Manufacturing to Target &
Six Sigma: Tools for Our Future
· Manufacturing to Target is a process-focused methodology designed
to improve business performance.
· Manufacturing to Target is used to stabilize and standardize
critical processes within a company. In
the long term it becomes standard practice and the basis for continual
improvement.
· Six
Sigma is used to improve targeted areas of strategic
processes. It will become the project
methodology for managing process optimization.
Manufacturing
to Target
and Six Sigma stem from a few key
concepts:
“Critical-to-Quality” Characteristics: Attributes that are most important to the customer
Defect: Failing
to deliver what the customer wants
Process Capability: What your process can deliver
Variation: What
the customer sees and feels
Stable Operation: Ensuring consistent, predictable processes
Often our view of our business is based on averages
and average-based measures of our recent past.
However, customers don’t judge us on averages; they feel the variance in
each transaction and in every batch.
Customers value consistent, predictable business processes and products
that deliver world-class levels of quality.
Manufacturing to Target focuses
first on reducing variation and then on improving process capability.
Manufacturing to Target is a proactive philosophy
that focuses on process control. The
central concept is to identify process upsets before non-conforming product is produced. Doing so allows for control steps to be
taken to prevent production of inferior
product. Traditional approaches, by
contrast, are reactive and focus on monitoring product that has already been
produced.
The first step in Manufacturing to Target is to identify the key process input
variables and analyze their relationship with the critical-to-quality
output. Once the relationship between
the two is understood, a target input is established that will ensure the
product’s conformance. Next, a process
control plan is put into place to control the input around the established
target value.
Examples of Key Processes:
·
Billing
a customer
·
Developing
new products
·
Processing
customer orders
·
Upgrading
software
·
Managing
payroll
·
Hiring
employees
·
Budgeting
·
Paying
bills
·
Evaluating
vendors
·
Managing
inventory
Who
Helps Make This Happen?
Manufacturing to Target teams are formed for each
process area; however, formal titles or organizational structure do not
exist. The team leader, rather than the
individual team members, receives training in the methodology and team
facilitation skills and then he or she leads the team through the
methodology.
Manufacturing to Target is implemented for critical
processes by following a prescriptive six-step methodology. The six steps are:
Because, ultimately, it is management’s commitment
to Manufacturing to Target that
drives the entire organization, an all-important aspect to the success of the
program is the support of top-down management.
This means that those at the top must demonstrate support of the process
by allowing the necessary time and resources for the activities.
An internal team with expert knowledge of the process being studied must identify the key process inputs and the relationship to the key process output or critical-to-quality characteristics.
The plan is communicated to the personnel working on
the process, and the appropriate level of training is provided.
After training has occurred, the control plan is implemented and the
process is monitored using statistical control charts.
Data is collected from the statistical monitoring
and evaluated for improvement opportunities.
The analysis may drive designed experiments or changes in the control
plan to optimize the process.