Posted on 11/01/2002 7:43:37 PM PST by VaBthang4
Edited on 04/13/2004 1:40:04 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
At a time when fighting the war on terrorism has become arguably the most important issue facing the USA, authorities are looking into an unlikely weapon to aid their fight: Six Sigma.
Six Sigma is nothing like a laser-guided smart bomb but rather a statistics-heavy regimen of analyzing problems that has saved corporations billions.
(Excerpt) Read more at usatoday.com ...
Funny...I was thinking that posting on FR should be less cultish and more based on sound analysis and evaluation.
~Grin~
What part of GE was that?
But to do that would require a manager with actual cojones, not unlike the same elusive characteristics lacking in our federal government.
I walked out of the 6s group in front of the CEO, the Executive VP, my director and our client's top brass. The client then chastised the company for not hiring more people like me instead of the Nigerian 6s "expert" who kept droning on and on. Sometimes it pays to be brutally honest.
I'm with you on that! I fondly remember the defense contractor I worked for years ago and their drive towards "TQM". We referred to it as "Totally Questionable Management". It was summarized one day during a big fanfare meeting wherein they rolled out the glorious new era, passing out coffee mugs to all in attendance. The "TQM" logos were printed on the mugs crooked....
One of the first applications I made of "Desktop Publishing" was to produce a sign for my office wall with the above saying.
That's when I learned the pen is mighty likely to really tick off middle management.
Process, procedure, over-focus on method makes for deafness. Ask any good piano player.
Ha! Remember the Zero Defects rallies? I went to one where - honest to goodness - they handed out pencils emblazoned with "Zero Deflects". They were complete with erasers. Erasers which broke off the first time you tried to use them.
That day I stopped being a wide-eyed college graduate new-hire and became a bemused observer of professional management.
Still have that pencil somewhere. I really need to mount it in a shadowbox.
The reality is that they will use it as justification for failure by claiming that it is a "statistical success".
3000+ lives lost in one terrorist attack will be easy to define as "an acceptable loss of life" if they compare the number of victims to the number of cigarettes manufactured in one year, or any equally unimportant statistic. Unfortunately, these definitions are always arbitrary, by the very nature of process definition. The idea that you should "strive for perfection" is replaced by the lame excuse "it could be worse".
On FR you have always come across to me, at least, as a person who wants to hear, see, smell, touch, or otherwise sense only those parts of All Creation he feels to be in line with his current views and understanding, and to deny, denigrate, refuse and ignore all else. This is the circumstance of many, of all to some extent and in some times, we are limited, we seek solace in the known and already comfortable.
If that is the case ... and my read on you, is subject to all the lousy and clouding factors relating to anyone at such a remove is -- therefore it could be far from the mark, as such reads oft are ... then wake up, open up, look around before you paint yourself too far into a corner.
Outside of manufacturing yields, Six Sigma is mostly useless unless you want to turn into a full time statistician and crank numbers all day.
Six Sigma projects at GE tend to be makework projects for those in Engineering, Sales and Marketing.
BUMP
That is what everyone speaking in this thread in objection to the boosterism of procedure that the original poster has made here. People, and respect for people's hard work, acheivements from that work and close insights, wisdom, and natural gifts comes first, before process, procedure. Invert that, and you have made a hell.
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