1.0 SIX SIGMA INTRODUCTION

With increasing competition and emerging global markets, the pressure to provide higher

quality products and better customer satisfaction has increased, hence increasing workload but

necessitating lower costs. Therefore, it is progressively difficult to be a competitive company as

there are fewer resources available. Six Sigma can help organisations learn from and excel at the

challenges they meet. It is a tactical methodology, which decides the best approach for a given

situation or process.

The success of Six Sigma is linked to a set of functional metrics that lead to significant

improvements in customer satisfaction and bottom-line benefits. Some employees of a future

Six Sigma organisation can view Six Sigma quality as a rigorous application of basic and

advanced statistical tools throughout an organisation. They can also believe that it is a group of

statistical components of old Total Quality Management (TQM) programs with the name of

“Six Sigma”. Others can regard Six Sigma as a refined version of TQM. Six Sigma emphasises

the knowledge of the organisation with established statistical tools to improve both the

efficiency and effectiveness of the organisation in order to meet customer needs and

requirements. Organisations do not necessarily need to use all the measurements described in

this project. It is most important to choose the best set of metrics for a situation, metrics that

yield insight into a situation or process.

Six Sigma is a business process improvement strategy, which essentially checks that a business

is doing what its customers require, that the process employed is the most effective known and

that variation is removed from that process to provide significantly improved consistency. Much

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of the initial success in the application of Six Sigma was based on manufacturing applications;

however, Six Sigma can also be applied in the services and also banking industries.

As clients place a high value on consistent business processes, which have been proven to be

efficient, Six Sigma would meet their requirements as it is a proven methodology for delivering

consistent incremental improvement. By reducing process variation, Six Sigma allows the

organisation to focus on improving process capability and as Sigma levels increase, the cost of

poor quality decreases and profitability increases.

The principal purpose of this project is to review the Six Sigma implementation process and

emphasise the importance of this methodology in the quality area. For this reason, its main

framework is based on the description of the Six Sigma process. The second chapter describes

the significance of Six Sigma, its statistical interpretation, the team members and their

responsibilities and some of the benefits and limitations of this methodology. The third chapter

illustrates the implementation process and the tools, which can be used in order to achieve high-

quality results. The fourth chapter is centred on showing the benefits and difficulties that can

occur in the implementation process in some published case studies. In order to show that Six

Sigma can be used in different sectors, the last chapter presents the application of Six Sigma in

the financial services industry, with a focus on banking

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2.0 SIX SIGMA APPROACHING

2.1. THE ORIGINS OF THE SIX SIGMA METHODOLOGY

Six Sigma started with Motorola when an engineer (Mikel Harry) began to influence the

organisation by studying the variations in processes as a way to improve them. These variations

are known in statistics as standard deviations and are represented by the Greek letter sigma ( σ ).

This initiative became a focal point for improving Motorola’s quality. Bob Galvin, the

company’s CEO, emphasised not only variation analysis but also the principie of continuous

improvement and established the goal of reducing the company defect rate to 3.4 defects per

million, which is near perfection.

Lawrence Bossidy, who after a successful career in General Electric transformed Allied Signal,

a failing enterprise, into a successful organisation, adopted this initiative. With Bossidy’s help,

Allied Signal increased its sales and profits exponentially. This example was followed by Texas

Instruments, which achieved the same level of success. During the summer of 1995 Jack Welch,

GE’s CEO, discovered the success of this new strategy and initiated an enormous

transformation in his firm.

A drive for greater efficiency and the help of Jack Welch transformed GE into a “Six Sigma

organisation” with dramatic results in all departments. For example, General Electric Medical

Systems introduced a new diagnostic scanner developed with Six Sigma principies with a scan

time of 17 seconds (the norm had been 180 seconds). In another division, General Electric

Plastics improved one process for increasing production by almost 500 thousand tons, achieving

not only a substantial profit but also an important contract with Apple.

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2.2. SIX SIGMA DEFINED

In order to introduce a Six Sigma definition it is necessary first to state the meaning of sigma:

For a manufacturing process, the sigma capability is a metric, which indicates how well the

process is performing. Sigma capability measures the capacity of a process to develop without

defects. A defect means an unsatisfied customer. The quality scale of Six Sigma measures the

number of sigmas between the interval defined by the specification limits. The greater the

number of Sigmas between the specification limits the smaller will be the value of Sigma and

the lower the number of defects. The difference between the Upper Specification Limit (USL)

and the Lower Specification Limit (LSL) is divided by the standard deviation to give the Sigma

Level, z. The capability of a process for a Six Sigma Level is two, obtained by dividing the

difference between the USL and the LSL by Six Sigma. Figure 1(a) shows a line with negative

slope representing the relationship between the standard deviation (sigma) and the number of

sigmas between the specification limits. As the sigma value increases, the number of sigmas

reduces and vice versa. The relationship between the number of sigmas and the yield (%) is

shown in Figure 1(b). It has a positive slope indicating that as the sigma level increases the

process yield also increases. Figure 1(c) shows the relationship between the value of sigma and

the number of defects per million. It also has a positive slope, indicating that when sigma

increases, the number of defects per million also increases. Figure 1(d) displays a line with a

negative slope, which indicates that the number of defects per million decreases, when the yield

(%) increases.

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z z

(a) Sigma (b) yield (%)

DPM DPM

(c)

Sigma (d) yield (%)

Figure 1. Relationship between sigma, DPM, yield and the number of sigma.

Sigma measures demand a clear definition of what the customer requirements are. This helps

the company to realise what is important and what need to be improved. With their focus on

defects and defect opportunities, sigma measure can be used to analyse and compare different

process inside an organisation or between organisations. Once that have been identified the

opportunity area and the requirement, the organisation can define the defect and the sigma level

which wants to reach. Table 1 lists the sigma level against the number of defects per million of

opportunities, it shows that the number of defects decreases exponentially as the sigma level

increases.

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SIGMA LEVEL

DEFECTS PER

MILLION

1 690.000

2 308.537

3 66.807

4 6.210

5 233

6 3,4

Table 1. Relation between sigma level-DPM.

The output from manufacturing processes is liable to change over time. The mean or setting of

the process could shift or the standard deviation might change increasing the spread of the

process. The result of this is that a part of the tail of the curve would extend beyond the sigma

limits. This means that the sigma level is smaller than the company expects. In practice it is

devalued by 1.5σ which is an arbitrary value based on manufacturing experience. If a company

has an X sigma level in the short term it will have an (X – 1.5) sigma level in the long term.

Six Sigma is not an exception to this rule, as Figure 2 shows. The blue curve is centred between

the limits, with a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one and represents the short term

process sigma. The green one has exactly the same standard deviation of 1 but the mean has

shifted to the left by 1.5σ and so part of the now falls beyond the LSL.

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1,5s

LSL 6s USL

Figure 2. Difference between the long and the short term

Many people think that 99% quality and therefore 1% defectives is a high level to obtain.

However, the 1% can mean the failure of the company. Table 2 lists a comparison of some

processes evaluated by Six Sigma and by 99% quality. The results show that 99% quality is not

enough in some cases. The table shows that it is necessary to implement Six Sigma as a tool for

reducing defects and increasing customer satisfaction.

99% Quality Six Sigma

20,000 pieces of mail lost per hour 7 pieces of mail lost per hour

Unsafe drinking water 15 minutes per day. Unsafe drinking water 1 minute every 7

months.

5,000 surgical operations per week. 1.7 surgical operations per week.

No electricity almost 7 hours per month. No electricity for 1 hour every 34 years.

Table 2. Comparison between Six Sigma and 99% quality

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The sigma level for airline company safety is 6.5 sigma, which means less than one-half of a

failure per million flights; in contrast, airline baggage operations work at 3.5 Sigma. People fly

by plane because it is a safe transport medium but a piece of lost luggage is tolerated.

In order to understand better the significance of being a Six Sigma organisation it is necessary to

analyse the connotation of Six Sigma.

• Six Sigma is an enterprise process, which enables companies to improve their final

results, design, and supervise their usual activities, minimising waste and resources

and increase costumer satisfaction.

• It allows enterprises to reduce the number of defects in all their outputs and

eliminate quality error.

• The Six Sigma methodology not only enables errors to be detected and corrected, but it

also contributes methods to create new processes, which ensure that the error does not

occur again.

• The Six Sigma is a business strategy, which seeks to identify and eliminate causes

of error or defects or failures in business processes by focusing on outputs which

are critical to the customer.

Once Six Sigma have been defined is necessary to understand the importance of implementing

Six Sigma, the different models which can be used and the team’s structure and responsibilities

of the team members which is analysed in the next stage.

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2.3. IMPLEMENTING SIX SIGMA

There are six phases to implementing Six Sigma in an organisation. The first normally begins

with leader awareness training and a few improvement projects. These should not only focus on

manufacturing, because the company will limit itself to traditional quality improvement

initiatives, but it is also necessary to recognise improvement opportunities in all key business

processes. The second phase is related to establishing good communication with customers,

employees, and suppliers. The information obtained from these groups will help the

organisation to determine a starting point and to eliminate obstacles to achieving the goals. The

third phase is based on the training of the team to assure that adequate levels of numeracy are

possessed by all employees. In the fourth concerns the development of a framework for

continuous process improvement. In the fifth phase is selected the business process to be

improved. Six Sigma projects are organised to improve business performance. Lastly, the

individual employees and teams who will conduct the Six Sigma projects are chosen.

Eckes [2003] gives three reasons for implementing Six Sigma, the first reason for implementing

Six Sigma is the arrival of a global economy and new competitors. This create a new, more

competitive market and makes enterprises adopt the level of quality that the customer demands.

The second is based on total quality. Due to a reduction in demand and an extraordinary

increase in the level of cheap offers, which began in the early 1980s in Japan and in the new

industrial countries, customers began to require more value for money. The third reason is

generally to reduce the cost associated with poor quality. Enterprises want to make more

products rather than to make better ones and they prefer control and correct rather than prevent.

Six Sigma quality is one way to achieve value for the enterprise’s expenditure in terms of both

money and resources.

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In the 1980s, Total Quality Management (TQM) was very popular but its impact has begun to

wane. A new methodology was necessary and Six Sigma is emerging as the new way.

Six Sigma focuses on reducing process variation and then on improving process capability and

in order to achieve this uses two improvement models based on the PDCA cycle, introduced by

Shewhart and applied the first time for Edwards Deming, which describes the logic of data

process improvement. The PDCA cycle is based on the next phases:

• Plan: Identify objectives, choose possible solutions, and plan an implementation

test.

• Do: Drive to the planned solution.

• Check: compare with the objective.

• Act: Take necessary action to achieve the goals.

The two Six Sigma models, which are used in order to reduce the number of defects and to meet

with the customers requirements, are DMAIC and DMADV. The Design for Six Sigma process

is known as DMADV - Define, Measure, Analyse, Design and Verify. This process is generally

used for product design before manufacturing. The DMAIC process is used to refine the

manufacturing process through reduction of common cause variation. The DMADV process is

designed to remove variation between what the customer wants and what actually was designed.

The DMADV methodology should be implemented when a service or product needs to be

developed in a company where does not already exist or it does not reach the specific sigma

level. The phases of DMADV are:

• Define the project goals and customer deliverables.

• Measure and determine customer needs and requirements.

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• Analyse the process to meet the customer needs.

• Design (detailed) the process to meet the customer needs.

• Verify the design performance and ability to meet customer needs.

The fundamental objective of the Six Sigma methodology is the implementation of a

measurement strategy that focuses on process improvement and variation reduction through the

application of the DMAIC process which as is shown in Figure 3 is based on five cycled phases.

5.CONTROL 1.DEFINE

2.MEASURE

3.ANALYZE

4.IMPROVE

Figure 3. DMAIC cycle

Selecting the right people is one of the key aspects of the implementation process. It is

necessary to realise the importance of finding the correct team, which is going to be involved in

the Six Sigma initiative. In order to achieve their desired goals, the team may need to change the

way in which they have been working and thinking. A Six Sigma project requires a leader who

work-guide the team from the old way of working to the Six Sigma way. Everyone involved in

Six Sigma is a leader (Champions, MBBs, Black Belts, and Green Belts). Managers should be

trained in using Six Sigma to help run the organisation. The function of the leadership team

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depends on the size of the company and the project. In large companies, there is a leadership

team at the corporate level and other leadership teams for each part of the project unit and

function. Eckes[2003] indicates that a good team requires different people and abilities.

• Experts who understand the current process.

• Workers who use the process and work closely with customers.

• Individuals who are completely objective with the process.

• Customers of the process and suppliers.

• People who are not familiar with the process.

Intelligent and dynamic people should form the team but they must work well together to

achieve the goals of the organisation. In the process of selecting people for the team, it is

necessary to keep in mind some of the characteristics that the members of the team should

possess i.e. they should be:

• Creative and open minded.

• Good team players

• Respect the Six Sigma’s hierarchy.

A team generally comprises between 3 and 12 members but smaller teams are preferred because

generally they work faster and produce results more quickly. Larger ones tend to require

additional time and sometimes it is necessary to form sub teams in order for them to operate

more effectively. In large enterprises, it is more common to have a design team of 5 or fewer

people as a subset of a larger team. This structure helps the design team to establish faster

results. Having considered the size of the team, the next issue is its structure.

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The leadership team is the responsible for identifying the improvement opportunities and

leading the project to achieve the team’s goals. In the case of a manufacturing process, the

leadership is the plant manager and the members of his or her department. In the case of the

finance function, the leadership team would be the CFO. A champion, Master Black Belt, Black

Belts and Green Belts, should form the team.

Each team should have a champion who is the business and political leader of the Six Sigma

effort. He or she uses to be a member of the unit leadership team and is the maximum

responsible of the project. Some of the responsibilities which a champion should have, are:

• Select the project.

• Designate the initial project charter.

• Choose Black Belts.

• Eliminate barriers to achieve goals.

• Review the project with Black Belts to detect improvement areas.

The Master Black Belts are technical leaders of the team. They have strong leadership qualities

and help the organisation to integrate Six Sigma within its operations. The MBB helps the

Champion to select the projects and to review the progress, they also train Black Belts, and

sometimes Green Belts. The MBB should help the champions in the improvement process and

implement the changes around the organisation. The Project Champion has the responsibility to

see that any problems or barriers identified are resolved.

Black Belts are responsible for driving organisational vitality and process consolidation, for

rationalising project activities, and improving service levels through quality leadership,

mentorship, and application of the Six Sigma methodology. Black Belts will work closely with

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champions and the leadership team to ensure devotion to the quality methodology and to the

tools. This includes, but is not limited to, quality reviews, validation of adherence to quality

methods, strategy, and objectives.

A Green Belt sometimes leads a project with the supervision of a Champion or MBB. Green

Belts work part-time, devoting typically 25 percent of their time to the project. Green Belt

projects are more focused than are Black Belt projects. Since Green Belts work on improvement

projects in addition to their existing job responsibilities. Some companies have an objective to

form all professionals will be at least Green Belts such as GE. Some Green Belts will become

Black Belts. The different departments of the organisation should:

• Provide data as needed by the Black Belt .

• Provide expertise.

• Provide members for the Black Belt project team.

• Help identify improvement opportunities.

The team needs to include people who are familiar with the process, so that they can contribute

to identifying the solution. They will be involved in the process implementation. The Black

Belt, Project Champion, and managers are required to prepare the future team members report.

The process of forming the team is:

• Choose potential team members.

• Potential team members accept to be in the team.

• Identify any barrier, which do not help to achieve the team’s goals.

• Black Belt and the team work on the project.

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It is important to inform the team about their role in the project and the benefit that they provide

to it so that they can appreciate their importance within the organisation. The new Six Sigma

organisation needs to realise the importance of re-evaluating existing work programmes, and to

re-prioritise how they utilise their resources. Six Sigma is usually deployed using existing

resources.

During the implementation process the team needs to realise that they can find out some

problems because the own Six Sigma methodology has its benefits but also its limitations. Some

of these are described on the next section.

2.4. BENEFITS AND LIMITATIONS OF SIX SIGMA

When Six Sigma is first introduced, opinions In many organisations vary between enormous

enthusiasm and scepticism. At the beginning of its application there can be many

disappointments, giving rise to adverse comments such as :”There is nothing really new in Six

Sigma compared with TQM.” “This will not work in our enterprise.. We are doing Six Sigma

already,” etc.

Some of the benefits of Six Sigma compared to other quality improvement initiatives are

according to Anthony [2001]:

Six Sigma strategy focuses on achieving financial benefits beginning from the

bottom line of the business. A Six Sigma project can be accepted without the bottom

line having been identified and defined.

Six Sigma needs a passionate leadership for its successful deployment.

It integrates the human and process elements for improve.

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Six Sigma is based on tools and techniques that have to be followed to achieve

the goals. Each has its place and reason to be applied to obtain the final objective of

the business.

Six Sigma establishes an internal structure within the business, enterprise which

leads, deploys, and implements the approach. This usually takes the form of:

1. Master Black Belts (MBBs).

2. Black Belts (BBs).

3. Green Belts (GBs ).

Six Sigma is based on the importance of accurate data and decision making

rather than on assumptions.

Six Sigma utilises statistical concepts, tools, and techniques for reducing the

number of defects based on variability reduction.

Six Sigma like any other quality improvement initiative has its limitations.

Sometimes, there are many problems in applying the change and finding the data

to begin with can be difficult. This could take most of the project time.

One of the most important problems associated with implementing the Six Sigma

methodology is determining the right selection and prioritisation of projects. In some

enterprises, the process of prioritisation is completely subjective.

The statistical definition of Six Sigma is 3.4 defects per million of opportunities;

on the one hand, this can result in dissatisfied customers, but on the other it cannot

assume that all defects have the same level of severity. For instance, for an airline

company a tragic accident is more serious than a cold meal.

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A 1.5 sigma shift cannot be assumed for all processes.

Six Sigma can easily digress into a bureaucratic exercise between Master, Black

and Green Belts.

The relationship between Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ) and Process Sigma

Quality Level requires more justification.

In this chapter has been explained the necessity of implementing Six Sigma, the role of the

different members of the team and some of the benefits and limitations that this methodology

imply. The principal objective of the next chapter is to approach, in more detail, to the tools and

methods used during the implementation process.

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3.0 THE IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS

3.1 PROJECT SELECTION

In order to make a good project selection for Six Sigma application, it is necessary to

understand both the organisation and the customer.

Before an organisation decides to implement the methodology, it is necessary for the Managers to

understand the meaning of a Six Sigma organisation and what is needed to achieve it. Six Sigma

initiatives require a radical change within the organisation and a great deal of effort for achieving

the fundamental goals. Within an organisation, there are a lot of interconnected processes and

functions to form the end product. Enterprises produce different products and services all of which

are going to be consumed, so they have to be competitive in the marketplace and for this reason

should have a good quality-price relationship.

Six Sigma is a methodology for improving existing processes and creating new ones and it provides

an excellent opportunity to review and revise corporate strategy plans. Several products, services,

and processes may be inappropriate, ineffective, or even inefficient and should be analysed. Each

organisation decides what it is going to produce but the product should be made to suit the needs

and wishes of the customer. Organisations must be able to recognise the customer and their needs

and expectations. The success of a company in the marketplace depends on several factors one of

which is quality. If a company is to achieve its goals, it should consider its situation in the market is

going to be and use its resources to achieve the required goals. After understanding the products

and the services offered, and even the market, the company has to be aware of how quality can be

used as a key differentiator. Increasing quality in products and services allows a company to enter

newer and wider markets, to consolidate its existing market and to centre on customer satisfaction.

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When an organisation begins to grow and develop in size and structure a lot of inadequate and

inefficient processes emerge. Most of the employees of a business realise that a change is needed

but are unable to carry out improvement. Projects teams, for implementing Six Sigma, need

extensive training. The best way to start a project is to define a dynamic document, which sets out

the responsibilities, goals, roles, and aims of the team.

Everything that is done in life follows a process with a series of steps. In some cases these steps are

easy to recognise and sometimes there is an output .When a process map is constructed it is

necessary to identify the inputs and the outputs at each step. Process maps commence at a start

point and finish at a stop point, and pass through different process steps with decision points and

inefficient delays as shown in Figure 4.

Rework

Less efficient side process

START

DECISION

STEP DELAY STEP

DECISION

STOP

MOVE STEPDELAY MOVE

Figure 4. Process map.

The high level of the process map is called SIPOC (Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs, and

Customers) demonstrates areas of inefficiency and waste. The Six Sigma Methodology is

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focused in understanding the relationships between dependent and independent variables. This

is fundamentally different to what has been done in the past which was to focus on the outcomes

or the Ys. Now the emphasis is placed on understanding the vital inputs or Xs. Controlling these

parameters will bring success.

Y (output) = function of (inputs X1, X2, X3… Xn).

Six Sigma is aimed at producing Ys within a specific range by reducing the variation in the key

influential Xs. When Y is centred about the targeted (desired) value and the variation in the Ys

is 33 percent of the spread of the upper and lower control limits, we have a Six Sigma process.

Six Sigma uses statistics. It is necessary to use statistical tools to characterise the influence of

the Xs on the Ys. It can be quite difficult when there are interactions occurring among the

multiple Xs that influence Y and when there is a system that cannot be measured.

A process map is fundamental to the Six Sigma method. It is the foundation of measure. In

manufacturing, a good process map can be facilitated only with a knowledgeable and

participative team of operators, maintainers, process engineers, supervisors and engineers.

Process mapping allows the identification of core and enabling processes, as well as added

value and enabling process steps because customer are only interested in processes which add

value to the product. The main core processes are those, which constitute essential operations,

add value for the customer, and map well onto customer perceptions of the delivery of the

product or service. The core processes are those for which the customer is prepared to pay. They

can be divided into two or three more processes. However, there are other processes, which

from the point of view of the customer, do not add value to the product, these are enabling

processes.

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The team needs to identify who is the customer and what are the customer’s requirements. In order

to achieve a good project selection the team needs to understand the classification of the customer,

the necessity of customer satisfaction, and the critical to quality characteristics. The customer can

be classified as external and internal customer.

A external customer is any person who is not related with the organisation and tastes the product or

the service of the organisation is an external customer. The most direct customer is the one who

consumes the product or service. The team can identified three types of possible customers:

1. Customers are those who have been consuming the products or the services of an organisation

during a determined period.

2. Not customer is existing or past customer who has gone elsewhere and now is not customer of

the organisation. These customers are important for the organisation because they were customers

in the past and now they are not. They are dissatisfied customers and the company needs to analyse

which are the reason to be not customer.

3. Non-customers are potential customers. Each class is important to an organisation but the most

important are the last two, they have more to say about poor quality and added value.

Sometimes the output of one process is the input of another and so if is an output is a defect it could

cause more defects in the final product or service. The internal customer is of equal importance to

the running and smooth operation of a company .Sometimes they are the stakeholders, in which

case they have a terrific interest in the operation and success of the business. In the case of

shareholders, they are interested in the value and worth of the business and the return on

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investment. Internal customers do not have too much influence over the control of a company but

they help to achieve its objectives.

Six Sigma quality is aimed tat satisfying the expectations of the customer and may include the

profitability and corporate safety for the shareholder. In terms of processes, Six Sigma is related to

defect reduction and this not only influences customer satisfaction but also improves the internal

processes. As far as employees are concerned, Six Sigma is aimed at increasing the value of the

employees because they become more engaged with the operation of a successful business.

3.1.1 Customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is a fundamental measure of quality. It is the experience of the customer with

a product or a service of the company. A satisfied customer usually results in repeat business and

he/she tells others about their experience with the organisation. On the other hand, a dissatisfied

customer means not only that this customer cease to consume the product or service of the

organisation but also relates to others the poor experience with the business.

It is possible to measure customer satisfaction on a percentage scale. The steps, which should be

followed, are first of all identify customer needs and requirements, then core processes, and finally

convert requirements into critical to quality characteristics.

First, it is important to understand the customer and the different groups that can exist. It is also

important to understand that the customer is directly related to the decision making unit which

influences when the customer is going to purchase the goods or services. In simple cases it is

assumed that there is only one consumer however in other cases the decision making unit is more

complex and the buying process is difficult to determine. The buying process involves recognising

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a need, determining a specification for solution, searching for information, evaluating alternatives,

making decisions and finally resulting in outcomes. Some studies based on the customer are

extremely complex and it may take several months to understand.

There are two definitions of core processes. The customer definition is that it is all those which add

value, affect satisfaction and quality of the product. The business definition is all these which add

value to the customer. The only way to identify core and enabling processes is to ask and study the

costumer. The result of this is a quantifiable ranking of such processes against customer judgement.

Six Sigma initiative consists of quantifying customer satisfaction. In most cases the customer does

not realise that he/she is the most important part of a Six Sigma initiative and the customer

information is the basis of Six Sigma. The important customer information needs to be processed

and analysed.

Customer satisfaction means that all the needs and requirements of the customer are achieved. It is

necessary to realise what the characteristics of the products or service are. The team needs to

improve customer satisfaction and list these needs and requirements for each process. This step is

quite difficult because the own customers sometimes do not know what really expect of the product

or service. For example, safety and accuracy are always vital to good service and a failure in any of

these is a dramatic defect for the customer. For this reason it is necessary to determine the things

and the process which create unsatisfied customers.

3.1.2 Determining “critical to quality” characteristics

First, it is necessary to begin with a definition of critical to quality. Neumann [2000] defined it as

follow :

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CTQs (Critical to Quality) as the key measurable characteristics of a product or process whose

performance standards or specification limits must be met in order to satisfy the customer. They

align improvement or design efforts with customer requirements.

CTQs represent the product or service characteristics that are defined by the customer (internal or

external). They may include the upper and lower specification limits or any other factors related to

the product or service. A CTQ usually must be interpreted from a qualitative customer statement to

an actionable, quantitative business specification.

It is necessary to determine a list of CTQ characteristics for processes that are not only measurable

but also actionable. Customer needs must be converted into CTQs. The success of Six Sigma is

based on a good conversion between CTQs and requirements. Only when this is achieved, the

process of change is possible and the organisation is closer to its goals. Customer research is often

expensive and all too often ongoing research is required to find a solution to reduce costs as well as

to provide continuous information, which helps the business to act.

At this stage, it is necessary to determine what the customer requirements are for each individual

process and to set specific target limits. The team needs to analyse customer requirements and set

targets. In order to do this the team should put their shelves in the position of an external customer.

Some of the steps that need analysing to determine critical to quality characteristics are the voice of

the customer and customer requirements and needs analysis.

Customers often have difficulty in expressing what they want or expect from a service or product

and forget the main things. However, this raw information can be quite useful even though it may

not be complete. The methods for obtaining information about “the voice of the customer” include

focus groups, interviews, market research, and becoming a customer and observing customers in

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action. The most important for achieving the company goals is the ability to listen to customers’

requirements.

In this section, the key issues will be determined. In order to identify a key issue it is necessary to

list one or more requirements, which would resolve the issue of the customer satisfaction. In some

cases, requirements are difficult to be expressed and sometimes they can be analysed from different

points of view. A good requirement should be measurable, concise and complete, but not a solution.

When new processes or products are designed, it is necessary to work down from high level

concepts of general customer needs. One of the tools that can help to the team in this regard is

Mallow’s hierarchy of needs which is a list of customer requirements from the basic to the abstract

(see Figure 5)

1. Physiological Needs

Physiological needs are the very basic ones such as air, water, food, sleep, etc. When these are

not satisfied a person may feel sick, irritate, in pain, discomfort, etc. Once they are satisfied,

he/she may think about other things.

2. Safety Needs

These needs are mostly psychological in nature. Security is essential in any purchase.

3. Social Needs

Humans have a desire to belong to groups: clubs, work groups, religious groups, family, etc.

There is a need to be accepted by others.

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4. Esteem Needs

There are two types of esteem needs. First is self-esteem, which results from competence or the

mastery of a task. Second, there is the attention and recognition that comes from others.

People, who have all of their lower needs satisfied, often drive very expensive cars because

doing so raises their level of esteem.

5. Self-Actuation

The need for self-actuation is the desire to become more and more what one is, to become

everything that one is capable of becoming. People who have everything can maximise their

potential. SELF-ACTUATION

SELF-ESTEEM

SOCIAL

SAFETY

PHYSIOLOGICAL

Figure 5. Mallow’s Hierarchy.

Kano Analysis is another tool used to determine customer requirements and needs. It is a quality

measurement tool used to prioritise customer requirements based on customer satisfaction and to

determine which requirements are important. Not all identified requirements may be of equal

importance to all customers. Kano analysis can help organisations to determine which requirements

have the highest priority. This is useful because customer needs are not all of the same kind and

they do not all have the same importance. The results can be used to achieve customer satisfaction.

Note that the Kano model can be used to help identify customer segments, based on the relative

priority of each segment's requirements. Once segments have been defined, the Kano model, which

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is shown in Figure 6, can be applied once again to each segment to further defined the segment's

priorities.

There are four types of customer needs:

1. The Surprise and Delight factors.

2. The More is better.

3. The must have things. Without this, the product is not sold.

4. The dissatisfies, the things that cause customers not to like a product.

Satisfaction

One dimensional

Delighters

Performance

Lack of performance Must-haves

Dissatisfaction

Figure 6. Kano diagram.

Another powerful tool used to design new products is Quality Function Deployment (QFD)

which is used to define customer needs or requirements and convert them into specific plans to

produce what the customer wishes. The voice of the customer, as has been stated, is a necessary

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tool to reflect the requirements of the customer. The next step, once that the requirements and

needs has been collected, is to build a product planning matrix with all the information about the

customer requirements. This matrix is used to translate higher-level needs into lower level ones

and determines how the needs are transformed into a satisfying product. The basic QFD

methodology has four phases. During each phase, one or more matrices can be built to realise

critical product and process planning and design information.

Once the majority characteristics of the project have been defined, the team can begin to

establish what they are going to measure and to establish the procedure to achieve a good

measure of the process.

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3.2 THE MEASUREMENT PHASE

The most important purpose of the measure phase is to understand the current state of the

process and collect reliable data on process speed, quality, and cost that will be used to realise

causes of problems. Collecting measurements is necessary but can sometimes be difficult and

could incur the majority of the project time and money; however, it adds facts and informed

weight to the project. The team is therefore able to calculate an initial process metric and give

important information for analysing the situation. It is important to notice that without this

phase the DMAIC cycle cannot continue because only that which can be measured can be

controlled and improved. One relevant measurement is the CTQ characteristics from which the

process sigma metric is calculated. In order to evaluate the process it is necessary to determine a

measure of the root cause variations of the defects and process problems. The team needs an

appropriate data collection plan and a formal definition of what to collect. It is necessary to

obtain sufficient sample points to ensure that all possible aspects of variation and customer

satisfaction are included.

Most things that happen in a business can be measured but the principal requirement for

measurement is the ability to observe. It is important to understand the difference between

continuous and discrete variables because this not only influences how the data is collected but

also how the measure is defined. Sometimes the difference can seem confusing. Continuous

measures can be defined as those factors that can be measured on an infinitely divisible scale or

continuum such as weight, height, temperature, etc. An discrete variable is an attribute.

Many factors can only be measured as discrete variables; e.g., customer satisfaction is often

represented as a rating scale, which is a discrete measure.

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Some of the problems associated with discrete variables are:

It is necessary to make more observations to obtain good results.

Discrete variables can hide certain information.

There are more potential useful forms of analysis with continuous data than with

discrete.

Six Sigma measurements are about understanding the relationship between the X factors and the

impact that they have on customer satisfaction and profitability, Y. There are two types of

measures, output and input. Figure 7 shows a simplified process.

(X) (X) (Y)

Figure 7. Simplified process

PROCESS OUTPUT INPUT

The goal of the team is to find the Xs that are the indicators of the critical output Y. For this

purpose, it is necessary to use a SIPOC diagram and sub process map. The basic steps for

implementing any measurement system in a project are select what to measure, develop

operational definitions, identify data sources, prepare a collection and sampling plan,

implement, and refine the measurement.

3.2.1 Select the possible measurements

Enterprises do not always know exactly how the customer evaluates their product and services.

If the voice of the customer of the enterprise is not good enough or not very sophisticated, a big

risk exists of making no correct measures. It is necessary to select the optimal performance

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measure of the product. The team needs to evaluate what is more valuable for the customer and

to determine the possible opportunity area. The team has to be trained to select the right

measurements and needs to bear in mind, when selecting the items to be measured, which are

the available data, the complexity, the cost and the lead-time required of getting the data.

3.2.2 Construct operational definitions

An operational definition means a clear and understandable statement of what is to be measured

or observed so that everybody can perform the task. This is important because without it

different members of the team may not operate in the same way. An operational definition helps

to ensure that the right data is corrected and that it is understood. The team needs to use the

following steps to create operational definitions:

1. The first is to understand the goal for collecting the data and what is actually required.

2. It is necessary to create a clear data collection procedure that is understood by everyone

concerned in the process thereby minimising mistakes in the data collection (correct units, no

missing information, etc.).

3. At this stage, the team needs to check the operational definition with the people involved in

the previous step and those who were not involved to evaluate and compare the results. It is

necessary that everyone obtains the same results, If not the operational definitions will need to

be redefined.

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3.2.3 Identify data sources

The company has to be sure that the sources that are chosen have accurate data and represent the

process that the team wants to measure. The required data is sometimes held on a computer, but

often what is needed is not captured on the system. On the other hand, the data can be taken

manually but is prone to human error. In order to obtain complete and accurate data, the team

needs to bear in mind:

Why it is collecting the data.

Explain for what the date is to be used.

The company needs to choose qualified people to collect the data.

Sometimes it is a good idea to give data collectors the opportunity to provide inputs on

the process.

Another option is to use existing data; this has some advantages such as achieving data, learning

about the input, process, or output and being quicker and easier than gathering new data. There

are however cautions to remember:

- The data should be recent.

- The team needs to know how the data were initially collected; the procedure may not

be consistent with the operational definition.

- The data should be representative of the process and the measurement system.

- There must be enough data for the team to draw conclusions.

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3.2.4 Prepare a collection and sampling plan

At this stage, the team needs to develop data collection forms, stratification plans and a

sampling procedure. Standard forms can facilitate data collection, because they enable faster

capture data and ensure consistency. Often a company has to create its own forms. The

following guidelines can help to construct an appropriate form.

Select the data and factors, which are to be included.

Determine the period over which the form will be used.

Develop the form:

- Review different form formats.

- Include the name of the data collector and comment columns.

- Use a clear title.

- Decide on the accuracy of the measuring system and indicate it on the form.

- Testing the form design and making changes where necessary.

Another tool which can help the team is the utilisation of check sheets which are employed

for distinguishing between fact and opinion and also for gathering data about how often a

problem is occurring and the type of problem occurring. Some of the most common check

sheets are:

1.Defect or cause Checksheet.

2.Data sheet. Captures readings, measures, or counts quantities.

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3.Concentration Diagram Checksheet. The item is observed and the data collectors

mark where the defects are produced. The data collection sheet is based on the

physical representation of a product, workplace, or form.

4.Traveller Checksheet. It is a check sheet that “travels” with the product through the

process. It is one good way of analysing data at each step of the process.

Once the collection forms have been developed, it is necessary to establish stratification plans.

The purpose of stratification technique is to obtain a baseline measure of performance against

customer requirements. Sometimes the team wants to know more about the data and

stratification helps to clarify what is really happening. The team can identify the strata by

making a list of factors, which is related with the problem. Some of these include:

1. Identifying output measure.

2. Introducing the questions that the team has about the output measure.

3. Identifying characteristics which define different subgroups.

4. Creating specific measures for each subgroup.

5. Discussing if the specific measures help to analyse the output Y. If not it will need

to apply the measurement system to other items.

After stratifications plans haves been designed, the team can begin the sampling procedure.

Sampling means using some of the data in a group to represent the whole process. Statistics is

based on sampling and this discipline has the ability to draw conclusions about all items based

on a part of them. Getting a valid sample is in some cases hard work and presents a significant

challenge. Different factors affect the number of samples and size of them that the company

needs to collect. For this reason it is necessary to establish if the items change with time or not

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(process or population), the data type (Continuous or discrete), the finality of this data and the

confidence that the company put in the results.

The most difficult aspect of sampling is to ensure that bias is kept occurs to a minimum. Bias

occurs when the sample does not represent the whole. There are others concepts that it is

important to define to understand the importance of collecting data:

- Confidence level: this concept is related to how certain that the company wants to be.

- Precision: The quality of being exact.

The team, after developing the stratification plans and selecting the sampling population, needs

to achieve accurate data, which will be analysed in the next stage.

3.2.5 Implement and refine measurement

In the manufacturing are there are several methods that can be used to assess accuracy. There

are several types of measurement system analysis Gage R&R, Stability Analysis, Discriminate

Analysis and Kappa Analysis.

Measurements need to be accurate and precise. The accuracy of data means that they due

reflects the true one but it may be imprecise because the units used are not sufficiently

discriminatory. The data can be precise but not accurate.

Gage R&R is one of the most useful methods. This method is most commonly done with

continuous data. Gage R&R involves:

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1. Repeatability. This is an indication of the variation that occurs when successive

measurements are made under the same conditions, person, thing, characteristic and under the

same environmental conditions.

2. Reproducibility. This is the variation in the average of the measurements when the measure

is made by different operators under the same conditions.

If the measurements do not change over time, the instrument is said to be stable. Nevertheless,

there are some reasons that can produce a loss of stability due to either deterioration of the

instrument or increasing in variability of operation actions. Evaluating the stability of a system

can be achieved by maintaining a control chart on the system. Discrimination enables changes

in the characteristics to be detected. The team can evaluate discrimination graphically with a

ranges chart. The other measurements analyse methods discussed in this Section use continuous

data for their calculations. When attribute data cannot be changed to continuous data it is

necessary to use Kappa analysis. At this point, the objective is to determine how the process are

working and establish baselines. For this purpose output and total process performance

measures have to be developed.

3.2.6 Output Measures

The process measure Six Sigma is focused on reducing defects within a process. There are

several ways to measure defects:

1. Simplicity. The calculations of the defects measures can be made using basic mathematics.

2. Consistency. Defect measures can be applied to any process.

3. Comparability. Defect measures can be used to compare processes in different areas of a

business.

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Some disadvantages or problems make defect measures less attractive. One is that they only

look to see if one process is good or bad and in the case of continuous data the measure can hide

information. Some key concepts of defect measurement that need to be signed are:

Unit. An item or the final product or service that has been delivered to the customer.

Defective. An entire unit that fails to meet acceptance criteria, regardless of the number of

defects within the unit. A unit may be defective because of one or more defects.

Defects per unit. It is the number of defects over the number of units sampled.

Defect opportunity. One product can have multiple customer requirements and for this

reason there can be several opportunities for defects. Sometimes it can be difficult to

determine the number of opportunities that one product can have.

The defects per million of opportunities indicates that how many defects would arise if there

were a million of opportunities.

All the defect measures that have been described are based on results or measures at the end of a

process. Sometimes when the purpose is to determine what the customer requirements are or to

evaluate the efficiency of the process, these measure are not useful and give no real indication

of how the whole process is working. Internal yield measures are based on data collected from

the process operation. The team needs to measure internal defects to know how well the process

is working otherwise a lot of information is hidden.

Once the team has a clear definition and a guideline of what to measure and the procedure to do

this, it is necessary to analyse the collected data, which it is described in the next section.

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3.3 ANALYSIS PHASE

The principal and essential requirement before beginning the analysis phase it is to have at least

a clear measurement about the problem or the opportunity. This phase focuses on facts and

reality and is believed to be the most unpredictable because the tools that the team has to use,

and the order in which they will be applied depend on the problem and the process that requires

improvement. For this purpose, it is necessary to have a dynamic and qualified team, which can

try to anticipate to the problem based on the team’s experience and intuition, but sometimes it is

not enough and the way can be difficult.

The principal objective of the analysis phase is to find the main cause of the problem that

creates poor quality and defects for the customers. The equation that describes the customer

CTQ is:

Y=f(x1)+ f(x2)+ f(x3)+...+ f(xn)

Y is the CTQ characteristic which affects a customer’s satisfaction and is the addition of a series

of factors, f(xi), which increase the final output Y. In a process or a product that has many

defects with a lot of variation. The team’s objective is to reduce the number of defects thereby

eliminating unnecessary factors.

The team needs to work to achieve the best equation, which describes the process. For this

purpose, it is necessary to identify the main factors, because once this has been achieved, the

process can be changed and improved. The tools used to lead to the identification of the main

factors are inferential statistical analysis with the consideration and analysis of the process map.

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The analysis phase can be represented as a cycle as shown in Figure 8. The cycle diagram

begins at point 1, if the objective is to identify defects, or at point 2, if a hypothesis is to be

validated. If the hypothesis that the team has chosen is not correct it is necessary to go back to

the beginning of the process and redefine the problem.

1 Analyse Data/process

2 Develop causal hypothesis

Analyse Data/process

Refine or Reject Hypothesis

Confirm and select vital causes

Figure 8. Analysis phase diagram

There are two key sources to determine the true cause of the problem.

1. Data Analysis. Use data from the measurement phase to create thinking about the cause

of the problem.

2. Process Analysis. Investigate how the work is being done to identify problems during

operation.

The tools that are going to be described in this Chapter can help the team to identify the root

causes of problems and find new solutions. They can be divided into two groups, those for

identifying and those for verifying potential causes.

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3.3.1 Tools for Identifying potential causes

The tools for identifying potential causes can help to propose hypotheses about the factors f(xi)

which are increasing the number of defects in a process, product, or service and to prioritise the

critical ones.

There are two types of tools to identify potential causes: data displays and caused-focused

brainstorming tools.

Data displays

These tools are focus on creating ideas about potentials causes. There are many which the team

could use in their investigative efforts. Some of these are:

Histograms. A histogram is a bar diagram of a frequency distribution in which rectangles

are constructed across the class internal, the areas of which are proportional to the class

relative frequencies. Histograms are a useful informative tool about the underlying

distribution of the data. They help to choose what kind of statistical test can be applied in

each situation.

Time series plot. It is a tool that shows if a process is changing over time and depicts the

data in the order in which they occur. It is easy to construct manually and requires less data

than other tools.

Pareto chart. A Pareto charts is a type of bar diagram in which the “x” axis represent the

categories of the problems, defects or error and the vertical axis “y” represents a count or

percent of defects. To create a Pareto chart it is necessary to follow the next steps:

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1. Determine the total number of problems and the counts or impact in each category if there

are categories with very small frequency they can be combined.

2. Group the problems by frequency or by level of impact.

3. Draw a vertical axis and divide into increments.

4. Draw the bars of each category.

5. Represent a curve showing the cumulative percentage.

Pareto analysis gives the team a visual interpretation of the data. If there are one or more

categories with a high percentage, this means that these categories of the problem account for

the most occurrences or impact. A possible example of Pareto chart representation is shown in

Figure 9.

0%20%40%60%80%

100%120%

Problem 1

Problem 2

Problem 3

Problem 4

Problem 5

Others

Figure 9. Pareto chart representation.

Cause-focused brainstorming tools.

Brainstorming tools can produce many ideas or solutions in a short period of time.

Some examples are given below:

5 whys. This method is used to help to the team to think about root causes and not to be

satisfied with supercilious solutions which do not resolve the problem in the long run.

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The procedure is simple and based on the following steps:

1. Select any cause, which needs to be analysed. (Why 1)

2. Ask, “Why does this outcome occur”? (Why 2)

3. Choose one reason for the why 2 and ask, “Why does this outcome occur”? (Why 3).

4. The team needs to continue this procedure until a potential root cause is found.

5. Sometimes the team finds a root cause before the 5 whys are completed but not

always.

Cause and effect diagrams (fishbone or Ishikawa diagrams)

The fishbone diagram is used to identify causes of problems or prevent future problems.

The procedure to create and use a cause and effect diagram is as follows:

1. Name/define the problem or the effect, which is going to be analysed and write it in

a rectangle placed on the right hand side of a piece of paper (at the head of the

fishbone).

2. Decide the major categories for causes and create the basic diagram (Figure 10).

3. Brainstorm for more detailed causes and create the diagram( for this step the team

can use the 5 whys method).

4. The team need to review the diagram and eliminate causes that do not apply.

5. Based on the final diagram the team need to identify the causes that are most critical.

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cause cause cause cause cause cause

Effect

Figure 10. Basic cause and effect diagram

Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA). This technique is used to identify the ways in

which a product or a process can fail and to prioritise the actions to reduce risk.

The team can perform an FMEA in the following way:

1. The first step is to review the process or product.

2. Brainstorm potential failure modes.

3. The team needs to list the possible consequences if a failure occurs.

4. Ranking the severity of failure: 1-10, 10 means most severe impact on customer and

assign rating to likehood that a failure will occur: 1-10, 10 represented most likely

occur.

5. Assign a detection rating to each failure: 1-10, with 10 representing least likely to be

detected using current control.

6. Calculate a risk priority number (RPN) for each effect multiplying

(severity*occurrence*detection).

7. Use the RPNs to prioritise actions with highs RPNs or those that have a very high

severity rating.

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8. The team need to establish a plan to eliminate or reduce the risk associated with

high-priority failure modes. This plan begins identifying the potential causes of the

failures modes and then develop recommended actions (with timeplan, etc.).

9. Develop the plan and recalculate RPN.

3.3.2 Tools for verifying potential causes

These tools are used to confirm if a potential cause contributes to the problem, and can be

divided into three groups: basic hypothesis testing principles and techniques, specific cause and

effect testing techniques, and design of experiments.

Basic hypothesis testing principles and techniques

An hypothesis test calculates if a particular value of interest is contained between a

confidence interval it means the probability that the team’s conclusion is wrong. A common

application of hypothesis testing is to determine if two means are equal. In the hypothesis

test exist two hypothesis.

t-test. The t-test is statistical tests that permit to the team if the null hypothesis is likely to be

true. It is necessary to calculate a t-statistic to determine probabilities comparing the

statistics with a t-distribution. This test is used in two situations:

Specific cause and effect testing techniques.

Regression Analysis. It is a tool that uses data of important variables to develop an equation

Y=f(x). The team needs to evaluate which input variable have the biggest effect in the

response variable and delete unimportant factors from the model.

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ANOVA (Analysis Of Variance). This tool is used to analyse the relationship between

categorical inputs and one continuous output.

Chi-square test. The Chi-square test is a hypothesis testing method used when the

contributing factor and the result are attribute data. The steps that the team need to follow to

calculate the chi-square:

1. Collect the data from the measure phase and summarise the results in an

observations table.

2. Based on the observation table develop an expected frequency table.

3. Compute the relative squared differences.

4. Add together all the relative squared differences to get the chi-square.

5. Determine and interpret the p-value.

In this section have been described the tools and methods used in order to analyse and

investigate the potential cause of the problems. Now, the team, based on the analysis of the data,

has to begin to construct and develop solution for the problems. This is developed in the next

section “improvement phase”.

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3.4 IMPROVEMENT PHASE

The purpose of the improvement phase is to select solutions based on the data, which comes

from the measure and analyse phases. The team needs to generate, select, and finally implement

a solution to eliminate or reduce the root causes of defects. The process of generating solutions

can sometimes be difficult but there are several tools, which can help the team such as

brainstorming.

The team needs the right training to produce good ideas. It is necessary to know how much root

causes affect the CTQ because this gives the team a quantifiable number of defects to rectify.

The team will be able to create and identify smaller but effective solutions which should be

implemented in a couple of weeks. The use of piloting, which will be described in this chapter,

and Failure Mode Effects Analysis, will help the team to be sure that the solution will not have a

bad impact on the final process.

It is necessary that the team bears in mind the goal to be achieved. The team has to brainstorm

and develop solutions in relation to the objectives of the organisation and eliminate other

solutions.

The team needs to develop potential solutions based on the confirmed cause and effect diagram

or the others tools described in the previous chapter. The team needs to start with a confirmed

root cause verified by data collection, process observation, and experimentation. It should then

develop potential solutions, which would provide new perspectives on the work and the

processes.

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Three tools, which would help the team in doing this, are brainstorming, affinity diagrams, and

benchmarking.

3.4.1 Brainstorming

Some of the keys to successful Brainstorming are:

1. Clarify the objective of the brainstorming. Everyone should agree on the purpose and

work in the same direction to get good results. The brainstorming is necessary once the

goal has been clarified. It can provide important information for eradicating defects. In

order to generate good ideas, the team needs a period of silence to think about how the

process can be improved and to write down some ideas.

2. Listen to and build on the ideas of others. It is necessary to pay attention to other

people’s ideas and develop them.

3. Abandon assumptions. Past assumptions sometimes prevent the team from developing

good ideas.

4. Consolidate similar ideas. Discuss certain ideas with a view to consolidating them.

5. Understanding of the idea deployment process.

3.4.2 Affinity diagram

The affinity diagram generates and collates ideas after they have been organised into groups.

The first step, to construct an affinity diagram, is to give time to reflect and consider. Then all

ideas are written on post-it notes. The team then organised them into categories and finally the

ideas are labelled.

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3.4.3 Benchmarking

Benchmarks are measures which a company compares its performance against other companies

practice. This tool determines how to use this information to improve company’s performance

and can help the team to focus their objectives to get good solutions to problems.

The potential solutions that have been developed in the last step, need to be evaluated, selected,

and optimised. Two tools use for this purpose are the Solution Selection Matrix and the Pugh

Matrix.

The purpose of the solution selection matrix is to make sure that the solution selected for

implementation is the best to achieve the objectives of the team and the organisation. It is used

when it is necessary to choose one out of two or more solutions.

The Pugh matrix is a tool that uses decision-making that compares concepts, based on the

requirements of the customer and functional criteria. The objective is to work with potential

solutions to converge to an optimal solution.

The team has selected the solution and now needs to implement it. One of the tools that the team

can use is Pilot testing which evaluates the solution and its implementation. Pilot test determine

if the process is agree with the customer requirements and the design specifications. To pilot a

solution it is necessary to follow the next phases:

Phase 1: Plan. The team need to determine what needs to be piloted, what will be

involved in the process, how long will the pilots run and how will the pilots be

conducted.

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Phase 2: Review design. It is necessary to review the plans to ensure that all the

elements of the design are completed. The team needs to find possible defects that can

be tested at the pilot phase and review both the pilot and the implementation plans. At

the end of this phase the team is able to list the key issues raised, the possible actions to

apply in the pilot and changes in documentation.

Phase 3: Finalise design and implement. In this phase, the team will implement design

changes that have been found in phase 2 and will start the implementation.

Phase 4: Evaluate the test and verify results. This is the last phase of pilot testing. The

team should use statistical tools to evaluate design predictions and improve on the pilot

if there are any weaknesses.

During the improvement phase, the team has selected and finally implemented potential

solutions. Once these solutions have become effective, the team needs to begin the next step,

which it is the control phase.

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3.5 CONTROL PHASE

This phase consists on identify the new behaviour of the CTQ characteristics. It is necessary to

repeat some of the early measurements in order to recalculate the sigma process. During this

phase the team needs to make a fully documentation of the project and the improvement

changes which have been made. The project must be evaluated fully and the financial gains

documented. The team will describe a plan to retain the gains after the conclusion of the project.

The steps, which are necessary to follow to complete the control phase, are maintaining the

improvement, defining responsibilities for process owner, driving the organisation to Six Sigma.

At the end of the improvement phase and when the first gains are achieved, the team needs to

consolidate their goals. The team has to be dynamic and works to build a solid support for the

solution. In order to achieve this, the team needs to be able to justify why and how the applied

solution has sense for the company.

In order to maintain the improvement the team is required to document the changes, select and

apply ongoing measures, and develop the response plan.

Document the changes.

It is necessary for a company to have a clear documentation about the process which has been

implemented. A good documentation help the team to have a better vision of the changes and

the new procedures. The documentation has to be simple, clear, and understandable for

everyone. If someone use specific terms that someone new in the project is not able to

understand it is necessary to include a definition or glossary.

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The team needs to make a good documentation and for this reason they can complete their

written documentation with pictures and flowcharts for getting a clearer and more accessible

documentation. One way to show the efficiency of the new process is to document the possible

behaviour and some procedures to be applied under various conditions. Finally the

documentation must be handy and update. The team needs to review and follow the procedures

that there are in the documentation in order to achieve good results.

Select and apply ongoing measures

In order to maintain the improvement the team needs to use well-chosen and implemented

measures to track the process and solution. Can be applied measures to any part of the project:

Input, process or output. The ongoing measures should include a balance among these parts.

The team must centre in the things, which experiment the greatest change and should go higher

on the measurement list. Some measurements can be applied during a long period to observe

things as defects, cycle time, cost, etc. Other measures will be occasional.

Once that the ongoing measurements have been selected the team begins to implement them.

There are several ways to presents the measurements perhaps the most useful one is using

graphical measurements reports because they are quicker to read and make for easier

comparisons. Two of the tools that can be applied are Pareto Charts and Histograms. Another

technique that ca be applied is Control Chart profiled at the end of the chapter.

Once the data have been collected, the team needs to monitor results in their key areas. One

tool, which helps the team in this purpose, is Balanced Scorecard. This tool displays key

measure in an easy to read format. Balanced Scorecard emphasises that it is necessary to keep in

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mind to measure the next areas: innovation, process customer and financial. Therefore, the team

is able to establish common performance measures.

Response plan

It is necessary for the team to have guidelines, which indicate what to do and when do it in some

circumstances. The team needs to know what actions have to be taken in each situation and

when those actions are necessary. It is necessary to establish clear standards in input, process

and output of the process because if the key points are standardised and fully identified con help

to the team to discover which are the actions to apply in each case. A good response plan must

to be a continuous improvement plan. It should identify and prioritise ongoing or serious

problems, which can be improved. The response plan must anticipate possible problems. Two of

the tools, which can help the team to anticipate the problems, are FMEA and potential problem

analysis.

3.5.1 Define responsibilities for the process owner

The process owner is the responsible for process design and performance and needs to sustain

the gain and identify future improvement opportunities on the process. Some of the

responsibilities of the process owners are listed below:

1. The process owner is the person or persons responsible of maintaining process

documentation and keeping them update. The process owner needs to collect background data

on customer requirements.

2. It is necessary to control the measuring and monitoring process performance. The process

owner is the responsible that the measures are executed in the right way.

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3. The process owner should be the first person who discovers the problems before they arise

and defines guidelines for long and short term solutions.

4. When projects to improve are identified, the process owner needs to select a team, which

carries on the project, and they have the responsibility to maintain the gains.

5. Process owner has to work with customer and supplier to reach the goal of the company at

the highest level of performance. Thus, the company could achieve high Six Sigma levels of

quality, efficiency, and flexibility.

The process owner has to focus on gains and the customer and should be present where the core

process are running for trying to identify weakness zones. However, the principal purpose of the

process owner is to lead the team in order to achieve a high sigma level.

3.5.2 Drive to Six Sigma

Establishing process management is the last step in the implementation of Six Sigma and the

beginning of becoming a real Six Sigma organisation. The key elements of the process

management can be formed following the next steps:

1. Identify core processes. It is the principal step of the process management because can be

used to define the process which is going to manage.

2. Define the customer requirements. This is an important step because the team can answer

the next question: manage the process to do what?

3. Measure current performance. It is essential to provide feedback on results and key process

factors.

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All the efforts made for the team in the process improvement become the key elements that can

help to the team to reach a high Six Sigma level and respond to the customer requirements and

demands for new products, services, or capabilities.

Once the team has a clear definition of the tools and the procedure to achieve the required sigma

level, it is necessary to find out how this methodology is applied in some real case studies and to

know the difficulties, which can reach in the implementation process.

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4.0 PUBLISHED CASE STUDIES

4.1 SIX SIGMA SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT CASE STUDY

BACKGROUND

This published case study of Gack [2002] centers on the use of the Six Sigma DMAIC process

in an organisation which develops software packages. It achieved substantial reductions in costs

within 6 to 12 months of the beginning of the implementation of the project and reached a 15 to

25% reduction in software development cost in two years.

1. DEFINE PHASE

The main purpose of the define phase was to determine the critical-to-quality characteristics,

create the project charter and develop a high level process map. The principal goal, Y(s), of the

organisation was to improve the capability of its software which meant ensuring that the project

was delivered on time, with predictable effort, and with an acceptable number of released

defects. In order to achieve the team’s goal, they identified the following characteristics:

• Time to market.

• Total development cost per size.

• Delivered quality in terms of defects.

Then, the team would focus on the percentage of project commitments that were delivered on

time. It was assumed that the organisation was decentralised with various divisions in different

parts of the country. The team considered data from previous projects separately and so selected

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the project that had more precedents, in the hope that the process could be replicated in other

divisions. The fruits and nuts division was selected by the first team.

Once the specifications had been identified, the team began to build the project charter which

should include the expected pay off if the team was able to improve the critical to quality

characteristics. It was also necessary to provide a good definition of the problem:

"Conversions that miss planned dates are causing unexpected budget increases that impact our

profitability."

The next step, the development of the project charter, was to define the goal statement. One of

the principal was to improve the on-time project percentage from the baseline value of 62% to

90% within the next year. Black Belt was selected as project leader. The champion was the Vice

President of Marketing, with the Director of the Project Office, three software Project

Managers, and the Director of Quality Assurance as team members.

The financial opportunity was based on 10% of the potential service contract revenue which was

lost due to late software deliveries which amounted to approximately $800,000 per year.

2. MEASUREMENT PHASE

The first thing to be done was to determine the current state of the process and to collect reliable

data. It was decided to investigate four controllable factors:

• Short task durations

• Defined predecessor/successor relationships among tasks

• "Levelled" resources (ensuring an 80-hour week has been scheduled for the team)

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• Defined deliverables or end states for each task

It was also necessary to evaluate the measurement system to be used. The team needed to be

able to understand the quality of the data before making any conclusions and to convert attribute

data into quantitative information. The four controllable factors selected were called potential

Xs, which influence the behaviour of the outcome.

Scoring system, which had been used to rate the X(s) in previous projects was presented. This

would show if the high score of an X(s) high score was related to the high performance of Y(s).

Table 1 shows the score system used in some historical projects.

Table1. Possible scoring system

Using the score system the team collected the Y(s), schedule performance defined as percentage

of plan, and X(s) for each project. The results are listed in Table 2.

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Table 2. X(s) and Y(s) data collection.

Figure 1 represents schedule versus score trend.

Figure 1. Schedule versus score trend

In Figure 1, the straight line indicates that as the score increases, Y is improved ( percentage of

plan) suggesting that the higher the attributes of a professional plan the higher is the

improvement in Y. However, there are some points which are marked in Figure 1 that do not

correspond to the general pattern and so perhaps it is necessary to consider more factors which

influence Y.

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3. ANALYSIS PHASE

From the measurement phase it was observed that only 20% or 4 projects were achieved on

time, not the 62% as required by the software team. If the company’s goal was to achieve 90% a

450% improvement would be needed. The Six Sigma team constructed an estimation model and

a new column "Plan %" which is defined as: (actual planned duration) / (duration indicated by

the estimating model), could be generated and added to Table 2. If the “Plan percentage” was

less than 100 %, the planned schedule would be too optimistic. Table 3 shows the

implementation of this in the case study. As can be observed the planned schedule was too

optimistic because there were 15 projects which heir “Plan percentage” less than 100%.

Table 3. Simulation model

During the measurement phase, it is also necessary to identify which of the critical factors Xs

have more influence in the determination of the schedule performance of the Y(s). In order to

achieve this, the team applied the multiple regression analysis and concluded that 78% in the

variability of this sample was due to task duration, predecessors and plan percentage.

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Once the critical X(s) were determined, it was necessary to redefine the financial benefit

forecast. The average expected profit for the 20 projects was $850,000 and the projects were

scheduled to take 15 months. The projects required 134% of the planned duration and they

needed 5 months more than expected. The opportunity cost was 5/12 of $850,000 with an

expected time of money of 15%. The team estimated that the opportunity cost associated with

the 20 projects obtaining a profit of $1,065,500 but the company had a target of 90% and a final

profit of $956,250.

4. IMPROVEMENT PHASE

The principal purpose of the improvement phase is to generate, select and finally implement

solutions. The following possible solutions were identified:

1. Train personnel responsible for project planning on best practices.

2. Assign mentors or coaches from the Project Office to review the draft plans and help project

managers bring them up to best practice standard.

3. Use a combination of these options.

In order to determine the best option in terms of cost and effectiveness, it was necessary to pilot

two or more options and try to discover the best solution. The team decided to implement the

alternative of trying each one with different teams and comparing them after two or three

months.

5. CONTROL PHASE

It was necessary to develop a control plan and define how the X(s) and Y(s) will be monitored.

There was established that if any score was below 5 for any of the X(s), the team would try to

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reach that level and if the target for the Y(s) was not met, they would review the project.

Finally, it was necessary to define responsibilities for the Six Sigma team project and to fully

document of all the process records and data.

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4.2 MEDICAL TRANSCRIPTION CASE STUDY

BACKGROUND

This published case study of Goyal [2004] is based on a Medical Transcription company

established in India with customers in the U.S.A. Medical Transcription involves writing the

notes from doctors, transcribing them according to appropriate rules, protecting them from

errors, and recording the final results. This is an important process because it avoids

mistreatment of patients. The principal purpose of the business is to increase of their revenues,

control the absenteeism and patients load.

1.DEFINE AND MEASUREMENT PHASE

The Six Sigma effort began with a meeting with the 20 most senior personnel of the

organisation in order to drive the Six Sigma effort. At the end of it, some conclusions were

obtained which will be described a long of Six Sigma improving process. The Six Sigma team

considered the results of the brainstorming session and generated approximately 20 problems

were grouped into two categories:

• End result problems faced by external customers

• Internal problems that were causes of customer problems, rather than basic problems.

The first category focused on customer satisfaction and the team, using a prioritisation system,

put the fundamental CTQs as:

1. Consistency of quality

2. Timeless, which was allocated the higher priority

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In order to achieve a precise definition of the problem, the team interviewed different customers

and the following conclusions were made:

The customer wanted to be dispatched before 5.30 PM every day. This means that a customer

who was received between 7.30 AM on day X and 7.30AM on day X+1 should be dispatched

by 5.30 PM on day X+1.

The turnround of a file was defined as the time taken from receipt to dispatch it. This meant that

a file received at 7.30 AM on Monday should have a turnaround of 24 hours and a file received

at 7.30 AM on Tuesday. Following on analysis of customer requirements, the team realised that

the problem was "meet the dispatch deadline of 24 hours" rather than "reduce turnaround of

data". The team suggested measuring the discrepancy between the time of dispatch and the

customer's target. The team designed a check sheet in order to collect the actual time of dispatch

during two weeks including:

• Average delay: 89 minutes.

• Variation: 82 minutes

Thus: Average + 3σ= 335

The team defined the problem as:

In order to achieve 99.7% on time delivery, they would need to reduce 335 minutes to 0.

2. ANALYSIS PHASE

In order to ascertain the vital causes of the problems, the team developed a check sheet to

collect the following data: starting time, loads, past and actual transcriptions, capacity per

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transcription and finishing time. These data were collected over several days; however, the

results from the data collected between 7.30 AM on day X and 7.30 AM on day X+1 began to

be processed at 8.00 AM on day X+1. The principal reason for this was that the data came from

doctors of U.S.A. who normally dedicate the end of the day to the dictation of the data and this

time corresponds to the morning in India.

A group was selected to collect the data from the United States every hour for a week. Based on

this data, the team started the improvement phase in which ideas were generated, selected and

finally implemented.

3. IMPROVEMENT PHASE

There were two fundamental ideas:

• Use two teams during the night shift, one team during the day shift.

• Use one team at night, one team for an early morning shift, and one team for the day shift.

Eventually the first idea was selected and put to the test. The initial expectation was that lower

efficiencies would provide required results, which was supported by the outcome of most of the

cases. In the first two days of testing, the dispatches were achieved two hours earlier than

expected.

Table 1 compares the results from the third week after the changes and the week before the

project began.

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Load Delay time Average

Week Average Maximum Average Sigma plus 3 sigma

-1 285 397 89 82 3353 348 531 -134 43 -4

Table 1. Project results.

The results showed 22% higher load with an average dispatch time of 134 minutes

early compared to 89 minutes late and compared to 335 minutes late at the same reliance level.

4. CONTROL PHASE AND FUTURE ACTION

A control chart was established in order to observe any deterioration in the process and resolve

it. The different responsibilities and operation procedures of the process were developed and

documented. The improvement process is continuous and once the goals have been achieved

higher expectations are required. Now the team needs to improve their process in order to

achieve the Six Sigma level. Finally, it is necessary to recognise the team’s effort.

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4.3 A SIX SIGMA CASE STUDY FOR AN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (IT)

1. INTRODUCTION

This published case study of Hallowell [2004] is based on an information technology (IT). IT is

a service used by companies as a means of providing call centre support to a variety of

customers. IT services can be really important in a business because when prices are similar, the

customer chooses the company which provides the best service. In this published case study,

benchmarking was used to show that the company was not competitive enough and needed a

change. Six Sigma was the initiative adopted by company to improve their service.

A Champion was chosen for the new project, and then he/she chose the leader of the project.

The objective of the team was to reduce support costs while improving new account growth.

The champion, with the help of a Black Belt and after verifying the benchmarks and other data,

was able to select the DMAIC project.

The team compared customer satisfaction against average and best class companies and found

that their rate was a little below average (73 percent for the studied company against an average

of 76 percent).

The company was aware that customer satisfaction could be the driver of new account growth.

The team studied this and realised that the range of customer satisfaction ratings for the best

competitors produced about 76 percent of the changes in new account growth. The team also

noticed that customer satisfaction and business growth do not have a direct relationship to

support costs per call because those companies with the best customer satisfaction and business

growth spend less money on support costs per call.

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2. DEFINE PHASE

The team needed to evaluate the elements of the project charter. The following situation was

described:

“The competitors of the study call centre are increasing their customer satisfaction levels by

reducing support costs per call. The team needs to increase the company’s growth from 1

percent to 4 percent, without increasing the support costs per call, which would mean an

augmentation of the company’s growth revenue of $3 million.”

The team’s goal was to increase their customer satisfaction level from 75% (90th percentile) to

a target level of 85 percent (90th percentile). The team discussed with the team leader the

objectives of the project charter and then collected the customer satisfaction data.

The case study included some individual customer responses, which were representative of the

data gathered and are summarised in Table1.

Requirements

Connect with the right person.

Get the required information.

Personal help.

How to prevent problems.

Table 1. Customer Requirements.

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3. MEASUREMENT PHASE

Once the customer requirements had been identified, the team could focus on the measurement

phase. The team prepared the data collection plan and identified all the parts of the project and

the possible measurement areas.

Y(s) Measurement

Customer By industry standard monthly survey.

Satisfaction Can be require more customer satisfaction data.

Call answering and discussion

Support Cost Case research

Call back time.

Days to close Calls receive in closed days.

Wait time Calls in queue.

Transfer Call moved to another extension.

Service Time Time require for the staff.

The team then needs documented the current baseline and the best estimate target as is shown in

Table 2.

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MEASURE CURRENT BASELINE TARGET

Customer Satisfaction 90th percentile/70-

85%satisfied

90th percentile/85% satisfied

Support cost 90th percentile/$40 90th percentile/ $32

Days to close Do not have good baseline

data

90th percentile/ 3 days or

less

Wait time Do not have good baseline

data

90th percentile/ 4 minutes

Transfers Do not have good Baseline

data

90th percentile/2

Wait time Do not have good Baseline

data

Mean< 8 Minutes

St. Dev.:<0.5 Minutes

Table 2. Current baseline and target.

It was also necessary to identify the factors which drive the Y(s) and their behaviour. When the

principal objective is to discover the Y behaviour, the team needs to focus on the Xs behaviour;

this offers the possibility of addressing the root cause.

At the end of the measurement phase the team had began to forecast what could be revealed in

the analysis phase using the data collected to produce an Xbar-R control chart, which represents

the variation in customer wait times.

4. ANALYSIS PHASE

The team graphed and studied each Y data set. Table 3 summarises and compares the capability

checks to establish targets.

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Measure Capability Target

Customer satisfaction 90th Percentile = 75% Satisfaction 90th Percentile = 85%

satisfaction

Support Cost Per Call 90th Percentile = $39 90th Percentile = $32

Days to Close 90th Percentile = 4 Days 90th Percentile = 3 Days or

Less

Wait Time 90th Percentile = 5.8 Minutes 90th Percentile = 4 Minutes

Transfers 90th Percentile = 3.1 90th Percentile = 2

Service Time Mean: 10.5 Minutes StDev: 3

Minutes

Mean:<= 8 Min StDev: <=

0.5Min

Table 3. Comparison between capability check to establish targets.

During the measurement phase the team tried to identify some important Xs factors. At this

point, the team had to verify the previous Xs factors and discover others in order to make

comparisons and an analysis based on the Xs identified in the last study. The team observed that

on Mondays and Fridays, the company was often understaffed whilst on Sundays, it was

overstaffed. They developed an analysis of variance for wait time. Based on the results of the

ANOVA, the team also observde the influence of callbacks on the call wait time. (P<0.05)

5. IMPROVEMENT PHASE

At this stage, the team needed to identify and select potential solutions in order to reduce the

support cost (controlling staffing ratios, transfer and callbacks). During the analysis phase, the

team identified some improvement areas, but now alternative solutions are sought for some of

the Xs identified in the last phase:

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Xs from Analyse phase Solution alternatives

Staff * Additional staff on Monday and Friday and

reduced on Sunday

*Staffing model

Web service percentage * Improve service on the web

* Communicate the service to the

customer

* Some presents for using the service.

Transfers and callback * Reduce transfers and callbacks

improving call centre processes.

The team had to consider how these solutions could improve the process compared with the

current and the possible benefits. This was the objective of the team in the following steps of the

improvement phase.

In this step, it was necessary to evaluate and quantify the key relationship between the Xs and

the Ys and the possible benefit. If the benefit appeared to be positive, the team had to determine

how to implement that improvement. To evaluate the staffing option, the team had to bear the

following points in mind:

The variables that affect the process wait time, support cost and volume/staff (v/s) ratio.

Measure the benefit value of account growth minus the cost of additional staff.

Based on the collected data, a regression analysis was performed which, showed the wait time

was related to the v/s ratio and so the same technique was used to determine if the wait time

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affected to new accounts. In this analysis 61 percent of the variation in account growth could be

attributed to wait time. Before the team modified or improved any process, it needed to forecast

what would happen theoretically.

With reference to increasing the staff numbers on Mondays and Fridays, the addition of 14

people on Mondays would result in the following:

• A 1.18-Minute reduction in wait time

• 0.037% new account growth

• 549 New Accounts

• $345,870 Incremental Annual Profit

• $177,870 project net benefit to business

After performing the same analysis for web service, transfers and callbacks, the team

recommended that:

• Changing staff levels should be the first step but in the future discover another solution

which reduces costs.

• Reducing the number of transfers and callbacks in order to increase customer’s satisfaction.

A pilot programme was developed for the Monday staffing.

• Xs to adjust: Staffing level

• Y(s) to measure:

- Wait time, v/s ratio, customer satisfaction, transfers, callbacks and service time.

- Carry out a hypothesis test to compare new staff against old staff.

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In order to perform the pilot test, the team needed to increase the current level of customer

satisfaction sampling, which only gave 1 set of data per month. The team arranged to have 5

sets of data per day over 90 days using 80 percent of the current staff and 20 percent new staff.

During the first month, the new staff took 6 minutes more than the old ones; this difference was

reduced during the second month to 2.5 and then to 1 minute in the third month.

To determine if the wait time had decreased with the staff increment, a two-sample t-test was

performed; this resulted in a pvalue less than 0.05, which means there was a difference. At the

end of the improvement phase, the team evaluated the goals that had been achieved. They were:

• A wait time reduction of 5 minutes.

Volume/staff ratio was reduced to 1100/54 = 20.37 ( as opposed to the previous 23 ).

Predicted wait time = .63 + (.214 x 20.37) = 5.0 (agrees with actual).

• Initially new staff needed more time than the old but after three months both groups required

almost the same time to do the same work.

• Customer Satisfaction had increased.

The overall conclusion was that the Monday staffing pilot programme has been a success and

the team recommended full implementation.

6. THE CONTROL PHASE

In order to prepare the implementation process control, the team had to develop a data collection

process. All the staff had to have a clear understanding of what and how they were going to

measure. It was also necessary to create current documentation of the project and define

responsibilities for each part. After preparing control charts, the team created new processes or

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modify old ones for determining the right solution to implement and try to eliminate defects in

order to know if the variable was out of limits or not.

6.2 CLOSE PROJECT

The team evaluated and reviewed all that they had done during the project and created a

procedure to be followed for implementing the improvement process. It was necessary to

establish responsibilities for each process, and to train and inform everyone who was involved

in the new change. The team should not forget that the new process was implemented in order to

increase the benefits and they have to document it. Moreover, the final point is to celebrate the

results.

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5.0 SIX SIGMA IN THE SERVICE INDUSTRY

The Six Sigma approach to improving the performance of business processes is enabling an

ever-increasing number of organisations to transform service performance, enhance customer

satisfaction and catalyse the ‘bottom line’. Although the approach originated in manufacturing

applications at Motorola, General Electric through their financial services business GE Capital

subsequently demonstrated how its could be applied to service and transaction.

Many manufacturers have been slower to extend the approach to their key transaction processes

and operations. However, those who have done it have experienced substantial success. Indeed

some manufacturers have experienced that there is more money to be saved and bigger

opportunities for improved customer satisfaction in transactional improvements than in

manufacturing ones. Six Sigma as a programme is probably best described as an improvement

approach that seeks to improve processes to the point of near perfection. This means that they

consistently and profitably deliver outputs (goods, services and transactions) to customers’

requirements in all but a handful of cases in a million times, strictly 3.4 defects per million

opportunities. Such a high performance level is an entry -level requirement when it is though of

passenger safety in transportation services, but may more realistically be an aspiration when it

comes to more mundane although equally vital activities such as processing payroll cheques or

employee expenses.

Six Sigma scores much better than many other quality approaches. It has a rigorous approach to

understanding customer requirements and translating them into specific and measurable outputs.

It aligns this ‘Voice of the Customer’ with the process, improving the design and operation of

key processes to consistently meet customer needs. There is strong emphasis on management by

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fact and data, and not merely relying on people’s opinions and experience which can be fallible.

Furthermore, Six Sigma is focused on issues and problems important to both the business and

the customer, and is delivered through manageable sized projects prioritised in line with the

business’s strategy.

Six Sigma is far more powerful in service operations than in manufacturing. Not only is the

average project value higher, savings or earnings are often replicable across a large volume of

users (millions of banking customers, insurance subscribers, etc).

Approximately 30-50% of the cost in a service organisation is caused by costs related to slow

speed or performing rework to satisfy customer needs. Six Sigma in the service industry attacks

these costs by eliminating waste, speeding up processes, and delivering customer wants and

needs. Some of the results, which can be achieved:

• Reduce company's service costs by 30-60%

• Improve service delivery time by 50%

• Expand capacity by 20% , without adding staff

Six Sigma can be applied in the following environments:

• Advertising

• Banking

• Computer services and outsourcing

• Document management

• Energy and financial services

• Hotels & hospitality

• Insurance

• Logistics and distribution services

• Professional services

• Sales and Marketing

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5.1 Six Sigma in the financial service.

Since the late 90s, there has been a steady increase in the take-up of Six Sigma within the

Services Industry, particularly in Financial Services. Most importantly, the companies in this

recent trend are not GE. Naturally, the US has led the way, as one would expect, and Financial

Services has become one of the highest growth sectors of the global Six Sigma market. High

profile initiatives at institutions such as Citigroup, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch and AIG

have provided the interest and inspiration for others to follow. It is a positive sign for the long-

term sustainability of Six Sigma as a management approach that many of the companies now

practising this methodology in the UK and Europe are indigenous companies rather than

subsidiaries of a US parent.

The popularity of Six Sigma as a means of improving the quality of service and customer

satisfaction is growing exponentially. Six Sigma offers a disciplined approach to improve

service effectiveness and service. Six Sigma is the inexorable and rigorous pursuit of the

reduction of non-value added activities and variation in core service processes in order to

achieve continuous and advanced improvements in service performance that have an impact the

results of an organisation.

Traditionally Six Sigma has been used in the manufacturing industry. Now, in the new

competitive world, where the financial industries need a distinction factor to increase their

revenues, Six Sigma is starting to play an important role as distinctive quality methodology. Six

Sigma is not only merely a quality initiative but it is also a business initiative. The use of the Six

Sigma methodology is more valuable in financial institutions now than it has ever been and

some companies are achieving true savings and revenue growth. Six Sigma is being introduced

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through the financial services, where performance management is becoming critical for firms

throughout the sector. From investment banking to credit cards, the need to respond to customer

demands is increasing daily. Customers expect faster and easier service and if they do not get it,

they will go elsewhere.

Six Sigma is a methodology that helps to satisfy customers’ demands, find out how to improve

the cycle times of all their processes, eliminate bottlenecks, minimise errors, cut cost-sand and

increase capacity. It is necessary to provide more value per customer transaction, rather than

trying to acquire more transactions and keeping existing customers can be more important than

finding new ones. By using Six Sigma’s define-measure-analyse-improve-control process,

leading financial services organisations have worked to reach the methodology’s aim of near

error-free performance. Moreover, this goal is relevant to all processes, from handling

customers’ money, to processing payments, to sending out bills, to closing a loan, or answering

the phone.

The principal goal of the Six Sigma’s team should be improving service delivery and customer

loyalty. This can be achieved reengineering processes for speed and flexibility, retaining good

employees and boost shareholder value. Six Sigma provides the connection that allows the

company to improve and sustain performance. Whether the company goal is to improve

customer experience, comply with the latest regulatory requirement, or simply improve the way

that the service is delivered, the organisation can rely on Six Sigma as the quality differentiation

factor. The Six Sigma’s team needs to understand and to be centred on the next points:

• Knowledge and experience in financial services industry

• Change management expertise

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• Service quality and speed

• Understanding financial industry applications

• Thought leadership in Six Sigma for services

• Prove solutions in testing.

• Leading Software tools to support the implementation process.

• Understand what the customer wants from the process.

• Remove non-value-add complexity that is invisible to customers.

• Improve total shareholder returns by driving revenue, profits, and return on assets.

• Focus projects on the “critical few” problems.

• Attract, retain and develop talent that provides excellent customer service.

• Provide valued new service offerings to customers quickly and efficiently.

• Improve the speed and quality of service delivery to strengthen customer relationships.

• Generate returns of 10 times company’s investment in two years. Tangible, measurable,

strategic results.

Six Sigma is a methodology that maximises shareholder value by achieving the fastest rate of

improvement in customer satisfaction, cost, quality, process and speed and return on investment.

Not only is it a powerful tool for executing the CEO’s strategy, it is a tactical tool for business

managers.

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Six Sigma methods sometimes cannot work really well. Nevertheless, what Six Sigma does give

the company is a very neat and coherent ‘Management Pack’ for conducting the business

activities in an improved and more sophisticated manner. After all, business is actually very

simple, and if companies do the basics well and maintain a strong focus on their customers and

core services, they will always be successful. Six Sigma provides the organisation with a means

of applying great management practice in a structured approach, but the company should never

overlook the most powerful tools, good leadership, good management and of course, common

sense.

Since its emergence in the mid 80s, Six Sigma has been used primarily in manufacturing, but

actually, it is being used in all sectors for different reasons. Six Sigma was developed to provide

a means of reducing common cause variation in business processes. There is hardly a Financial

Services business out there in the market today that is not suffering the effects of uncontrolled

variation in one or more of their client facing processes. In many cases, companies need a new

approach to service and operational improvement that will enable them better to serve their

customers.

A core theme of the Six Sigma concept is centred on the idea that all activities conducted in

business are processes, and every process has inherent variation. Whilst it is easy to view a

production line in a factory as a process, it is harder to identify discrete processes within a

financial services business. Yet the Financial Services industry is built on them and beneath all

behaviour of the front offices in these organisations lays a maze of (often-manual) operational

processes. The insurance sector is a good example. For years, its members have led everyone to

believe that the industry is highly complex and shrouded in mystery, but when one breaks it

down the underlying business is built on three core processes – risk placement, claims and

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settlement. It is typical to find a financial services business structured hierarchically around

operational departments and functions. Whether it is the underwriting department, credit, cash

operations, billing, payments or any other function within a financial business they nearly

always exist as a discrete vertical unit. Yet processes always flow horizontally from first point

of customer contact through the sales process and onwards through service delivery to ongoing

relationship management. More than likely, the process will flow through 4 or 5 lines of

management responsibility and each handoff in the workflow increases the cycle time and the

chance of a service failure. Hence, a primary root cause of variation and subsequent customer

dissatisfaction is the fact that the provider is delivering the service as a series of separate tasks –

loosely linked - rather than as an end-to-end process.

Figure1 illustrates a sample of a typical operational structure in a retail financial services

company, where the business is traditionally built around functions and departments. Whilst this

provides no shortage of ‘ladder climbing’ opportunities for management and staff, it does not

necessarily represent the best model for client-centric service delivery.

Front office Customer acquisition

Bussiness Risk Identification &Verification

Credit Know your customer &Money req.

Operations Data Entry & Customer Set-up

Operations Service Fulfilment

Customer Service Account Management

Figure 1. Traditional Departmental Infrastructure.

This is an area of business thinking where the Six Sigma approach is offering Financial Services

companies an opportunity to rethink their operating model to improve their capability in

delivering end-to-end services to their customers. Some companies have already moved to a

model broken down into core processes, aligned to the customer experience, such as ‘Enquiry to

Order’, ‘Order to Remittance’ and ‘Billing’. If this thinking were applied to the business

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described above, it would look considerably different from the status quo flutter. The key point

is that the business would be aligned to the decisive moments, those interactions with the

customer when they experience the service and make a judgement upon it.

Most importantly, the management structure of the business should be realigned also. Figure 2

represents the new possible alignment of the process, which is centred on the customer

experience.

Front office Customer acquisition

New Customer Activation

Service Delivery

Account Management

Customer Departures

Figure 2. End-to-end process alignment

One of the most important and high profile management positions in any services company

should be the end-to-end owner of the new customer activation process. In order to understand

better this point the following should be consider. Whether a bank, building society, mortgage

lender, insurer or investment manager, each new customer’s first experience with a financial

services provider is the account opening process. If the process goes well and the human

interaction with the provider is impressive, the customer will come on board with greater

reliability and commitment. They will accept more service failures later on before they depart to

another supplier. They will tell their friends and colleagues about the experience. On this firm

foundation, the provider is more likely to achieve cross selling of additional financial products,

and it goes without saying that if the experience is poor, the impact is far greater, but in reverse.

This position would have a significant impact on a company’s growth and profitability.

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Adopting Six Sigma methods within a Financial Services business, it is never going to be

simple. Financial Services companies may be built around processes, but in the majority of

cases these processes rely on people. People provide the inputs, people conduct the processing

and people produce the outputs. This has a number of implications. Firstly, the inputs to the

process are often incomplete and inaccurate. Secondly, there is a high likelihood of human error

and customs within the transaction processing. Lastly, and most importantly, if the organisation

wants to change the process it is necessary to persuade the people.

It is rarely to hear of manufacturing companies who have failed spectacularly in their Six

Sigma programmes. Yet it is common to hear of service businesses where the initiative has

failed to get off the ground and achieve the commitment it requires to succeed. This has caused

a fair level of scepticism with senior executives in the Financial Services market and has

deterred many companies from adopting the method. The principal Commandments for Six

Sigma in Financial Services are:

1. Listen to the Voice of the Customer

Six Sigma is a method for improving quality by removing defects and their causes in business

process activities. The method concentrates on those outputs which are important to customers

and translates these customer needs into measurable requirements, the so-called CTQs (Critical

to Quality). Then it is necessary to ensure that process performance meets or exceeds these

requirements. In order to understand and define these requirements, it is necessary to listen to

the Voice of the Customer. Many companies are led to believe that Six Sigma is the answer

before they have posed the question. It is imperative to start by defining what it is the business

wants to achieve. Then decide how the business is going to get there. If Six Sigma is an

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appropriate means, then use it as a great approach. However, a clear and meaningful operational

strategy is the starting point and that drives everything that follows.

2. All projects must satisfy the strategy and priorities of the business

In defining the operations strategy, the business should conduct a rigorous operations review,

identifying risks, problems, opportunities and recommendations, and assigning real cash values

to them. This drives priority in the selection of projects, and in the selection of appropriate

methodologies and practices for each project. At this stage, the appropriate tools and training

can then be properly deployed. Experience has shown that few companies have been successful

when they simply launch into DMAIC projects as soon as a corporate decision has been made to

implement Six Sigma. This is because the head first approach into DMAIC does not allow for

appropriate and deliberate project selection. The net result is that companies invest fortunes in

training for, and working on, the wrong projects.

3. Six Sigma is a set of tools, not a strategy

Six Sigma is not a strategy; it is a set of methods and tools. Six Sigma is an approach to solving

problems and encompasses three elements: a philosophy of putting the customer first and

defining the service levels expected by the customer; a structured project management method

(DMAIC) and a statistical means of measuring process capability. It is no substitute for a

coherent business strategy and it does not matter whether all the organisation processes operate

at six Sigma.

Many of the most successful recent case studies of Six Sigma deployments in Financial Services

have achieved this success by adapting the approach to the cultural environment of the

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company. A greater chance of success and cultural acceptance is achieved when launching by

stealth. Companies should select a few high profile and high impact projects, train only the

required number of resources and focus on achieving tangible results and stakeholder support.

Then it is time to consider a wider role for Six Sigma across the business.

4. Training Programme

If Service companies do choose to implement Six Sigma, they should be very selective about

any element included in their programmes and should not accept the conventional view that

every aspect of Six Sigma is applicable or necessary in every circumstance. Training staff in

only those specific elements of Six Sigma, which are relevant to their industry, service

businesses, can avoid the lengthy training programmes on the market, which are sometimes

more academic than practical, and which have been derived predominantly from non-service

environments.

In Financial Services, initial Six Sigma training to get a Black Belt up and running can be

successfully and effectively achieved in days, rather than weeks. This can be further supported

as necessary with specific coaching during actual projects, so that Black Belts learn from real

experience. A primary reason for this is that not every Black Belt needs to be an expert in

Statistical programmes. Whilst this statistical software plays an important role in data analysis

and the production of high quality dashboards, it can be a supporting function provided by a

team of business analysts, rather than expecting every project leader to be an advanced

statistician. In this industry, the soft skills make the difference.

Finally, experienced and highly qualified service industry practitioners, whose business, should

deliver training and coaching and industry sector expertise is both personal and current.

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Consequently, the case studies they present during training will be up-to-date, directly relevant

and culturally appropriate. Training which is delivered around industry specific process

simulations, such as customer account opening, has proven to be an extremely effective way of

transferring appropriate levels of Six Sigma expertise in this sector.

5. Measure what is necessary

One of the many challenges faced in Financial Services companies is the availability of clean,

relevant and accessible data. In many cases managers use to look at spreadsheets with

aggregated data, offering measures that do not really offer much relevance to the underlying

process capability or performance. It is never easy to access relevant data at a transactional level

and often takes some moving of mountains to achieve. However hard the effort and

determination required, the end result is worth it. Following the Six Sigma approach of defining

CTQs, developing data collection plans, producing operational definitions of the key measures,

extracting and cleaning the data and designing client centric process management dashboards

will prove invaluable in achieving operational excellence and meeting customer expectations.

The lack of normal data is a fundamental difference in applying Six Sigma’s structured and

data-driven approach to service businesses. Therefore it is necessary to find other ways of

coping with the existence of non-normal data. Additionally, operational managers in Financial

Services tend to be less familiar with statistical thinking. Looking at the end-to-end process and

process variation is often a departure from the ubiquitous traffic light indicators and

performance measures derived from aggregated data. However, the customers feel the variation,

not the average. The average, or mean, is sensitive to outliers, especially in smaller volume

situations, which can skew the value significantly and produce a very inaccurate indicator of the

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customer experience. A first step should be to define and monitor relatively simple indicators

for the central tendency and the variation of the process. With non-normal data sets, it is

necessary be concentrating on the median rather than the mean. If the mean is significantly

different from the median, this is a clear indication that there are big outliers within the data

and/or that the distribution of the data values is skewed. To measure and manage the variation in

a service process, it is advisable to look at percentiles.

In a manufacturing process, it is possible to hire a post-graduate with a technical background,

give them 5 weeks of Six Sigma training. Even Manufacturing companies which are

experienced in the successful deployment of Six Sigma in their production and design

operations are not getting comparable results when they use the same approach to tackle their

non-manufacturing transactional and administration areas.

It is not really possible to train and prepare someone for the organisational, cultural and political

challenges they will face as a Black Belt in a service business. Black Belts in this industry need

a manager or coach with meaningful commercial experience, who has fought the cultural and

political battles involved in implementing Six Sigma projects in a people, based business. There

is only one way to gain that knowledge.

In a Financial Services environment, there are often opportunities to make immediate common

sense changes when the solution seems obvious. Alternatively a team may have spent months

on a project and developed a process and organisational solution that will transform process

capability and performance against customer expectations. However obvious that change may

be, it is worth remembering that the implementation will involve new staff working practices

and possibly the removal of age old habits.

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Over the last three years or so, with the economy and markets in a state of depression, many

financial businesses have focussed actively on cost reduction programmes, but with the recent

uplift in economic conditions, there has been a shift in focus from cost cutting towards service

enhancement and improving the customer experience. There is likely to be a continuing change

of mindset in the services industry towards process orientation and understanding processes

end-to-end from the customer’s perspective. Consequently, Six Sigma is destined to gain further

traction in the Financial Services industry in Europe, but in the context of a growing realisation

that in service and transaction businesses, it is truly a different ball game. Companies deploying

Six Sigma methods are becoming increasingly knowledgeable and thoughtful of how they

should launch their improvement programmes, supported by the growing number of successful

case studies in this sector that have steered a different path to the traditional company-wide Six

Sigma roll-out. As was so often said at GE, these are great management practices, which should

be integrated into business as usual. In Financial Services, Six Sigma should simply be the way

of working.

The next stage is centred on the process of implementing Six Sigma in a bank, how to

implement it and the benefits that different banks have obtained by applying this methodology.

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5.2. Six Sigma in Banking

A new competitive scenario has become visible in banking. Liberation and the globalisation of

financial services have produced a rapid expansion of new financial products and services.

During the last few years, banks have implemented numerous new technologies and marketing

programs to improve service delivery and revenues. Banks offer an enormous range of financial

new products through constantly expanding branch networks. All these new products, such as

investments and insurance, need to be introduced into the new competitive market. For this

reason and in order to meet with customer requirements, it is necessary to implement Six Sigma

as an idiosyncratic factor.

The tools and techniques that have worked in manufacturing industries cannot be simply

adapted and applied to Financial Services businesses. Even those manufacturing companies

which are experienced in the successful deployment of Six Sigma in their production and design

operations often do not achieve comparable results when they use the same approach to begin

their non-manufacturing service, finance and administration areas.

The phases of implementing Six Sigma, in order to improve customer satisfaction in bank

branches, are almost the same as described in the other chapters of this project. The first step is

to define the factors that result in customer dissatisfaction such as wait times, errors and

inaccurate customer information are some of the factors that need to be analysed. Nevertheless,

not all factors can be measured in the same quality scale. For example, customers wait time

normally, although not always, have the most impact on customer satisfaction. In order to apply

Six Sigma to customers wait time it is necessary to determine the activities that affect wait time,

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such as the number of tellers and their activity. Once the factors that affect wait time have been

determined, it is necessary to minimise their impact, find out potential solutions and implement

them.

Six Sigma can be used for much more than reducing customer-waiting time. It can be used to

enable managers to make relevant decisions. For example, banks have reduced fraud using Six

Sigma.

Successfully implementing Six Sigma in banking requires a relentless focus on customers and

on meeting their needs as efficiently as possible. First, it is necessary to define what is critical to

customers and confirm which core processes are based on those requirements. This is probably

the most unpredictable step because it is necessary to understand the full process from the

beginning to the end. Sometimes a process depends on different departments and each

department probably has a clear understanding of the process in its area but a full map of the

process does not exist. For this reason, the Six Sigma team needs to understand the full process

in order to achieve the required goals. There are many ways to find out the customer

requirements and needs such as surveys, call center results, focus groups and whatever means

allows the voice of the customer to be heard loudly and clearly.

The next stage is to translate customer requirements into measurable characteristics of the

process. Once the team has a clear understanding of the customer requirements, it is able to

measure process effectiveness and efficiency based on those requirements. The effectiveness of

the process determines the problem or defects that the process can produce. For example, if

delivery of the product or on time service is really relevant for the customer, then the metric

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would typically be on-time delivery as measured by the time from the promised date to the date

of actual delivery.

Once the team has defined the possible measurements, it is necessary to determine the cost of

poor quality. This means determining the cost of not reaching the required quality levels and

quantifying the impact of particular gaps in the processes. For example, a mortgage lender

whose customers want prompt action on their applications might find that the process includes

a high number of abandoned customer calls by , long delays in producing a quote that cause

prospects to drop out, and numerous inaccurate credit reports. The Six Sigma methodology

includes powerful tools for analysing each of the gaps and quantifying what the poor quality is

costing the company in each case.

Having clearly understood what each process gap cost the organisation, the team can begin to

prioritise the improvement efforts according to what is most critical to the customer and less

expensive for the organisation. The team needs to ensure that they are investing in the right

project and in the right order because the prioritisation of some projects against others could

produce a different and unexpected output.

In order to understand the process of implementing Six Sigma better and having good approach

to the real process, it is necessary to look at some Six Sigma banks such as Citi Bank and Bank

of America.

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5.3 Citibank

Citibank’s objective is to be the most important international financial company. In order to

achieve this ambitious goal, the company had to acquire quality initiatives that satisfied

customers quickly and differentiated them from other banks. In recent years Six Sigma quality

has always been applied in the manufacturing area but Citibank selected this methodology to

meet customer satisfaction. This bank has achieved substantial performance in process

timelines, cash management, and customer satisfaction, applying methodologies such as cycle

times helped with the detection of defects and organised teams of Six Sigma.

Citibank has discovered the benefits of cycle time reduction in financial areas such as customer

banking and emerging banking. The Citibank Six Sigma team developed the process map and

looked for defects in each step of the processes, in order to achieve a cycle time reduction. Once

the defects were located, the team began to eliminate wasteful steps. For example, when

Citibank’s customers wanted to transfer money from their accounts, they had to call their banker

and then phone, fax or mail in the requests of the transaction process. Customers used to

complain because they always had to wait to the confirmation of their request.

When the opportunity areas have been identified, the Citibank team was able to correct the

problems in the Six Sigma program. Citibank's principal purpose is to reach a cycle time

reduction by 10 times by the end of 2000 and another progressive defects reduction and cycle

time by 10 times every two years from there on. Not all the Six Sigma tools, which have been

described in the previous chapters, can be applied here because a bank is a special case. In the

case of banks, the Six Sigma’s team usually uses easy tools such as Pareto charts. These charts

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show the problems, which occur more often, and the team; based on this data, decide what

needs to be corrected first.

By using Pareto chart, Citibank realised that one of the principal problems was the internal call-

back procedure. This required staff to return to call the person who had ordered the transfer of

funds to make sure that all the data was correct. In this case, the reduction in return calls to

people who had ordered fund transfers of the cut in-coming transactions by 73%.

Citibank Six Sigma teams are usually made up of 30 to 50 people in each functional

departments. Then the Citibank’s team, in the implementation process, follows five phases. First

of all, it defines the problem. Next, the team tries to map all current steps and identify what is

not working. The team then confirms the accuracy of the map with all the departments involve

in the process and it can be modified if they think that are necessary or they find another new

problem. After finishing the process map, the team removes useless process and non-value steps

and creates new ones. The last phase is the implementation of the change of items to reach the

required goals.

Some of the goals, which have been satisfied in two of the Citibank divisions, are:

• The Private Bank has achieved a reduction of between 80 and 85 percent in internal and

external callbacks, respectively, and a 50% credit process time.

• Global Equipment Finance: This subdivision has improved all processes from the

reception of customer orders to the delivery of the product. They have also reached a 67 %

reduction in the credit decision, from three to two days.

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• Copeland Companies. They have improved the accuracy and timeliness of statements.

They have also reduced the cycle time of processing statements from 28 to 15 days.

Citibank has achieved great results applying Six Sigma in all its divisions. In the next step, how

the bank of America applies Six Sigma is described and the results which they have obtained

implementing this methodology.

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5.4 Bank of America

The Bank of America is one of the largest financial organisations, which after trying to

establish other quality strategies and efforts without any improvements, introduced the Six

Sigma philosophy in 2001. In the beginning, some people were sceptical about it but now Six

Sigma has become an integral part of the culture of the bank. This discipline was implemented

as a core process performance metric, business approach and a leadership philosophy. Some of

the results that the Bank of America has achieved applying Six Sigma are:

• Control payments to suppliers.

• Increased productivity.

• Enhancement of enterprise e-mail governance to improve productivity.

• Reduction of credit risk assessment that are considered biased.

• Elimination of significant numbers of electronic information subscriptions.

• Increased associate retention in key areas.

• Improved ability to detect and prevent fraud at banking centers.

The benefits of the implementation started rising quickly and the bank achieved an important

cost reduction in several areas. With the enthusiasm and knowledge of the BBs and MBBs,

quality training was extended throughout the organisation. Then Six Sigma tools were

implemented and utilised across the Bank of America. Businesses and engineering teams were

collaborating on projects to eliminate variation and errors in key processes. Based on the

principie of spreading the discipline across all Bank of America businesses, the Six Sigma team

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demonstrated that this methodology could work in financial services by focusing on customer

issues and performance gaps.

For example, Six Sigma helped teams reduce system problems that occur in hardware and

software systems. Thirty Six Sigma projects were concentrated on the root causes of these

defects, reducing defects by 88% through the end of 2002. The customer delight was increased

by 25% across the company; in some operational areas of the company, they achieved even

greater gains. These good results convinced leaders that Six Sigma works and they then desired

to reach a better quality level.

Another important aspect to achieve the required Six Sigma level is that not only the

organisation needs to establish Six Sigma methodology but also all the vendors and suppliers

have to be involved in this quality program. For this reason, during the last two years, the Bank

of America has established the objective to become a real Six Sigma organisation and this

requires that all their processes reach a high Sigma level including the processes which involve

suppliers, vendors, etc.

This project has been developed in order to understand the Six Sigma implementation process.

With the intention of approaching to this methodology and showing the possible difficulties,

which can arise during the implementation process, and the benefits of Six Sigma, some

published case studies have been analysed. The reason to study the impact of Six Sigma in

Banking is a way to show that Six Sigma is emerging and influencing in all the areas not only in

manufacturing but also in the service industry and evidently in banking. Nevertheless, this effort

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has not reached its leitmotif yet and needs to continue growing and improving in all aspects

from the employed tools to the team training.

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