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We bring good things to life
What Is Six Sigma?
Impact
The Roadmap to Customer
Making Customers Feel Six Sigma Quality
Globalization and instant access to information, products and services have changed the way our customers conduct business -- old business models no longer work. Today's competitive environment leaves no room for error. We must delight our customers and relentlessly look for new ways to exceed their expectations. This is why Six Sigma Quality has become a part of our culture. What is Six Sigma? First, what it is not. It is not a secret society, a slogan or a cliché. Six Sigma is a highly disciplined process that helps us focus on developing and delivering near-perfect products and services. Why "Sigma"? The word is a statistical term that measures how far a given process deviates from perfection. The central idea behind Six Sigma is that if you can measure how many "defects" you have in a process, you can systematically figure out how to eliminate them and get as close to "zero defects" as possible. Six Sigma has changed the DNA of GE -- it is now the way we work -- in everything we do and in every product we design.
GE's Evolution Towards Quality
GE began moving towards a focus on quality in the late `80s. Work-Out®, the start of our journey, opened our culture to ideas from everyone, everywhere, decimated the bureaucracy and made boundaryless behavior a reflexive, natural part of our culture, thereby creating the learning environment that led to Six Sigma. Now, Six Sigma, in turn, is embedding quality thinking -- process thinking -- across every level and in every operation of our Company around the globe. Work-Out® in the 1980s defined how we behave. Today, Six Sigma is defining how we work and has set the stage for making our customers feel Six Sigma.
GE's Evolution Towards Quality
High
Six Sigma Quality: The Road to Customer Impact Key Strategy Initiatives: QMI, NPI, OTR, SM, Productivity, Globalization
INTENSITY
Change Acceleration Process: Increase Success and Acceleration Change Process Improvement: Continuous Improvement, Reengineering Productivity/Best Practices: Looking Outside GE Work-Out/Town Meetings: Empowerment, Bureaucracy Busting
Low
1990
TIME
Key Elements of Quality...Customer, Process and Employee
There are three key elements of quality: customer, process and employee. Everything we do to remain a world-class quality company focuses on these three essential elements.
...the Customer
Delighting Customers Customers are the center of GE's universe: they define quality. They expect performance, reliability, competitive prices, on-time delivery, service, clear and correct transaction processing and more. In every attribute that influences customer perception, we know that just being good is not enough. Delighting our customers is a necessity. Because if we don't do it, someone else will!
...the Process
Outside-In Thinking Quality requires us to look at our business from the customer's perspective, not ours. In other words, we must look at our processes from the outside-in. By understanding the transaction lifecycle from the customer's needs Customer's View of GE's and processes, we can discover Contribution what they are seeing and feeling. A B C With this knowledge, we can Customer Process identify areas where we can add GE Process significant value or improvement from their perspective. GE's View
...the Employee
Leadership Commitment
of Its Contribution
People create results. Involving all employees is essential to GE's quality approach. GE is committed to providing opportunities and incentives for employees to focus their talents and energies on satisfying customers. All GE employees are trained in the strategy, statistical tools and techniques of Six Sigma quality. Training courses are offered at various levels: Quality Overview Seminars: basic Six Sigma awareness. Team Training: basic tool introduction to equip employees to participate on Six Sigma teams. Master Black Belt, Black Belt and Green Belt Training: in-depth quality training that includes high-level statistical tools, basic quality control tools, Change Acceleration Process and Flow technology tools. Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) Training: prepares teams for the use of statistical tools to design it right the first time. Quality is the responsibility of every employee. Every employee must be involved, motivated and knowledgeable if we are to succeed.
The Six Sigma Strategy
To achieve Six Sigma quality, a process must produce no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities. An "opportunity" is defined as a chance for nonconformance, or not meeting the required specifications. This means we need to be nearly flawless in executing our key processes. Six Sigma is a vision we strive toward and a philosophy that is part of our business culture.
Key Concepts of Six Sigma At its core, Six Sigma revolves around a few key concepts. Critical to Quality: Defect: Process Capability: Variation: Stable Operations: Attributes most important to the customer Failing to deliver what the customer wants What your process can deliver What the customer sees and feels Ensuring consistent, predictable processes to improve what the customer sees and feels
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