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 ...
Even 99% accuracy falls short
Six Sigma is a set of statistical and management tools that can make leaps in improvement. When something reaches Six Sigma, it has a failure rate of 3.4 per million, or 99.99966% accuracy. However, being just 99.0% accurate can sometimes spell disaster. It means:
At least 200,000 wrong drug prescriptions each year. Two short or long landings at major airports each day. 5,000 incorrect surgical procedures every week. 20,000 lost articles of mail per hour. No electricity for almost seven hours each month. 50 dropped newborn babies each day.
There's always another catchword that's going to save the world, the only thing that stays the same are the little lego kits they make you put together during the group grope sessions where they introduce this crap!
I worked at a company that was required to put its engineering division through TQM training specifically because that was GE's hotword at the time ("TQM" = "total quality management" for the unenlightened).
A few weeks later, as we were gathered around the design table, management put the squeeze on us to come up with an approach that would get our project completed in a very short timeframe. I raised my hand and suggested we "throw out some of the quality". You could have heard a pin drop in that room - but everybody knew I was telling it like it really is.
Don't you realize that there are children who read this site?
And you go and post the phrase TQM out where anybody can read it.
The nerve of some people.
The nature of business management is managing the trade-offs. In your case, it was time vs quality. Which would prevail? How much quality could be traded-off for time? How much time would be sacrificed for quality?
There is no business problem that cannot be solved by the liberal application of a.) money and/or b.) time.
TQM, Six Sigma, they are all the same -- a process that is intended to somehow focus (or substitute for) judgment concerning these trade-offs. The system is only as good as the people running it...
How in the world are we even going to tweak the existing system, never mind change it completely, with Dasshole obstructing every move on homeland security Dubya tries to implement? Hell, Dasshole doesn't want to fire any incompetent workers, much less all of them. Six Sigma probably requires that there be no incompetent workers in the system. I know this stuff works if properly implemented, but it takes a strong leader who can impose his will on the entire organization. Dasshole will never permit it, unfortunately.
It would definitely take a lot of the spontaneity out of the work process, but while that has its downsides, it has a lot of advantages, too. Far more projects are screwed up by sloppiness than by too much rigidity, and Six Sigma/ISO 9000/etc. are aimed at instituting procedures, and especially oversight/inspection procedures, which quickly raise a flag if something's getting off track, and/or catching errors before they can snowball.
Lord knows the far-flung intelligence community could use better internal coordination, and something resembling a goals-oriented method of operation.
I agree. I implemented it into my chip making 'line' at TI about 14 years ago. It is amazing. (...and then we made all our suppliers do the same.)
Last term here at WPI was like that for me( all of my courses had labs). Im glad thats over.
True enough. The key was to discharge the folks that let crap go on.
After a through investigation of Sept 11th, there ought to be blood in the hall at the FBI & CIA.
I ain't seen any so far.
Ditto TI.
Been there, done that.
I'm a full blown believer / practitioner in the proper utilization of statistics in manufacturing process quality assurance and control.
I also recognized that it's often totally misused and abused in a fashion that makes Political Correctness look amateurish by comparison.
The Six-Sigma Nazis are far worse than the most fanatic anti-tobacco, vegan, atheistic charter member of PETA, NOW and the Sierra Club that I ever came across.
If you should be so unfortunate to cross paths with one, I would hope that your affairs are in order and your loved ones have been provided for.
I dont think the motives jive.
Those are lame links if your looking to dismiss Six Sigma.
Show me where Six Sigma has been correctly instituted and failed...and I'll buy you an adult beverage.
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