Success – lower costs and higher customer satisfaction – requires structured implementation.

The Lean Six Sigma quality program has developed into a breakthrough program in the industry. Numerous companies credit Lean Six Sigma for successful achievements. This industry has also proved that practicing either Lean or Six Sigma may help achieve partial success, but the fusion of the two has achieved results more effectively and efficiently. Not every company practicing Lean Six Sigma has a happy story to tell, the most frequent cause of failure being the difficulty in the transition phase from theory to practice.

Abundant literature explains specific details of Lean Six Sigma methodology and tools, but only in their isolated forms. The lack of knowledge of strong associations between the methodology and tools, coupled with the effects of various environments on their uses, poses a great challenge for Lean Six Sigma deployment. Herein, we look at the real challenges and lessons of deployment in an EMS environment, and offer a robust strategy to overcome those challenges.

Six Sigma can be defined as a metric or goal, methodology, philosophy and a set of tools. The metric or goal is to achieve the process/product/service nearly defect-free, or 3.4 or fewer defects per one million units. The methodology provides the structured procedure enriched with detailed tasks, activities and tools to accomplish the goals. The philosophy encapsulates the meaning of “to enhance the customer satisfaction and to improve business performances by meeting the targets with reduced variations.” In the Six Sigma toolbox, though, most tools are very old, but their importance is magnified by Six Sigma-defined time-dependent uses.

The prominent Six Sigma objective is to achieve greater revenue and profit for the business and high customer satisfaction. Properly executed, Six Sigma will achieve this through lower costs. However, achieving Six Sigma goals may require significant changes to the system; change is perceived as a major source for disruption and the higher cost. Although every associate in the organization should be a good change agent, Six Sigma assigns special roles to realize effective change. An executive-level manager in the role of champion acts as the official change agent, facilitating the management plans and change process.

Successful deployment starts with objectives. A complete EMS systems environment is the efficient fusion of customers, business, employees and suppliers. The primary objectives need to be optimized and include supplier quality, business performances, and employee and customer satisfaction.

To understand and quantify the important objectives requires eliciting the voices of supplier, business, employees and customers. Using rigorous analysis methodologies, the prioritized high impact needs must be identified. An effective closed-loop communication needs to be established among suppliers, the business, employees and customers. Baseline studies must be conducted to determine the starting point and to identify cultural, policy and procedural obstacles to success. On top of all that, any methodology must have accomplishing the organization's goal as an objective.

A Lean Six Sigma program can fulfill the identified needs effectively and efficiently. Major challenges in the EMS environment for deploying these methodologies include culture change, establishing supporting systems, empowering deployment agents, fusing subject knowledge and methodologies, designing and monitoring metrics, involvement and buy-in of customers and suppliers, custom-fitting training, and identifying and providing remedial skills.

Deployment Plans and Manual

The primary objective of the deployment plan is to achieve the Six Sigma Cultural Revolution in the organization. As is well believed, a failure to plan is a plan for failure. Deployment must be well designed, planned, analytically examined, and finally, technically monitored and measured in its execution. Indeed, the individual (“pioneer”) responsible for deployment must apply Six Sigma methodology to the deployment phases.

The deployment manual must be sponsored by the executive-level Six Sigma leader, and planned and completed by higher-level Six Sigma deployment pioneers. The manual should cover detailed policies and guidelines, including deployment structure, role assignments, effective project selection criteria, certification criteria, training manuals, training strategy, project management and mentoring guidelines and deployment successes measurement criteria. Success factors are the organization’s Six Sigma vision; the management address to communicate the vision; the employees’ understanding and embracing of the vision; and the plan implementation. These factors reflect the leadership’s effectiveness. Customer, supplier and stakeholder buy-in is also crucial for success.

Effective training manuals. As mentioned, the Six Sigma deployment methodology starts with the voices of supplier, business, employee and customer. These voices are not only dynamic but always instigate changes. These voices represent current deficiencies, future market needs, competitive challenges and innovative ideas. Proper tools need to be used to collect these voices and rigorous methodologies used to analyze and identify the high-impact training needs. Therefore, these voices are the best sources to drive the higher ordered needs for training. Training manuals are documented based on the training needs analysis and derived needs.

Identified needs are classified and the corresponding training modules applied to close gaps by providing instruction on remedial skills. This method of teaching basic skills on-demand deviates from the traditional approach and hastens the Cultural Revolution. This also applies Lean guidelines by eliminating waste. (Six Sigma Lean applies Six Sigma methodology, but with greater speed or efficiency.) Also, training content must be customized to fit the business unit needs, with examples and case studies specific to the environment. The generic materials, trainings or consultancies provide the common solution, but to do better, they must be customized.

Cultivate the culture. Deployment should start from the top (Figure 1). Executive-level buy-in is essential, as it removes roadblocks. Because change management is the major component in deploying the methodology and change is believed to be a source of fear, disturbance and high cost, resistance will be high from all levels in the organization. Executive buy-in opens doors and releases resistance from the cross-functional business units. During initial deployment, some level of enforcement will be required, and is typically softly accepted by delivering the executive-level Six Sigma address across the organization. Therefore, executive-level management needs to be trained on the high-level definition, needs, objectives, deployment strategy, and alignment with the organization’s goals, estimated benefits and metrics.


Following executive buy-in, the second wave to achieve effective deployment is to educate senior management at the regional and/or site level. Senior management must receive the executive-level Six Sigma address and education on Six Sigma introduction, objectives, methodologies, philosophy and tools. This training will help senior management develop the management infrastructure that supports the program. In addition, the environment is prepared where innovation and creativity can flourish to achieve reducing levels of organizational hierarchy, removing procedural barriers to experimentation and change. Leadership participation helps toward spreading the culture, but also spurs the activities required to accomplish organizational goals. It also helps in breaking down barriers in cross-functional deployment activities. Six Sigma must be implemented from the top down. The deployment structure is an important factor in realizing successful deployment (Figure 1).

Project Selection

Six Sigma requires special focus and a tremendous amount of resources, especially during initial deployment. Thus, if project selection is not conducted using a rigorous approach and does not focus on high-impact business customer needs, the consequences will be severe. In terms of the impact on customer or business, the quantity of projects is less important than the quality. Mid-level management selects the high-impact projects, with support from the technical experts. The high-impact projects improve business performance as linked to customer satisfaction and financial results. Analytical tools and methodologies are often used for top-down and bottom-up project selection techniques. Project selection must involve technical and methodology experts and need to follow a carefully designed process (Figure 2). Involving these groups of individuals ensures the projects selected are the right ones. Technical knowledge helps identify the system constraints, while methodology knowledge identifies Six Sigma-appropriate projects. Typically, a team of Green Belts works out the identified projects with technical support from a Black Belt (see below). Most high-impact projects need to be sufficiently narrow in scope to be completed in four to six months.


Role assignments. This program is a cultural change and may face high resistance. As such, role assignment and utilization is a major activity of Six Sigma deployment. The top role within the organization level is the corporate Six Sigma champion;  his or her role includes policy sponsorship; corporate resources management; garnering executive level buy-in; leadership awareness; forming and managing the corporate Six Sigma steering committee; and providing the vision, goals and metrics. Occupying the second spot are the high-level Six Sigma pioneers, responsible for deployment. This role is responsible for generating the deployment manual; managing deployment resources; writing training objectives and manuals; deployment metrics, and breaking the barriers during deployment among the cross-business units.

The business unit owner assumes the next level role, called the sponsor. The sponsor identifies needs for change and helps provide the resources to enact them. The next role is the Black Belt (BB); this person assumes a technical role to assist with Six Sigma methodology and tools. Another important role  is the master Black Belt (MBB), spreading technical expertise in the organization and providing in-depth technical support for BBs.

Every associate in the organization assumes the role of Green Belt. The candidate selection process for MBBs and BBs is rigorous and must be followed because these roles are significant factors toward successful deployment.

Training

Training is provided on needs rigorously identified. Traditional teaching techniques – i.e., classroom training – is insufficient. Rather, interactive training modes and hands-on exercises are required. Basic skills education needs to be provided to ensure that employees possess adequate levels of literacy and experience. Top-to-bottom training for specific courses is conducted. The MBB responsible for training must be an expert on the subject knowledge and Six Sigma methodology. Successful deployment requires the combination of technology or subject knowledge plus the Six Sigma methodology; hence, fusion is essential. Six Sigma role selection is also the key for potential candidates. The selected BB and champions must have analytical  skills, precise communication skills, positive attitudes, dedication, team-building skills, and leadership abilities.

Training must be provided in multiple phases that cover the methodology and tools. Each phase must be followed by a period in which the lessons are learned and deployed and the results assessed. The training environment must be suited for learning and sharing skills. Overall, the training objective must serve the objective of spreading the new culture. Training must be provided to customers, employees and suppliers to achieve the culture spread.

Managing and mentoring. Students must demonstrate they are trained, which generally requires intensive mentoring and management. Mentoring that focuses only on Six Sigma methodology and tools will steer deployment toward failure. Instead, mentoring on the subject knowledge must also be provided. In addition to being a pioneer on Six Sigma methodology and tools, the mentor must have solid subject knowledge to fuse technology and methodology. The project team leader must have good knowledge of program or project management to steer the team toward project goals.

Deployment health monitoring. Six Sigma deployment success must be monitored using metrics. A Six Sigma project can be deployed to achieve efficient deployment, and the outputs or metrics can be used in the monitor phase to assess long-term deployment successes. Six Sigma is a continuous improvement program; thus, a continuous process improvement framework needs to be developed. A dashboard displaying the system of indicators for monitoring progress and success needs to be developed. Metrics are, of course, critical resources of communications and focus on the organization’s business processes, drivers and strategic goals. Deployment metrics not only indicate the number of trained people and finished projects, but more important, must indicate the quality of these individuals and projects and, especially, the ROI.

Best Practices Sharing

Good results are attainable but expensive, and must be shared across the organization to leverage benefits. Care must be taken in selecting the method of communicating the results, with a focus on transferring the findings effectively but safely and cheaply. The Six Sigma toolkit outlines numerous methods for knowledge sharing. The list of important methods includes Web publishing, meetings, reports, email, discussion groups, speeches, video messages, wall displays, banners and “all hands” meetings. Effectively shared knowledge will prevent redundant work and hasten the leveraging of high-impact findings.

Electronics manufacturing is a fusion of supplier, business, employees, stakeholders and customers. They have dynamic, important needs. Rigorous methods are required to elicit and prioritize those needs. These needs must be fulfilled accurately and over short time periods. Adapting and the fusion of Six Sigma and Lean provide the best methodology to fulfill the dynamic needs effectively and efficiently. Carefully designed plans, systematic deployments execution and closely applied management and mentoring schemes can avoid most pitfalls and ensure success. Accuracy and speed – the most prominent features of today’s problem-solving techniques – are achieved by fusing Six Sigma and Lean.

Ed.: This article was first presented at SMTAI in September 2006 and is republished with permission of the author.

Dr. Harjinder Ladhar is a process engineering manager at Solectron Corp. (solectron.com); harjinderladhar@ca.slr.com.

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