Tata Steel's first certified Six
Sigma
black belt
August 27,
2002
Jamshedpur:
Six
Sigma is a quality movement fast spreading among corporations
in the United States. Motorola, GE, Ford, Sony, ABB, Lockheed
Martin, Kodak and a host of Fortune 500 companies have
embraced Six Sigma. Tata Steel in India has also started
the Six Sigma initiative. Niloy Mitter was selected by
Tata Steel for the Six Sigma Black Belt training
in Texas, USA. Niloy, a graduate in commerce, post-graduate
in operations research completed the four-week training
programme at Smarter Solutions Inc, Texas, USA and returned
as the first certified Six Sigma Black Belt of Tata Steel.
Forrest Breyfogle, president, Smarter Solutions Inc and
ex-chairman, American Society for Quality and author of
several books on Six Sigma has written to Dr Mukherjee,
deputy MD (steel) of Tata Steel that, "I am not aware
of any steel company that has implemented Six Sigma the
way you did."
To remain competitive, companies essentially have to improve
business performance. They have to create a focus on the
bottom line. They have to reduce mistakes in every
aspect of the company; product defects, incorrect billing,
wasted materials and inefficient production processes.
Six Sigma is a disciplined methodology that focuses on
moving every process, product and service toward near-perfect
quality.
The term Six Sigma defines an optimum measurement of quality,
which is 3.4 defects per million events. The Greek letter
SIGMA is a mathematical term that simply represents a
measure of variation, the distribution or spread around
the mean or average of any process or procedure in manufacturing,
engineering, services or transactions. The sigma value
indicates how well any process is performing. The higher
the value, the fewer defects per million opportunities.
Six Sigma is the disciplined application of statistical
problem-solving tools that show you where wasteful costs
are and points you toward precise steps to take for improvement.
These tools apply a refined methodology of measurement
and discovery to gain a comprehensive understanding of
performance and key variables affecting the quality of
a company's products and services. A level of Six Sigma
represents the peak of quality — the virtual elimination
of defects from every product and process within an organization.
As sigma level increases, customer satisfaction goes up
while at the same time cycle time goes down and costs
plummet. Six Sigma is a process for mathematically analysing
specific problems in manufacturing or other aspects of
a company's operations. Through a methodical system, it
drills into the problem to find the best solution, and
then locks in that solution. Six Sigma thus is a business
philosophy to improve customer satisfaction, a tool for
eliminating process variation, a metric of world class
companies allowing process comparisons.
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