DMAIC - Help Your Company With Six Sigma

By Craig Calvin

If you are looking to improve quality, and eliminate defects in your company's products or processes then Six Sigma is the ideal solution. Six Sigma can be applied to one specific problem that your company is facing, but more importantly it can be used as a continuous improvement process that will help your business both now and in the future. Six Sigma training can be expensive for a company, so it makes sense to continue to use the training to improve as many aspects of the business as possible.

When implementing Six Sigma in your company, and applying its use to projects, it is ideal to focus on one certain aspect of a project to improve. If you are trying to implement Six Sigma processes across an entire project then it become a very large effort, and you will not realize the benefits of the Six Sigma process. If you continue to focus on smaller projects, or specific aspects of a larger effort then you will improve the quality of what you are working on. If you continue to do this over and over, on numerous projects you will see significant benefits for your company.

There are several different Six Sigma processes, that are geared torwards different projects or efforts. The DMAIC process is the Six Sigma process that is geared towards continuous improvement. DMAIC stands for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. When you apply the DMAIC principals and tools towards a specific aspect of a project or process you can help improve the quality of that process or project and eliminate defects.

Consider the following example: If you are a company that makes widgets you can start looking at the asssemble process for your widgets. You can try to streamline the process, eliminating steps that create a lot of waste, and combining steps where appropriate to increase efficency. You can also help eliminate defects in the production process by making the process more simple. You can analyze where the most defects occur in the process, and then modify that part of the process to eliminate the defects.

Another benefit of using continuous improvement processes is that you can learn from one quality improvement project and use those principles on the next Six Sigma Projects that your company undertakes. For example, if you find an analysis tool that is especially helpful, or virtually useless for that matter, you can relay that information to make sure that all future projects are aware of the benefits or disadvantages of that tool. Ultimately, DMAIC presents the perfect model to be used for continuing efforts with Six Sigma Projects rather than it being a one-time thing. - 32179

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