Six Sigma TQM methodology
Often the quality for products or services provided by any business organization concentrates on satisfying the preferences and needs of clients. The customer driven quality services and products help to ensure the satisfaction of the requirements beyond the expectation of the customers. As the business organizations enhance the quality standard of their services provided to the customer’s; their expectations also increases with it. Keeping this in mind growing business organizations tries to anticipate the changes in the expectations about the services and products persistently.
This perspective encourages the broad utilization of quality management techniques and tools which includes process integrity, cost of quality along with other quality management techniques that are essential for survival of the business organization in the competitive business market. The Total Quality Management (TQM) goes about as one of the important tools which coordinate both external and internal clients and enables the organization to provide quality services to the customers using the available resources.
For this assignment we choose the six sigma TQM methodology. The Six sigma methodology is considered as a Strategy to enhance the quality of a certain process by recognizing and disposing of defects and minimization in the variation of the outputs from that process (Woods, McMurtrey and Griffin 2016). It is considered as an information driven approach in light of Measurement of the procedure variety utilizing Statistical Process Control.
The “Defect” in a process is characterized as any procedure yield that does not meet the customer’s determinations or expectations.
- Improving quality means lessening the imperfections per million opportunities (DPMO). There are two ascribes to this metric that can be controlled:
- Opportunities – decreasing the number of steps, pitfalls and other “opportunities” which will offer assistance in enhancing the quality.
- Defects – diminishing the quantity of defects for each procedure venture through constant process change will help enhance quality.
The selected organization for this assignment is Ford Motor Company, which is often known as the Ford. Established in the year 1903, the company is fifth largest luxury vehicle manufacturer company (after VW, Toyota, General Motors and Hyundai-Kia). The organization is ranked second as per the intimal quality study conducted by J.D. POWER ((Media.ford.com 2017)). The company’s vision is “Quality Is Job 1” for which it is important for it to maintain the quality of the manufacturing of the cars and the different processes related to it.
There are mainly four factors that encouraged Ford to implement Six Sigma TQM. The factors are briefly described in the following part of this report
Reduction in the production cost: After the analysis of the manufacturing process it is found that, the process was shockingly expensive for the manufacturing of the cars (Albliwi et al 2014). It estimated that after the implementation of the six sigma methodology, the company can optimally use the available resources by avoiding the waste of the resources in the process where they are not required.
Improved quality of the manufacturing process: The Company gained its reputation in the worldwide market with its quality products; however in some occasions it is found that the standards of the products got slipped which affected the business of the organization (Woods, McMurtrey and Griffin 2016). While, for most of the similar organizations, a 99% product or process quality level is regarded as an acceptable standard. This standard too surprisingly consist of significant amount of defects. According to different researches may consist of as much as 20,000 occurrences of defects. Six Sigma embraces that only the 99.99966% (and up) is perfect or ideal for any product or process. This rate of quality confines the quantity of defects per million to only seven.
Six Sigma implementation in Ford Company
Better Customer satisfaction: The customer satisfaction is as critical as utilizing or leveraging it for the overall success of the business. A large number of these issues connect to each other, as numerous instances this defects leads to a defective product (Albliwi et al 2014). This will unavoidably disappoint the customers of the organization which is the reason Ford planned to execute the Six Sigma, to streamline their different procedures, and improve the production process by resolving different issues related to the production process. All of which contributes more satisfied customers and productive organization.
Achieving lower environmental impact due to the production process: The use of six sigma quality management plan helped the company to reduce the consumption of the solvents in the production process so that the manufacturing process can achieve better Volatile organic compound (VOC) balance. Being a green quality management philosophy thus it helps in reduction of consumption of vigorous resources that proved to be very costly in the long-term (Woods, McMurtrey and Griffin 2016). By selecting a green work culture with Six Sigma, the company will be able to reduce the costs for the processes, improved quality as well as improved customer satisfaction by providing better quality products.
In order to implement the total quality management in the organization using the six sigma tool, the company should use the DMAIC Model.
Applying the DMAIC model that includes define, analyse, measure, improve and at the end control. The project team should categorize the stakeholders utilizing SIPOC analysis that identifies, inputs, outputs, suppliers, process and the customers (Chowdhury and Taguchi 2016). The groups resulted from the analysis may incorporate not just customers who buy the cars of Ford, additionally internal stakeholders like the different process owners, for this specific project then the paint shop and the quality control group are mainly concerned and connected with this project.
Continuous Improvement is considered as one of the critical factors for the implementation of Total Quality Management in the manufacturing organization Ford. For this process it requires involvement of systematic methods and people or employees of the organization for tackling the issues that are related to the quality of the processes that may have critical impact on the product.
Following are the steps that are important for successful implementation of the six sigma in the organization,
In order to adequately accomplish their main business objectives, the procedure must be taken off deliberately. They started with the best administration amass before proceeding onward to the officer gathering and authority gathering, and at last spreading it to their plants around the world. Indeed, even the best administration, experienced training, and trailed by staff individuals who were relied upon to champion the procedure: Green Belts, Black Belts, and Master Black Belts (Chowdhury and Taguchi 2016).
Another important part in the implementation cultural change. As it is considered a process development strategy and involves changes in the culture and the value. In some cases, substantial change to an organisation’s infrastructure needs to take place. People facing challenges and cultural change due to this project must be handled efficiently. Also a clear communication plan and communication channels are required to motivate employees/ individuals to overcome the possible from the employees, customers and management.
Necessity for the implementation of Six Sigma TQM methodology
Involvement and commitment of the top level management: The Company’s top level management of the organization should be committed and active involvement in the implementation process. For the most part since six sigma is a customer satisfaction tool as well as a quality improvement technique. The top level management of the organization needs to be engaged in the implementation process of six sigma in the organization.
Education and training to the employees: Another important factor that is critical for the success of the implementation process is, providing extensive training to the employees for their six sigma certification (Such as black belt, green belt). This will help them to understand and use the different tools, fundamentals and techniques that may help in increasing the effectiveness of the manufacturing process of the company.
Setting clear performance metrics: This is the point that is considered most critical from the project point of view. It is important for the company to identify what to change and the level it is trying achieve. Before starting the imitative to implement the six sigma methodology it is important for the organization to have a clear idea about the qualities or standards t be achhived by the end of the implementation project.
Combining the success of the project with financial benefits: For the employees of the organization, combining the success of the six sigma implementation process with the financial is important in order to encourage and engage them more effectively in the concerned process. Financial benefits as a measure of success makes it effectively justifiable for employees and help them to identify and relate themselves with the outcome of the six sigma implementation project.
Commitment of the employees: As it happens in most of the cases, numerous employees at Ford, that includes top-level and senior management of the company, at first observed and viewed Six Sigma with suspicion. This implied an absence of commitment to implement the TQM was in existence from the beginning of the project, demonstrating a noteworthy reason for concerns for Ford’s Six Sigma implementation. On the other hand the time constraints, over this made it hard to put its top level leaders or managers through weeks of training.
Funds, productivity and time: Moreover, alongside an absence of commitment, other key resources like time and fund for the project affected on the employee training was in a adverse way (Woods, McMurtrey and Griffin 2016). In addition to that the lack of commitment additionally prompted an absence of productivity of the organization.
Data needs for the productivity: At long last, Ford was new to Six Sigma and inadequately furnished to complete its Six Sigma activity. Six Sigma, obviously, depends on immense measures of information to this implied Ford expected to make and execute new estimation frameworks to handle the requirements of Six Sigma. At exactly that point was it ready to give any advantage to the organization.
Notwithstanding for one of the world’s biggest business organizations, Ford’s interest and the related investment in Six Sigma was huge. After acquiring the training licence, Ford should put a huge number of hours in training of the employees, buy new hardware and install newer software..
In Ford Motor Company, Six-Sigma can be thought as the information driven critical thinking process has the ability to save more than $2.19 billion in squander in its worldwide plants. As indicated by 2003 Annual Report, the waste elimination process along with the quality improvement approach, has had an inexorably effect on the operation of the project.
In the analysis of the manufacturing process it is found that, there are almost 20,000 opportunities that can result in defects in the product or the finished cars in the manufacturing line (Woods, McMurtrey and Griffin 2016). At the end of the implementation or completion of the six sigma in the company, the company can reduce the probable defect drastically so that the company can improve the rate of customer satisfaction who are using their products.
Conclusion
In case of Ford, the most important issue with its production line or manufacturing process was the waste management and issues related to it. They need to tackle this issue by applying Lean Six Sigma methods, for example, an information driven issue resolving process, to devise answers for waste disposal issues. Additionally, the organization’s systems for quality change and waste disposal needs a great amount of change in the organization’s operations. The Consumer-driven Six Sigma tool will help the company to save huge amount investment in its manufacturing plants throughout the world. With respect to customer satisfaction, Ford will be able to enhance the rate of customer satisfaction along with the increasing market share.
References
Ahmed, S., Manaf, N.H. and Islam, R., 2013. Effects of Lean Six Sigma application in healthcare services: a literature review. Reviews on environmental health, 28(4), pp.189-194.
Albliwi, S., Antony, J., Abdul Halim Lim, S. and van der Wiele, T., 2014. Critical failure factors of Lean Six Sigma: a systematic literature review. International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, 31(9), pp.1012-1030.
Atmaca, E. and Girenes, S.S., 2013. Lean Six Sigma methodology and application. Quality & quantity, pp.1-21.
Chowdhury, S. and Taguchi, S., 2016. Robust Optimization: World’s Best Practices for Developing Winning Vehicles. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
Mensah, P., Merkuryev, Y. and Longo, F., 2015. Using ICT in developing a resilient supply chain strategy. Procedia Computer Science, 43, pp.101-108.
Media.ford.com. ,2017. Ford Becomes No. 2 Non-Premium Brand in J.D. Power’s 2017 Initial Quality Study; Ford’s Best Ranking in Report’s 31-Year History | Ford Media Center. [online] Available at: https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2017/06/21/ford-jd-power-initial-quality-study.html [Accessed 14 Jul. 2017].
Pacheco, D., Pergher, I., Vaccaro, G.L.R., Jung, C.F. and ten Caten, C., 2015. 18 comparative aspects between Lean and Six Sigma: Complementarity and implications. International Journal of Lean Six Sigma, 6(2), pp.161-175.
Woods, D.T., McMurtrey, M.E. and Griffin, K., 2016. Six Sigma vs. Performance Solutions by Milliken. Journal of Strategic Innovation and Sustainability, 11(2), p.81.
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