I would like to ask if people (your company) reading this are using any of the philosophy of Lean and tools of 6 Sigma?

What about Work Keys?

When you need or desire training do you take advantage of your local community college? Other colleges?

I work for a stainless and specialty alloy manufacturing company, we have been using the six sigma methodology for almost 10 yrs and have recently(last 2 yrs) been incorporating Lean Manufacturing. Originally we received training from one of our major customers but now we have brought it all in-house.
My opinion on both topics if that if your upper management/owners do not embrace them, it will be hard to reap the benefits

You are absolutely correct on owner/management buy in. If they are not on board and convienced that it works, you (it) will not get the support that it needs.

My experience in over 25 instances, I also work with a community college and we have provide Lean Management/Six Sicma training, both Green Belt and Black Belt to more than 25 indiviudals and asa a part of the 4 week program (one week a month) they must conduct a project for the company that they work for and make monthly reports and a month after the course ends must make a persentation or report on their project. The least savings that have occured was with a green belt project and it saved the company slightly more than $52,000. Typical savings are 100-200K but one project had savings greater than $2 million.

Believe me if the owners and managers were not convinced before the class they were when it was over.

Richard

Do not believe any of the economic benefit figures.

People inside the company who want to claim credit normally highly overestimate or even imagine these figures. If an outsider helps them do so, they say there was no measurable benefit.

A lot of companies have to go through 6 sigma because an important customer expects them to, but it is hardly used.

Sig sigma is basic statistical techniques, which are not even applicable in a large variety of production problems.

This is my experience.

I find your comments interesting! Motorola was the first to implement 6 Sigma and after 5 years of application to it manufacturing entities claimed (I think this is the right number) $5 billion in savings. they then applied it to their transactional business and got about the same savings in only one year.

You are right in that 6 Sigma is basic statistics. It is how you apply them and what you measure that makes it work. Throw in the philosophy of Lean Management and you have tools and concepts that can create real savings.

I know of one carpet company that sent people for Lean Sigma training. As a result of applying what was learned during the training they were able improve the quality of the product, increase the width of the product, make rolls that held more yards of carpet, and most importantly, meet the needs of new unserved customers.

Six Sigma means less than 2.65 errors in 1,000,000 attempts or opportunities. I think that any company that can do this is going to benefit.

There are way too many companies utilizing this to not pay attention to it!