Ford Sics Six Sigmas on Product Quality

by Cammy Corrigan

Published: September 2nd, 2008

Fresh from the quality gains made in recent surveys (some of which they bought and paid for), Ford isn't resting on its laurels. The Detroit News reports that The Blue Oval Boyz have committed to training seventy hourly workers from each of its United States' factories to become masters in six sigma, the "gold standard" in quality proficiency. "They are doing it during pretty hard times," says Harley Shaiken, a labor expert at the University of California-Berkeley "This would be an easy thing to cut." Don Lowery, a plant worker on the six sigma course, is a believer. "Before, I was just putting on car parts. Now, I get to deal with the finished product." Just for perspective, Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli was a GE-trained, Six Sigma uber alles kinda guy, and we all know how that turned out…

Cammy Corrigan

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Psarhjinian on Sep 02, 2008

Six Sigma, like ISO9000 before it, sounds wonderful until you realize that, at a lot of companies, the process has become more important than the intended results. It's a misguided attempt to instill accounting-style process controls on processes that might not suit it. Accountants--especially auditors--love this stuff because it fits into the cookie-cutter GAAP mentality drilled into CAs (and/or MBAs) in school. It's the same mindset that thought up the current joy of my existence, ITIL. Not all accountants are like this, but the bad ones certainly are. I've slaved under both ISO and 6Σ a few times, in none of those cases was the actual end result important, certainly not at the middle-management level. It was all about the process.

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Ktm on Sep 02, 2008
Six Sigma, like ISO9000 before it, sounds wonderful until you realize that, at a lot of companies, the process has become more important than the intended results. It’s a misguided attempt to instill accounting-style process controls on processes that might not suit it. Accountants–especially auditors–love this stuff because it fits into the cookie-cutter GAAP mentality drilled into CAs (and/or MBAs) in school. It’s the same mindset that thought up the current joy of my existence, ITIL. Not all accountants are like this, but the bad ones certainly are. psarhjinian, thank you for this rather insightful commentary regarding Six Sigma. Six Sigma has run rampant throughout my company. The bean counters are trying to foist the Six Sigma "boxes" upon the unwilling engineers (I am the engineering manager for the most profitable market area in my company). They fail to grasp that our field is dynamic and that unit costs, quantities, and schedule are not set in concrete (pun intended). Even my boss, who is the director of engineering four our group, is more concerned about the process than the results. He is new to his role as my former boss was ousted because he refused to pave the way for the implementation of the processes. My life has become sheer hell because now I need to worry about the process instead of actually getting any work done.

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Kericf on Sep 03, 2008

After working QC at a computer company trying to implement this BS, all it will do is turn into a pissing match between managers. QC fail rates translate into people getting yelled at. Then in turn QC gets yelled at. Then it evolves into ways of spreading the quality out among other items until the numbers look better even though nothing at all really changes and everyone is happy because the numbers look better. All hail six sigma.

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Golden2husky on Sep 03, 2008

I think I just found a few new terms to submit to bullshitbingo.com...

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