Let six sigma drive your thought process

Speakers addressing the Six Sigma Colloquium held here on Friday borrowed a line from the Software Project Survival Guide to drive home the importance of six sigma: "Between one third and two thirds of projects exceed their schedule and budget targets before they are delivered. Of the most expensive software projects, about half will eventually be canceled for being out of control."

Defined as a measure of quality that strives for near perfection, six sigma is a disciplined, data-driven approach and methodology for eliminating defects (driving towards six standard deviations between the mean and the nearest specification limit) in any process -- from manufacturing to transactional and from product to service. To achieve six sigma, a process must not produce more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities.

To get it right from the beginning, the experts said the approach itself should be design-based rather than process driven. The aim should be on building quality during the design stage and not lean on test and inspection results to determine the utility of the solution.

Such a paradigm shift in approach, in fact the entire thought process, they said, will reduce the effort and cost overrun in the functional and integration testing stage.

Ravi Praksak Salagame, lab manager, John F Welch Technology Centre, said GE had used this mode to strike dividends in work on medical equipment like scanners. A design approach will ensure the product/solution is quite insensitive to variations in inputs, like webpage traffic or power fluctuations, that cannot be controlled.

This seminar on optimising organisational values through six sigma follows implementation of the quality process by several big names in the IT sphere like Wipro, TCS and Infosys. Now even the SME manufacturing segment is cautiously testing out the process to enhance competitiveness. Though a quality process model, six sigma has captured the imagination of many.

With the large concerns already benefiting from six sigma, speakers said, the concept in a simplified form can become a mainstay for the SME segment.

Constrained by lack of human resource and time to go through the full implementation, SMEs can opt for outsourcing the deployment, start with critical areas or go for project based learning, advised Yashvardan Shukla, regional head, Six Sigma Advisory Services KPMG.

Another option, he said, was to lean on the numerous basic statistical techniques that can solve up to 80 per cent of the process glitches. The trick is to start small.

Get just the training you require to 'pick the low hanging fruit', and the rest can follow.