaction scores of ABC
Motors, Vivek was attracted
towards new quality improvement
drive using six sigma methodology.
The six sigma implementation had
raised issues that needed immediate
management attention for the longterm
sustainability of such an
exercise. The scope for
improvement in terms of
“opportunity areas” was much
higher than expected.
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