To buy Bit Coin you have to give up real legal tender money. Six Sigma is like Bit Coin in that it looks good on paper but the value is built on an illusion. The proof is...have the products produced under Six Sigma increased the financial well being of GE. To get promoted to the professional ranks at GE you must take Six Sigma classes and become certified or become certified shortly thereafter. The first time I attended a Six Sigma class about 20 years ago and was told we could find waste and bottlenecks in the process if we used a spaghetti chart and then we could track our defects per million opportunity using an L1 spreadsheet, I thought to myself, how is this really going to help. There have been many successful companies that don't use Six Sigma. I have been told there are some other companies that actually laugh at the concept. It is wasteful programs such as Six Sigma that have crippled the company. This is just one example of many that have ruined a once great franchise.
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Yes I am 6 Sig certified. Yes it is a colossal waste of time and money. No wonder GE is all over it for the "Leaders" A matter of time before aviation gets anhialated by a better company. GE has a 19th century mentality about leadership.
The problem is (as others have stated) that Six Sigma is a useful tool - but only in the hands of a technical expert who understands the products and processes. It's utterly worthless in the hands of someone who's never walked the product from raw material to finished good at the customer.
And that is GE's problem. Instead of having seasoned employees with years of technical expertise learn the tools of Six Sigma, they used it to leap-frog younger (cheaper) employees up the chain.
Six sigma has added waste and bottlenecks in the process and destroyed the technical capabilities and excellence that used to exist at GE.
Now inexperienced six sigma type promotes reside over this corrupt empire that resembles a communist dictatorship or a failed state like Venezuela. GE has become a failed state and cant make money anymore even with over 7 billion in sales
You can't replace experts with inexperienced managers that don't know what they are doing because they never did the work.
It doesn't work
Six sigma doesn't work because of het sham where you don't have to know the business to run it
Most of the six sigma projects that were perpetrated on the business actually increased costs and ineffectiveness of the organization, but were sold as cost savings. This is because fake costs were booked that mostly relied on eliminating value added engineering, manufacturing, and service. After the dust cleared, and the six sigmas got promoted, costs went up with duplication, bloated management, huge ineffective Atlanta cost center that used to be done in product departments and especially cost of quality and poor execution that plagues GE today.
My friends, here is why Six Sigma was implemented at GE.... First, it was used as a weed out tool. Second, as rationale to promote a younger person over a much more experienced senior person. Third, please remember that the threat was that there would be no wage increase or promotion without Six Sigma certification. Jack made sure everyone knew he was serious. Then, his genius was that Six Sigma certification required two meaningful cost out projects. That coerced thousands upon thousands of additional cost out projects from everywhere. Those original projects were meaningful (not the stupid meaningless projects of today). It was those projects that helped the bottom line. So I guess Six Sigma did help but not in the way it was advertised. Six Sigma is not a gimmick but it became one at GE. Many people resent it rather than embrace it. Another example of misguided leadership. As a GE veteran, be watchful for the next GE gimmick from Flannery.
True, they were trying to get many customers back in the service business that they lost that now go to competitors. This is because GE doesn't make their own parts, doesn't have many experts left, and screwed up a lot of outages because of the expertise factor. The service business is a mess and everyone knows it. Customers are very unhappy and cant get expert service or engineering support for their turbine parts issues or problems.
GE service has to bid low last few years to try to get customers back, sometimes even below competitors costs which was very surprising. Then they try to make it up by drumming up extra costs while on site which drives customers nuts. A lot of this is fake drummed up work and customers know it.
GE service put too many managers in place who didn't know anything about the business because they never did the work. This is the basic problem with GE today - the six sigma way.
@pvc you obviously do not understand 6-sigma if you think that’s a basic tenant, lol
What we see in the service business is lack of expertise and an Atlanta PAC mentality where their field force are no longer turbine experts like the 1970's thru 1990's.
Now they send out people who don't know the product lines, correct methods or troubleshooting skills and often screw up customers turbines. GE used to have expert turbine field engineers who could do t all. Now they call the PAC every day and the PAC doesn't have any experts either, they just try to look up things they don't understand. Six sigma is what has caused all this and created the Atlanta disaster.
FieldCore will destroy what six sigma started. Service belongs close to engineering instead of completely disconnected
I agree and cringe that I have to put Six Sigma Green Belt on my Resume. It's almost embarrassing.
This may be a problem somewhere in the company, I can't say because it's a big company; however, I can tell you that it isn't the main problem in Power Services sales. We have plenty of technical experts, they are as good as any in the world at designing a bucket, fuel nozzle, whatever. We even hire technical experts to do sales, and that's ok to a certain extent.
Power Services didn't fail this year because of six sigma, the leadership programs, or the good ole boy network, which are the 3 targets that are called out on this website the most. It failed because the former CEO, who was not a product of six sigma etc, and his boss the CEO of GE Power, also not a product of said programs, and in fact an engineer I think, set unrealistic targets in an effort to swing for the fences, aided and abetted by JRI, his staff, and BOD. They didn't listen to their marketing and sales people, many of whom saw the market problems coming. They placed senior leaders in key positions who would also swing for the fences; many of these were in fact duds, but not because of six sigma or leadership programs. They did all this while under-investing in the effort to integrate our recent acquisitions. They weren't interested in the hard work needed to do that integration, instead they scaled up and hoped that things would start to operate on their own, which didn't happen.
They also drove their subordinates to unrealistic targets, which causes people to do dumb things, such as sole-source compressor blade production to an unproven company in China, who then proceeded to cut corners and screw GE. That is one time they should have asked the Black Belts or the MBA types, because neither would have recommended this action, or many others.
There are plenty of other reasons that we failed, but this is what I see from my corner of the world. Glad to hear what others see from theirs.
The basis tenant of six sigma is that you don't need to be an expert or know anything about the business. All you need t do is give a monkey a procedure and they can do the tasks.
This is such crap, and has destroyed the capabilities of the workforce.
It has also led t bad decision after bad decision by inexperienced managers who don't know what they are doing
GE is a mess because of six sigma
Why the constant haranguing on Six Sigma? It's not the problem and if you didn't notice, it is not a company initiative anymore.
Not true. You can mine bit coin.
No serious professional believes in this crap.
You are delusional and bitter. Seek help.