All entries for Tuesday 31 March 2009

Six Sigma and Service industry

I was talking to dad today and the topic of what I have learnt over the past 5 months came up. I told him business improvement is a underlying theme throughout most of our modules. In particular, I bring up Six Sigma telling him how I am doing a dissertation on it. Then I was surprised when he said he heard about it while citing the success GE had with it. But he didn't know exactly what it is except that it is being used in many large corporations.

Then I went into a bit of effort explaining (poorly) the bell shaped curve and the DMAIC methodologies . And he suddenly throw a question at me "So how will it help my company?". I was a bit taken aback because I wasn't expecting it. So I fumbled a few words like "Well, your company is a importer of milk powder, and your main customer are pharmacies... but six sigma is more suitable to manufacturing... but it may be able to help with the admin side of the business...". It was easy to see I was totally unprepared for his question.

Later that night, I spent some time reading an article on application of six sigma in Seagate UK (PC hardrive manufactuer) and it made the following comment

"Thus, the case findings, consistent with the literature, conclude that six sigma lacks evidence of success when applied outside the mass manufacturing environment" (McAdam & Lafferty 2004; p546)

So it had me wondering how useful Six Sigma is outside the manufacturing industry. I remember during the PIUSS module, the question of "Six Sigma in Service" came up several times, and the general idea at the time was "Yes! Six Sigma can work in non-manufacturing (service) industry too". But now I am less convinced and would like to see some evidence of that statement somewhere.

McAdam, R. and Lafferty, B. (2004). A Multilevel case study critique of six sigma: statistical control or strategic change? International Journal of Operation & Production Management. Vol24. (5). p530-549.

: 31 Mar 2009 23:37 |  Tags: Mbe Piuss |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem