Six Sigma: Breaking the Quality Hype :: essays research papers

SIX SIGMA BREAKING THROUGH THE QUALITY HYPEPARTIAL FULMILLMENTOF THE REQUIREMENTS FORoperations AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT BUSN 6110TitleSix Sigma Breaking through the feel HypDegree     Master of Business AdministrationMotorolas Robert Galvin came up with it and breathed purport back into the company, snagging a Baldrige Award in the process. Larry Bossidy rebooted AlliedSignal with it and then sold frequent Electrics Jack Welch on it. GE then made Six Sigma front-page news. notwithstanding its 15-year hi score and the usual hype that comes with any concept promising organizations considerable bottom-line benefits, the bit of companies actu eithery using Six Sigma appears to be quite small. Moreover, the perceptions in spite of appearance the tincture industry of Six Sigma methodology vary greatly. So whats the story behind the hype? Is there really around muscle in the methodology, or is Six Sigma simply, as many believe, PR-enhanced total quality solicitu de? TABLE OF CONTENTSPageABSTRACT                                                  iiChapterI      admittance                                        1II     TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES                              3III     BENEFITS MULTIPLY                                   8IV     SUMMARY  &nbs p                                          10REFERENCES                                             11AUTOBIOGRAPHY                                             12CHAPTER I designThe year is 1976. The USA was celebrating its 200th birthday. According to the Juran Institute, there was an emerging intimacy in this country for training in quality matters. Manufacturing companies were eager to lend oneself quality improvement within their organizations. They were mov e by a genuinely real competitive threat from overseas. Japanese industries had swallowed up a number of our companies and were threatening others. It turned out that quality was dramatically changing the demeanor many organizations were conducting business. There was a new buzzword being utilise by managers "Total Quality Management", or "TQM" (Blackiston, 1996, p. 1).What emerged as some of the key motivators...the drivers? The Juran Institute believes at first sheer terror motivated many American businesses. These companies realized that quality was a matter of smell and death. Indeed, many American manufacturers of consumer electronics died before they could react (Blackiston, 1996, p. 1).The Juran Institute states another of the essence(p) motivator for quality initiatives was the concept of "the costs of poor quality". This relates to all of those costs that would disappear in an organization, if everything were done correctly right from the start. We precept early on that most companies were simply throwing away about 25% of their sales revenues on scrap, repairs, warranties and other costs of quality (Blackiston, 1996, p. 1).As the historic period went by, the reasons for implementing TQM piled up however, the Juran Institute figured that 80% of the companies that tackled TQM in the 1980s failed (Blackiston, 1996, p.1). Although quality improved, TQM seemed to be mired in find and fix the problem and not worry about the cost.