| Whilst passing through Miami airport en route to Mexico City, Ron came
across an article on Six Sigma in USA Today, 21 July 1998. It read: ‘Today,
depending on whom you listen to, Six Sigma is either a revolution slashing
trillions of dollars from corporate inefficiency or it’s the most maddening
management fad yet devised to keep front-line workers too busy collecting
data to do their jobs’. At that time Ron was coordinating a Global MRPII
programme between all manufacturing sites of GlaxoWellcome, including
the Xochimilco site in Mexico. The Global Manufacturing and Supply Division
of GlaxoWellcome was considering a ‘LeanSigma’ initiative, which was meant
to be a hybrid of Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing. It struck Ron that the
message in USA Today reflected not just the doubts (or expectations) in the
minds of colleagues, but perhaps also those of quality practitioners worldwide.
These doubts or expectations addressed many questions. Isn’t Six Sigma
simply another fad, or just a repackaged form of TQM? It appears to be
successful in large organizations like Motorola and General Electric, but can
a small firm support such a programme? How can we apply Six Sigma
methodology, originating from manufacturing operations, to the far larger
market of the service sector? Like any good product, Six Sigma will have a
finite lifecycle – so what is next? Surely one big question is, how can we
sustain the benefits in the longer term? It is good to be ‘lean’ but isn’t it better
to be ‘fit’, to stay agile? The idea of writing Quality Beyond Six Sigma to
address these issues was mentally conceived at Miami airport, and the concept
of FIT SIGMA™* was born. |
