https://qz.com/work/1635960/whatever-happened-to-six-sigma/
Interesting read.
EOM is/was supposed to be SF's six sigma.
3 replies (most recent on top)
Six Sigma is not a bad thing. It simply gets a bad rep because leadership fails to understand where to draw the line. They get so excited at the idea of cutting waste (and the associated cost savings), that it becomes addictive to them to the point that they let it go WAY too far. That is why they only focus on results and metrics. The article shows a clear case (like State Farm), where they got way too carried away, and lost sight of what the methodology is...and what it isn’t.
Something to pay attention to is that if metrics are so important, why isn’t the company measuring what is important to the customers? I don’t see anything on huddle boards about customer satisfaction or cycle time results (time of claim report to time of claim close). Nope! Instead, they are only interested in how many times per hour you passed the buck to the next person in order to hit your metric targets. That is NOT Six Sigma.
If anything, leadership has gone the opposite direction of Six Sigma by introducing more and more waste to the claim process by causing the poor handlers to have to keep touching claims over and over again in order to do only the minimum work at each touch...because false metrics are all that matter.
In the end, the company only gets what they measure, and they are not measuring the things that customers care about (and pay for). The checker gets what the checker checks. As a result, callers continue to get madder and madder while driving the poor claim handlers to get anti-depression and blood pressure medication.
Real Six Sigma looks at something called “voice of the customer”. Efficient processes are then designed to deliver what the customers actually want (what they are willing to pay for). It doesn’t take any effort to see that State Farm does not operate this way. As such, it’s a business problem where Six Sigma was either NOT used, or it was not used properly. End rant.
@mM2
You nailed it. Since you posted this, I have read everything I could on Six Sigma. It is very interesting how it parallels to the EOM. Please continue to enlighten us, and thank you.
Boeing 737 Max was sigma six. Another fine business decision.