Six Sigma info requested

[azazyel]

I was reading through some job openings and I came across one for Six Sigma Master Black Belt. I thought at first someone was just joking but when I did a partial search I found that it was a real program.

Does anyone have experience with these guys?

 

[beer]

I'm glad you asked...So I worked for the largest utilizer of Six Sigma in the world. Six Sigma is, in a sentence, a method of process control - for both manufacturing and business processes - that seeks to systematically minimize defects through a program of statistical and probablisic analysis.

There are three levels of Six Sigma proficiency. Most companies that utilize Six Sigma will require employees to become a Green Belt within, oh, six months of hire. Green Belts will usually have a small project of some sort, the modification of some process under supervision of a black belt to analyze and improve an otherwise inefficient process.

Black Belts are where most leadership and management belong. Black Belts undergo weeks of training dedicated training and complete a Black Belt project. A Black Belt is considered an acceptable level of proficiency to lead projects involving business processes. Even within leadership programs, Black Belts take a couple of years wihtin a normal work environment.

A Master Black Belt is typically referred to as the Owner of the application, or in general, the owner of a process. While individuals with Black Belts utilize Six Sigma within their job, a MBB's job is Six Sigma. They analyze and improve processes for a living and do so on a very large scale. Most management never acquires a MBB because it isn't necessary unless your job *is* six sigma. MBBs take years to acquire and a MBB project is exceptionally long in duration.

I think www.isixsigma.com has a lot of stuff on it.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: azazyel
I was reading through some job openings and I came across one for Six Sigma Master Black Belt. I thought at first someone was just joking but when I did a partial search I found that it was a real program.

Does anyone have experience with these guys?

Sure, its the current trend in bureaucratic nonsense where a company milks another company for money and says "your a black belt now! Thanks for the check, please go back to your "normal job"

Every decade or so a new "give us money and we'll certify you and make your company money" management trend comes along. Six Sigma is the current one.

 

[Kelemvor]

Six Sigma was created by GE and has now grown huge and other companies are adopting the policy as a way to rin a business. Beer summed it up pretty well in his post.

 

[beer]

Six Sigma was actually created by Motorola before Welch made the move to implemenet it within GE.
As for what Spidey07 says, you can interpret it as you may. Since he likely has never even seen anything about how it has been utilized, you can make your own judgements. If you don't think quality control is a huge issue these days, you're looking inthe wrong places.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: beer
Six Sigma was actually created by Motorola before Welch made the move to implemenet it within GE.
As for what Spidey07 says, you can interpret it as you may. Since he likely has never even seen anything about how it has been utilized, you can make your own judgements. If you don't think quality control is a huge issue these days, you're looking inthe wrong places.

I guess I've been through the motions with other management trends over the years. Sure it is a good program, but at what cost? The ex was a blackbelt. heh, even have some of the books laying around. To me it taught what should already be known.

If you can't measure it you can't manage it.

 

[Zysoclaplem]

We have a Six Sigma Champion here at my work. It sounds silly but it's true.
I aspire to be the Lord of the Draft, and my buddy here at work wants to be the Emperor of Auditing.

 

[MazerRackham]

Here where I work (aerospace company) Six Sigma is HUGE. I will get the basic training soon I think.

 

[Kelemvor]

We have people come to our center to get trained on Six Sigma. There's actually a Master Black Belt class going on right now. It's freaking expensive too.

 

[azazyel]

beer - so is this something that a company would have you do or is this something that a person would do on their own, like a CCNA or something to that effect. I took a look at the courses, friggen expensive.

 

[azazyel]

Originally posted by: Zysoclaplem
We have a Six Sigma Champion here at my work. It sounds silly but it's true.
I aspire to be the Lord of the Draft, and my buddy here at work wants to be the Emperor of Auditing.

You're kidding right? So is there like a Paladin of Purchasing too? Crap is this the merging of geeks and business users?

 

[iamwiz82]

All of these programs sound good on paper. For instance, we supply to Ford and are running on a somewhat JIT process. We got a call from them this morning at 1:30am saying we need parts shipped ASAP or the plant is going down. Turns out they lost a few boxes of parts. However, since we are trying to be JIT as well, we didn't have any parts on hand to give to them.

 

[beer]

I don't see why you would seek out six sigma training on your own. It's not like CCNA or anytihng like that. I'm not even sure how it would work, since where I worked a project was required in addition to the formal training and tests.

 

[Zysoclaplem]

Originally posted by: azazyel

Originally posted by: Zysoclaplem
We have a Six Sigma Champion here at my work. It sounds silly but it's true.
I aspire to be the Lord of the Draft, and my buddy here at work wants to be the Emperor of Auditing.

You're kidding right? So is there like a Paladin of Purchasing too? Crap is this the merging of geeks and business users?

There is a Six Sigma Champion here. It says so on his card. But by saying Lord of the Draft, and Emperor of Auditing, I was making fun of the title. It's an odd title to have, like you had fought it many Six Sigma battles to become the Champion, and carry the golden sword of analysis at your side.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

I've considered having buisness cards printed up with the title "Deus Palam Machina". I just wonder how long until anyone asks, I'm betting it'd be a good long time considering noone ever asked about my mug that said "baka".

 

[azazyel]

Originally posted by: beer
I don't see why you would seek out six sigma training on your own. It's not like CCNA or anytihng like that. I'm not even sure how it would work, since where I worked a project was required in addition to the formal training and tests.

That is basically what I wanted to know. There are books and stuff out there but I wasn't sure how practical it would be to study them. I am just considering looking for a new job and I wasn't sure if something like that would be worth the cost/trouble.

 

[richardycc]

Originally posted by: beer
I'm glad you asked...So I worked for the largest utilizer of Six Sigma in the world. Six Sigma is, in a sentence, a method of process control - for both manufacturing and business processes - that seeks to systematically minimize defects through a program of statistical and probablisic analysis.

There are three levels of Six Sigma proficiency. Most companies that utilize Six Sigma will require employees to become a Green Belt within, oh, six months of hire. Green Belts will usually have a small project of some sort, the modification of some process under supervision of a black belt to analyze and improve an otherwise inefficient process.

Black Belts are where most leadership and management belong. Black Belts undergo weeks of training dedicated training and complete a Black Belt project. A Black Belt is considered an acceptable level of proficiency to lead projects involving business processes. Even within leadership programs, Black Belts take a couple of years wihtin a normal work environment.

A Master Black Belt is typically referred to as the Owner of the application, or in general, the owner of a process. While individuals with Black Belts utilize Six Sigma within their job, a MBB's job is Six Sigma. They analyze and improve processes for a living and do so on a very large scale. Most management never acquires a MBB because it isn't necessary unless your job *is* six sigma. MBBs take years to acquire and a MBB project is exceptionally long in duration.

I think www.isixsigma.com has a lot of stuff on it.

GE?

 

[UTmtnbiker]

I also work in a company that implements something similar. Things like SixSigma, TQM, Lean Sigma, etc are just buzz words, labels, or cynically, a way of collecting cheks for controlling quality. Depending on the company culture and the committment from mangement, these things can be great or they can fail miserably.

My experience hasn't been great with any of these programs. Quality is a culture, you can't "implement" quality. You can build a culture of quality if you're committed to it. Just because you have a black belt or are ISO 9001 certified, doesn't mean you'll put out a good product IMHO.

 

[Ameesh]

six sigma is a waste of time i hate it and refuse to work anywhere where they implement it in my group. there was a small movement inside microsoft and all the groups who implemented became the slowest least agile teams in the company. they were so buried in process that they couldn't even cope with changing product requirements. fvck 6sigma, stupid boring paper pushing bueracrats.

 

[azazyel]

Originally posted by: Ameesh
six sigma is a waste of time i hate it and refuse to work anywhere where they implement it in my group. there was a small movement inside microsoft and all the groups who implemented became the slowest least agile teams in the company. they were so buried in process that they couldn't even cope with changing product requirements. fvck 6sigma, stupid boring paper pushing bueracrats.

It's kinda funny then that the job were I saw this was from Amazon.

 

[Ameesh]

Originally posted by: azazyel

Originally posted by: Ameesh
six sigma is a waste of time i hate it and refuse to work anywhere where they implement it in my group. there was a small movement inside microsoft and all the groups who implemented became the slowest least agile teams in the company. they were so buried in process that they couldn't even cope with changing product requirements. fvck 6sigma, stupid boring paper pushing bueracrats.

It's kinda funny then that the job were I saw this was from Amazon.

oh i know its used in amazon some places but just not in my group. I don't think any of the software teams in amazon use it just because we don't have the time to follow a bunch of boring process and fill out a bunch of boring specs and paperwork for evey little change. 6sigma is good for industries like manufacturing but its not good for all companies like these 6sigma crazies are touting.

 

[azazyel]

Originally posted by: Ameesh

Originally posted by: azazyel

Originally posted by: Ameesh
six sigma is a waste of time i hate it and refuse to work anywhere where they implement it in my group. there was a small movement inside microsoft and all the groups who implemented became the slowest least agile teams in the company. they were so buried in process that they couldn't even cope with changing product requirements. fvck 6sigma, stupid boring paper pushing bueracrats.

It's kinda funny then that the job were I saw this was from Amazon.

oh i know its used in amazon some places but just not in my group. I don't think any of the software teams in amazon use it just because we don't have the time to follow a bunch of boring process and fill out a bunch of boring specs and paperwork for evey little change. 6sigma is good for industries like manufacturing but its not good for all companies like these 6sigma crazies are touting.

Right on, so they are kinda TPS coversheet people.

 

[beer]

Originally posted by: Ameesh
six sigma is a waste of time i hate it and refuse to work anywhere where they implement it in my group. there was a small movement inside microsoft and all the groups who implemented became the slowest least agile teams in the company. they were so buried in process that they couldn't even cope with changing product requirements. fvck 6sigma, stupid boring paper pushing bueracrats.

http://www.rbsc.com/pages/sixsig.htm

Just becuase your implementation sucked does not mean Six Sigma is worthless. Try and build an aircraft engine with four-sigma manufacturing.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: beer

Originally posted by: Ameesh
six sigma is a waste of time i hate it and refuse to work anywhere where they implement it in my group. there was a small movement inside microsoft and all the groups who implemented became the slowest least agile teams in the company. they were so buried in process that they couldn't even cope with changing product requirements. fvck 6sigma, stupid boring paper pushing bueracrats.

http://www.rbsc.com/pages/sixsig.htm

Just becuase your implementation sucked does not mean Six Sigma is worthless. Try and build an aircraft engine with four-sigma manufacturing.

uh-oh.....you're using the lingo now.

all your sigma are belong to six.

 

[Ameesh]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: beer

Originally posted by: Ameesh
six sigma is a waste of time i hate it and refuse to work anywhere where they implement it in my group. there was a small movement inside microsoft and all the groups who implemented became the slowest least agile teams in the company. they were so buried in process that they couldn't even cope with changing product requirements. fvck 6sigma, stupid boring paper pushing bueracrats.

http://www.rbsc.com/pages/sixsig.htm

Just becuase your implementation sucked does not mean Six Sigma is worthless. Try and build an aircraft engine with four-sigma manufacturing.

uh-oh.....you're using the lingo now.

all your sigma are belong to six.

seriously, beer can you explain to me how you can quantify the difference between 4sigma and 6sigma when talking about your process. i guarentee its gonna be a contrived arbitrary defintion as the difference between 4 std devs and 6 std. deviations is so small that your just hyping buzzwords at that point. most of these idiot six sigma people don't even know what a standard deviation is. :roll: