Globalization and instant access to information probably have changed the way you do business.  And, today’s competitive environment often leaves no room for error. 

At GE, we know that you need a high quality product at an affordable price.  This translates into GE's focus on productivity and quality as the cornerstone of our quest for SIX SIGMA.  Everyone plays a key role in this strategy, which continues to drive Delivery, Cost, and Quality improvements across GE.

The SIX SIGMA process will change the paradigm from fixing products to fixing processes so that we produce as close to perfection as possible.  And, through our consulting solutions, we can help you drive Six Sigma at your own facility.

What is Six Sigma?

Six Sigma is a highly disciplined process that helps us focus on developing and delivering near-perfect products and services.  Why “Sigma”?  The word is a statistical term that measures how far a given process deviates from perfection.  The central idea behind Six Sigma is that if you can measure how many “defects” you have in a process, you can systematically figure out how to eliminate them and get as close to “zero defects” as possible.  Six Sigma has changed the DNA of GE—it is now the way we work—in everything we do and in every product we design.

The Six Sigma Strategy

To achieve Six Sigma quality, a process must produce no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities.  An “opportunity” is defined as a chance for nonconformance, or not meeting the required specifications.  This means we need to be nearly flawless in executing our key processes.  Six Sigma is a vision we strive toward and a philosophy that is part of our business culture. 

Key Concepts of Six Sigma

At its core, Six Sigma revolves around a few key concepts:

• Critical to Quality (CTQ):  Attributes most important to the customer
• Defect:                           Failing to deliver what the customer wants
• Process Capability:         What your process can deliver
• Variation:                        What the customer sees and feels
• Stable Operations:           Ensuring consistent, predictable processes to improve what the customer sees and feels 
• Design for Six Sigma:      Designing to meet customer needs and process capability

Customers Feel the Variance, Not the Mean

Often, our inside-out view of the business is based on average or mean-based measures of our recent past.  Customers don’t judge us on averages, they feel the variance in each transaction, each product we ship.  Six Sigma focuses first on reducing process variation and then on improving the process capability. 

Customers value consistent, predictable business processes that deliver world-class levels of quality.  This is what Six Sigma strives to produce.

The Cost of Quality-Six Sigma Financial Benefits

The old belief of using increased levels of inspection and testing to prevent defects and reduce scrap and rework said that increasing appraisal and prevention costs tend to outweigh quality costs as we strive to improve quality.  Thus, one can find a stationary break-even point.

However, when you improve your process capabilities and therefore the sigma capability of your company, the break-even point moves. Appraisal and prevention are needed less and less as we assume a higher level of quality.  

Therefore, you can get more quality at lower costs if you improve the process capabilities of your company.  The following chart demonstrates GE’s success at driving continuous improvements on productivity while reducing the costs associated with achieving high quality. 

GE’s Commitment to Quality

GE’s success with Six Sigma has exceeded our most optimistic predictions.  Across the Company, GE associates embrace Six Sigma’s customer-focused, data-driven philosophy and apply it to everything we do.  We are building on these successes by sharing best practices across all of our businesses and with our customers, putting the full power of GE behind our quest for better, faster customer solutions.

Our Consulting Solutions team uses Six Sigma practices in all customer interactions to help assure that we understand your needs and can deliver results that meet or exceed your expectations. We can also help you use Six Sigma and its methodologies to improve your overall business operations as GE has done, such as:

• Improve your operating margins and working capital turns
• Improve overall operating efficiency
• Discover the "hidden factories" in your current operations and unleash capacity you never realized you had.

At GE Fanuc, Six Sigma has changed the way we do business. Our Consulting Solutions team can help you use Six Sigma techniques to change your business, too.

For more information, contact our Consulting Solutions team now.