Vital Benefits of Six Sigma Tools

Six Sigma is a scientific approach which employs a high variety of tools within its DMAIC cycle that aims on the ultimate goal of reducing variation in a specified process.

Pareto Charts:
In order to have a successful Six Sigma project it is first essential to focus on the correct process. How can we determine the process that we should focus on in any given system? In a Six Sigma project a process chosen to be focused upon is usually where there is most cost saving possible. This can be determined by utilizing “pareto charts” tool of the Six Sigma methodology.
Pareto chart is a bar chart where the height of the bars indicates the count, or frequency, of occurrence. The bars represent one grouping of the data, such as defect type. The idea motivating this chart is that 80% of the count will be due to 20% of the categories. The bars are arranged in descending order, therefore the dominant group can be determined and it will be the first bar on the left.
By using pareto charts for cost of bad quality for each process it is possible to can find out which process has the highest potential by reduction of variation in that process.
Pareto charts are vital for Six Sigma project for determining which process to focus on and apply Six Sigma methodology to reduce variation.

Measurement System Analysis (MSA):
Another tool that is essential in Six Sigma projects is the Measurement System Analysis (MSA). This tool assesses the reliability of the employed measurement system. Without reliable data it is not possible to make any conclusions or analysis. MSA tool of Six Sigma methodology assesses the measurement system in a scientific and statistical way by a number of criteria such as: Stability, Bias, Linearity, Repeatability and Reproducibility.
By assessing the measurement system on the above mentioned criteria, one can prove how reliable and correct is the data collected in a scientific and statistical way. By providing low percentage of error on the measurement.

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Voice of Customer:
Voice of Customer (VOC) is another tool often used in the define phase of Six Sigma methodology The “voice of the customer” is a process used to capture the requirements/feedback from the customer (internal or external) to understand their requirements. The voice of the customer can be captured in a variety of ways: Direct discussion or interviews, surveys, focus groups, customer specifications,observation, warranty data, field reports, complaint logs, etc. This data is used to identify the quality attributes which customer defines as acceptable. Therefore VOC creates a basis for evaluating the data collected from the process that is aimed to be improved by implementing Six Sigma methodology.

Cause and Effect Diagram:
Cause and Effect Diagram, Fishbone Diagram or Ishikawa diagram is a tool for discovering all the possible causes for a particular effect. The effect being examined is normally some troublesome aspect of product or service quality, such as ‘a machined part not to specification’, ‘delivery times varying too widely’, ‘excessive number of bugs in software under development’, and so on, but the effect may also relate to internal processes such as ‘high rate of team failures’.

Usually a template of a cause effect diagram has the following categories to specify a possible cause of error in the system:

• Man
• Machine
• Method
• Material
• Measurement
• Environment

These categories are not fixed for all cases and should be determined based on the nature of the process investigated.

Cause and Effect diagram provides a great starting point as a template to determine the roots causes of the specific process investigate. It should be noted that a problem can have more than one root cause and it is possible to dig into these root causes by asking why the problem occurs. For the answer given to the why question one must ask why as many times as possible to find the main causes of the problem. In theory one can find the root cause of a problem by asking why up to 5 times.

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