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The mkiv Supra Owners Club

Sixth Sigma & Lean improvement projects


Homer

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So it's bollocks management speak that really means nothing other than it being the latest buzz word then?

 

Its the basic operating philosoophy of the most profitable company in the world, which has been turned into bollocks management speak by people who try to sell it as an "out of the box" product rather than a philosphpy.

 

You can read all about it here.

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Holy crap, i never thought that I would come across a discusion about Six Sigma on here. Im afraid I can't really help with the question, despite the fact that I have my greenbelt. It is / was one of many fads here at Caterpillar. I can actually see the benefits of using it within a production line or distribution centre, but I really think it fails when being used in certain office environments. It is so much easier to see benefits on the production line when there are obvious tangible benefits i.e. If I only use one of these instead of 2 then we can save X £'s per year.

 

Some of the projects that were going on here were just ridiculous, things were being made into projects for the sake of it and people were getting 3 or 4 people involved in things that they should of been doing in there jobs anyway.

 

It is kind of dying in CAT now, as far as I can see. Unfortunately though there is always a replacement... So now we all get to become ninja's in CPS :(

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Its the basic operating philosoophy of the most profitable company in the world, which has been turned into bollocks management speak by people who try to sell it as an "out of the box" product rather than a philosphpy.
Sums it up nicely. :)
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So it's bollocks management speak that really means nothing other than it being the latest buzz word then?

 

LOL :D I've been involved with it all over the years, Lean, TQM, S/sigma, Kaisan, loads of them. Different managers, different companies and it's normally implemented to gain brownie points for certain managers and to try get a company out of the sh*t.

In theory it will always work, as said it's common sense but it needs 100% from all the workforce and signs of it working to give it credibility, most managers will only nod and give it lip service so it's always failed in my experience.

If you have the sort of enthusiasm required in your workforce for it to work then you wouldn't need to implement it IMO;)

 

One thing I do have respect for is Kanban, simple yet effective. At my last job I had to implement it on a massive order for a hydraulics company and it worked really well. Again, discipline and the right attitude is needed or this will fail too.

 

Paul

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We have a team looking into this. They have invaded production but havent dared cross the design office threshhold yet, not since their initial foray which resulted in several injuries and a severe beating with a cardboard tube with nails in the end. Chanting Tamigochi / Kanban / Muda etc wont get them very far with us. Bunch of misguided tossers who think that moving the print machine ten inches closer to the print room door will increase our productivity 1000 %. We need more staff, not less...more time not less...more equipment, not less. Best way to improve productivity and profit at the moment is to ship the lot of these pen-pushing prima donnas out of our company and onto our competition.

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A few recent enlightened suggestions from these eejits.

 

Build smaller boats.

Make each boat identical.

Make components for other (competition) boat companies.

 

My suggestion to them would be to rev up and fark right off.

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We have a team looking into this. They have invaded production but havent dared cross the design office threshhold yet, not since their initial foray which resulted in several injuries and a severe beating with a cardboard tube with nails in the end. Chanting Tamigochi / Kanban / Muda etc wont get them very far with us. Bunch of misguided tossers who think that moving the print machine ten inches closer to the print room door will increase our productivity 1000 %. We need more staff, not less...more time not less...more equipment, not less. Best way to improve productivity and profit at the moment is to ship the lot of these pen-pushing prima donnas out of our company and onto our competition.

 

Ewen there is some truth in this;

 

I moved my desk 6 inches nearer the kettle and my workspeed went up 1000$ lol

Rich

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Holy crap, i never thought that I would come across a discusion about Six Sigma on here. Im afraid I can't really help with the question, despite the fact that I have my greenbelt. It is / was one of many fads here at Caterpillar. I can actually see the benefits of using it within a production line or distribution centre, but I really think it fails when being used in certain office environments. It is so much easier to see benefits on the production line when there are obvious tangible benefits i.e. If I only use one of these instead of 2 then we can save X £'s per year.

 

I wasn't going to say anything but but that's kindof my opinion too. Applying what was a quality process for the manufacturing industry to the IT industry is slightly worrying lol but I guess it depends what part of the IT industry.

 

CMMI and methodologies like SCRUM I can understand, but 6sig for software development sounds weird. Maybe it works for general IT, like manufacturing pc's, but for development like software I'm less convinced, happy to be proved wrong though as if it works I'd take it up myself

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Ewen there is some truth in this;

 

I moved my desk 6 inches nearer the kettle and my workspeed went up 1000$ lol

Rich

:dYup, and buying three kettles but only half filling each of them reduces the time wasted at coffee breaks by 200%.

 

Someone edited an e-mail from one of these guys and forwarded it to me. It suggested that as I was wasting time by opening the other half of the entrance gate instead of driving over the dragons teeth (one-way gate, these teeth scrape the underside of the Supe), I should buy a car with more ground clearance. I didnt see the joke and sent a rather nasty reply back to the poor guy. I am now his 'problem for August'.

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