TQM in Manufacturing & Services to drive Variation out

JWI 550 Operations Management, week5 summary, 2/9/13

Great week !
I expected this week's learning to be on home ground. Familiar territory it was but I gained valuable new perspectives and frameworks that add to my skill set significantly.

I. Variation
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Welch six sigma video taught us that "variation is evil" and we need to get variation out of the system to save cost, time and quality. I used this statement in a presentation at IBM this week.

II. Manufacturing vs Services
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Industries can be classified into two sectors broadly:
(a) Manufacturing industry: Create a tangible product
(b) Services industry: Financial services, Education, Utilities & Government, Restaurants, Communications, Hotels, Transportation, Healthcare, Airlines, Entertainment
Both types of industries should be viewed as opportunities for ultimately delivering superior customer service.

III. Total Quality Management (TQM)
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The way a manufacturing or service organization functions can be continuously improved with business process transformation using TQM methods including SPC such as:
Kano model - Dissatisfiers, Satisfiers, Delighters (especially important in service industry)
PDCA - Plan, Do, Check, Adjust
Six Sigma DMAIC - Design, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control ( with seven tools: check sheets, scatter diagrams, Fishbone cause and effect diagrams, pareto charts, flow charts, histograms, SPC)
VSM - Value Stream Map to optimize business process
SIPOC - Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Output, Customer to enable business process transformation from status quo to desired state
5S LEAN - identify all types of waste and get rid of them by sorting, straightening, shining, standardizing, sustaining
FMEA - Failure Mode and Effects Analysis
8D - Eight disciplines of Structured Problem Solving (Prepare and Plan, Form Team, Problem statement, containment action, root cause analysis, Fix, Implement & validate, prevention, celebrate)
Benchmarking - against best in class competition
Kai Zen - Continuous improvement every day
Fool proofing - technique that prevents errors
Datamining - correlations; paretos
4Ms for causes - Material, Machinery, Manpower, Methods
SPC - Statistical process control; Cpk control charts
Source Inspection - to monitor and control the cause of variation

Dr DP