[VaBthang4]

I work for GE Financial Assurance and all of GE lives Six Sigma. It is one of the main reasons GE is such a strong company.

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.

[The Duke]

And before Six Sigma there was TQM, and before that....

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.

[LoneRangerMassachusetts]

I get the distinct impression Rummy won't use Six Sigma.

[LibWhacker]

"You can't tweak the existing system and get there,"

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.

[McGavin999]

LOL, this is great. An American solution to a world problem. Capitalism at it's best. It's certainly worth a try.

[weikel]

You know there are a lot of losertarians among the quiet statistic nerd types :).

[Dan Day]

I worked for a Raytheon company a number of years ago when they were toying with ISO 9000, another "quality assurance" approach (or maybe it was the ancestor of Six Sigma instead of a competing idea).

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.

[LasVegasMac]

Six Sigma is nothing like a laser-guided smart bomb but rather a statistics-heavy regimen of analyzing problems that has saved corporations billions.

How cute. Lets fight terrorism with software.

Don't misunderstand - I work in the IT field and am familiar with 6S (at least thats how the nipple heads refer to it.) I do not use it directly - I know what it does.

No, the first steps in this war need to be border closings, large amounts of HE delivered in 500 - 1000 - 2000 lb. packages, etc.

This software may have it's place - possibly from the outset, certainly as a follow on.

Right now, this country needs to be 99.99% accurate in taking out the fanatic's - on their ground. Blow them up - on their turf.

Like my man, Gen. Patton was fond of saying, "Don't waste time doing Power Point presentations - make the enemy do Power Point presentations..." - or something to that effect.

To think that 6S is the answer is silly. A tool, yes. After the hardware has spoken. After the ground has been taken. After dictators have been removed.

LVM

[TheLion]

This reminds me of the time I tried to fix a leaking basement from the inside. The simple solution was outside. Why let the water in!

[Dialup Llama]

>I work for GE Financial Assurance and all of GE lives Six Sigma. It is one of the main reasons GE is such a strong company.

Rent the movie GATTACA and observe life driven by Six Sigman concepts... where every decision, every resource, every person is totally rationalized. Experimentation, surprise and innovation are squashed out.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"If each of those 50 nodes passes judgment on 60 pieces of information each day, there are 300 opportunities for a decision error each day..."

Um... somebody check the math here... I think somebody slipped a sigma or three... < g >

[Dialup Llama]

>If improved to Six Sigma, accuracy is 99.99966%. That means only one of about every 294,000 pieces of vital information would be erroneously discarded.

How can someone know in advance what info is important? 6 Sigma works for manufacturing or highly regularized paper processes such as approving cookie cutter loans at GE Capital.

However can a 6 Sigma genius tell me if this information vital or not?--- 'A field agents observes there seem to be many Arabs at flight schools.' Well most Arab countries train their future pilots in the US. There have always been Arabs at flight schools. Can 6 Sigma tell me at what point does that info constitue a clue for further investigation or when should it get ignored?

[Maximum Leader]

The problem with applying Six Sigma or for that matter TQM (still not sure what that is, glad there's a new buzzword has superceded it)to the government is thta there are no shareholders in Uncle Sam.

Jack Welch was ruthless-- against his competitors, against vendors, against nonperforming employees-- in a way that George W. can never be. There are so many different interet groups that have political power to protect their own little piece of the pie. The problem is almost never what changes do we need to make, but rather what lobbies do we have to appease to get even the simplest reformes through.

The most glaring example currently are government employee unions that have the Democrats in the Senate tying up the homeland security bill. However, the single most critical problem is border security.

And our problem is that the Democrats want more immigrants, legal or otherwise, because they want their votes. And Republicans want more immigrants because they like the cheap labor. Couple that with a State Department which approved visa applications for the 9/11 hijackers that on their face were fraudelent and an INS that is so sublimely incompetent that its almost a work of art--- and our whole border security system is a train wreck.

You don't need a Harvard MBA to see what the problem is and nothing is going to be done because (so far), its not in anyone's political interest to change the system.

[GeekDejure]

So the USA has been running at Four or Five Frigma all these years . . . and now we want to switch to Six Sigma to fix the problem(s). But hasn't that been the level that the terrorists have been successfully working at???

Hence, I figure we should be striving for Seven Squigma. . . or better yet, "Let's Roll" with Eight Enigma !!! Period. End of argument !!!

[joesbucks]

I do business with a GE division. In the last month, I have had 3 incorrect invoices (documents that bill me MORE than the scale ticket indicates), two shipments rejected by my receiving plant because simple warehouse and trucking procedures weren't followed (seals on trucks, trucks clean, seal numbers on bills of lading) damaged shipments. We also had various product quality issues with these shipments. And these represent 100% of the business I did with GE in October. And this division is teaching our company the joys of 6 sigma. Oh, did I mention that this division recently had a manpower reduction? Obviously the six sigma culture isn't transferred on to the remaining employees who get bumped into new or extra duties or training is lacking. Funny, but in our training, they just told us that six sigma is so strong that even in downsizing the culture is so strong that people take the approach with them as they begin to tackle new assignments. Yeah.....sure!

That's not to say that there isn't merit to 6 sigma. But the GE approach is as much about error reduction and improvement as it is in selling 6 sigma as a product offering. But frankly, if my key customer would approve a competitors product offering (and that's in the process) I would be telling GE goodbye.

[Lion's Cub]

Here's a really novel concept:

Control the borders. Control immigration. Investigate muslims to weed out the militants.

[edwin hubble]

Six Sigma...probably a key to GE's great culture of management.

I have spent a one-day orientation session on Six Sigma at GEFA in Richmond.

Very Impressive... for how it drives the staff (team) and for how it links decisions to results.

If I had to describe it to the uninitiated..
all the best of Deming, Drucker, Covey...and down-to-Earth good common sense... all wrapped up in a very sound package.

[Denver Ditdat]

Even fans like Michael Dell warn it could take years for U.S. intelligence agencies to fully implement Six Sigma but adds, "It's possible."

I'm assuming that Mr. Dell speaks from experience. His computers are widely used at my workplace and I'm not impressed by their construction, reliability, or the support provided by Dell Computer.

[Aracelis]

Ping!

[Vince Ferrer]

As long as we're all having a meeting on this, I'd like our sigmas to have their own colors. Most of the time we could be at yellow sigma, but sometimes, if something goes wrong, we'll go to orange sigma. We never want red sigma, because that will be our bad sigma.

[Travis McGee]

Motorola mention bump.