Having had real world experience with Six Sigma, it really is a crock for anything other than endlessly repeatable simple manufacturing.
W Edwards Deming's stuff was far more useful.
My company gave up doing both.
The Toyota Production System actually has benefit, but only a small minority (<10%) of companies who try it actually do it right. Hell, even Toyota managed to veer off of doing it right.
My company tried to to the TPS (a.k.a. LEAN), but used it not to cut costs by improving productivity and quality, but as an excuse to dump employees.
Sigh, I will have to attend green belt training (again) eventually, manditory for all employees. LEAN is a way for managers to feel like they are making a difference. And speaking of green...try having some sugar (C12 H22 011) without carbon...sounds like water! http://www.dominosugar.com/carbonfree/
Keep in mind here that "Green Belt" training is about a decade old. I took it in 2004, and it's a nice introduction to basic statistics. Not worthless, definitely not an environmental thing.
That said, management does tend to use it as an excuse to cut costs instead of improving products.
More than a decade, took it the first time around 1999/2000. Had one guy at work that was very enthusiatic about 6 Sigma and took every course he could. He even got a continuous improvement award for a database program I wrote for charting total estimated radiation exposure when installing shielding.
aka "How to put your own employer out of business".
ReplyDeleteOutside of a few very specific processes, six sigma is pretty much a crock. "Green" is crock, double-damned.
ReplyDeleteI don't have words to describe the crockness of the two combined.
Those are expensive seminars. Green seems to be replacing productive work with worthless seminars.
ReplyDeleteHaving had real world experience with Six Sigma, it really is a crock for anything other than endlessly repeatable simple manufacturing.
ReplyDeleteW Edwards Deming's stuff was far more useful.
My company gave up doing both.
The Toyota Production System actually has benefit, but only a small minority (<10%) of companies who try it actually do it right. Hell, even Toyota managed to veer off of doing it right.
My company tried to to the TPS (a.k.a. LEAN), but used it not to cut costs by improving productivity and quality, but as an excuse to dump employees.
Sigh, I will have to attend green belt training (again) eventually, manditory for all employees. LEAN is a way for managers to feel like they are making a difference. And speaking of green...try having some sugar (C12 H22 011) without carbon...sounds like water!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dominosugar.com/carbonfree/
Keep in mind here that "Green Belt" training is about a decade old. I took it in 2004, and it's a nice introduction to basic statistics. Not worthless, definitely not an environmental thing.
ReplyDeleteThat said, management does tend to use it as an excuse to cut costs instead of improving products.
More than a decade, took it the first time around 1999/2000. Had one guy at work that was very enthusiatic about 6 Sigma and took every course he could. He even got a continuous improvement award for a database program I wrote for charting total estimated radiation exposure when installing shielding.
ReplyDelete