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…
Find Reviews by Make:
Read all comments
You know, just because you read the Kama Sutra doesn’t make you a fantastic lover. Neither does taking those funky blue pills.
Two workers per plant doing management mumbo-jumbo accounts to pretty much the same thing. Use the money and buy the plant lunch once a month. It’d be a better use of the money.
And I’m talking about money spent on the Six Sigma course, as well as whatever it took to pay for the news article to spur publicity about “quality.”
Reminds me of the press releases in the early 80’s Ford to give workers permission to shut down line for quality issues. Yea sure, first supervisor to let that happen was looking for a new job and was told so at the beginning of the program.
Wrong end. Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) is ten times more powerful than problem solving Six Sigma. Like Great Grampa said: An ounce of prevention…
The VeeDub with the lumber on top is a true story unretouched photo.
Not that I am insinuating anything but Maple Leaf Foods in Canada implemented Six Sigma hog wild through out its operations a few years back and we now have a huge and deadly product recall. At least 12 deaths are directly related to the recall http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/09/01/listeriosis-deaths.html
Pig_Iron:
Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) is ten times more powerful than problem solving Six Sigma.
+1. And I’d guess that problem solving goes nowhere if it involves job classification / work rules / seniority at Ford plants.
This application of Six Sigma is like Leatrile; the cancer is not responding to traditional therapies.
Having spent a terrifying 3 years at six sigma crazy Honeywell, I can only feel sorry for Ford investors and employees that once again management has decided to pour what little money they have down yet another drain.
Teaching workers how to efficiently separate fly shit from pepper misses the point that until they make pepper someone wants, it does not matter. Six Sigma is just a way to prove the bean counters are always right. It isn’t about cutting costs, it is all about the more noble cause of being more efficient – B.S.
Creativity isn’t even a consideration.
Just because six sigma is executed as no more than management mumbo jumbo or worse in many companies does not mean it is not a good system. It really is just a statistical approach to design and manufacturing and basically a different name for what every product development organization should be doing anyway. I think Ford has taken an intelligent approach to Six Sigma. Training operators makes a lot of sense, because it could help them to provide more useful data to engineers and help them improve the efficiency quality of their work and/or processes.
Maple Leaf Foods in Canada implemented Six Sigma hog wild
Pun intended.
What I love most about that pic is the person sleeping in the passenger seat. We should all sleep so soundly.
Six Sigma is the undead of management flavors. It started out as a good idea but the underlying system – the Western Electric SQC Handbook – is probably more appropriate because the underlying intent is going to be bastardized into uselessness anyway. Common to all these control strategies is empowerment of the worker and as argued above it ain’t happening.
An open letter:
To: Alan Mulally c/o Ford Motor Corp
Re: Six Sigma
Alan,
The best six sigma that you can get will probably give you better feedback for a free lunch than every one at GE combined. The test group is called owners and used car buyers of Ford products. They can tell you about quality issues in ways that your engineers can never garner from focus groups or UAW line workers. Instead of getting them from around Michigan, try going out four or five hundred miles. Guarantee you’ll build a better car if you listen to them and you’ll never need a bailout, eer buyout, er government loans package.
Sincerely,
Your Future Overlords
THE AMERICAN TAXPAYER
Six Sigma? Isn’t that a kind of GI Joe toy?
Just because six sigma is executed as no more than management mumbo jumbo or worse in many companies does not mean it is not a good system
Yes but the same is often said of Communism.
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.
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.
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.
I think I just found a few new terms to submit to bullshitbingo.com…