Six Sigma quality initiative sweeping the United States. This is good for any concern your company? Consultant Michael Hammer thinks not. He warns that, in his desire to improve the performance of operations, many business leaders are not able to distinguish its strengths from its weaknesses. Hammer is a strategic, integrated approach - business process management - in which Six Sigma is just one of the many useful initiatives. If business processes such as billing customers, essentially defective, why use Six Sigma to improve it? Companies that process the company calls the Hammer (Caterpillar, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Progressive casualty insurance, Bombardier, and IBM) have found greater success of the reorganization of the whole process. Of course, the ability of Six Sigma is to unearth the causes of the problems is outstanding for a small economy improvements. But it develops statistical analysis tools to identify gaps in the implementation of existing processes, without asking, the process itself is flawed. Six Sigma assumes that the existing design is fundamentally sound - a dangerous assumption. For maximum performance, the company has positioned Six Sigma in the context of the management process and assign process owners. Process owners to ensure that all performance initiatives (Six Sigma, enterprise resource planning, balanced scorecard, customer relationship management, etc.) are integrated to support the strategic goals. Installation in Six Sigma process-management framework enables organizations to enjoy the benefits of Six Sigma, while keeping it away from the areas where it does not belong. Process companies already reaping the cost savings, faster new product introduction, improve customer satisfaction and increase profitability. "Hide
by Michael Hammer Source: MIT Sloan Management Review 9 pages. Publication Date: December 1, 2002. Prod. #: SMR073-PDF-ENG
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