All entries for Wednesday 30 December 2015
December 30, 2015
Six Sigma fashion
According to some people, Six Sigma is a fashion, a trend in large multinational companies to improve their processes, cut their costs and increase their profitability. It is also argued, that the excitement of members about Six Sigma programs is faded away after a while and the motivation of employees can be reduced. A successful implementation of Six Sigma programmes is very expensive and involves a lot of training and mostly large companies are able to invest in it and plan for long-term. Therefore, Six Sigma programmes may fail after a short-term success. Six Sigma is another quality management system like TQM, ISO, EFQM which needs to work with other approaches like Deming's SOPK, PDSA in order to be successful. Six Sigma is a great tool depending on its application and implementation by an organisation, as well as, what are the objectives of an organisation with Six Sigma programmes.
Six Sigma and Organisational Learning conclusion
Six Sigma has the potential to contribute to organisational learning, although there are other factors need to work as well in terms of a successful implementation, such as team work, employee engagement/involvement, shared knowledge and ideas, motivation, effective communication and leadership, commitment from all the members of the organisation and so on. The implementation of Six Sigma projects must be aligned with the organisation's strategy, goals, mission and vision. It should rather a long-term investment than a short-term one. The behaviours of Black Belts and Master Black Belts are crucial in the successful implementation of Six Sigma programmes by influencing all the employees, forming the team and leading the change in the organisation. However, organisational learning can be relatively limited depending on the Belt system, leadership, organisational culture and the motivation of the organisational members.
The top management plays a key part in the creation of the right working environment, involving all the members of the organisation and engaging them to be committed to learning. The top management has to deal with the resistance of change by motivating all the employees, promoting effective staff meetings and encouraging organisational learning, respectively, providing training opportunities.
All in all, Six Sigma is quite rigid, and all the critical success factors must be met in order to work as a mechanism for organisational learning by eliminating all the failures and limitations.