TABLE OF CONTENTS Six Sigma has been considered a powerful business strategy that employs a well-structured continuous improvement methodology to reduce process variability and drive out waste within the business processes using effective application of statistical tools and techniques. In this chapter the authors illustrate the use of DMAIC (Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control) methodology in a step-by-step fashion to reduce waste in a film-coating process. It describes in detail how the project was selected, how the Six Sigma methodology was applied, and how various tools and techniques within the Six Sigma methodology have been employed to achieve substantial financial benefits.
Due to confidentiality agreement between the company and the authors, the name of the company cannot be revealed in this chapter. However, the company where the case study was performed is a large multi-national manufacturing corporation based in the UK. This chapter begins by describing how the project was identified and selected. After that, the chapter illustrates the different phases of the DMAIC methodology, and the tools and techniques employed to narrow the project and identify the sources of variation. With the successful application of the DMAIC methodology a team of Six Sigma practitioners saved more than US $120,000 (approximately 60,000) annually. The authors conclude this chapter by offering a brief summary and stating the lessons learned.
Project selection is the process of evaluating individual projects or groups of projects, and then choosing to implement some set of them, so that the objectives of the...
