1. If you believe in a product, don’t give it up halfway through. Be on it. You will succeed one day and the results will be good.
2. Have patience during difficult times. Don’t lose your balance, and try to carry the team with you.
3. If it is a new business, plan for 50% more to standby so that you don’t have to close the business or run away.
4. There is a lot of scope in manufacturing. The world’s emerging economies can become strong in the long run only through the manufacturing base, and not the service base. A service base is only temporary. This will not create long-term employment.
Suresh met me a month ago and requested that I write a foreword for his sister books: The Global Quality Management System: Improvement through Systems Thinking; Lean Transformation: Cultural Enablers and Enterprise Alignment; The Tactical Guide to Six Sigma Implementation; and Business Excellence: Exceeding Your Customers’ Expectations Each Time, All the Time.
When I met Suresh, and came to know about his operational excellence experience of more than two decades with multinational corporations like Eaton Corporation and Fiat Global, a bell rang inside me and I made up my mind not only to pen the foreword but also to leverage his Spanish language command to boost the performance of one of my South American Chilean units engaged in manufacturing wear-resistant products and material handling for the mining industry.
I knew Suresh well when I invited him to our Kolkata headquarters, to spend one week at the Tega head office and the main plant at Joka, Kolkata. It was evident from the feedback report I received from my plant management team that these sister books will clear the “cobwebs” and prepare any organization for the journey of continuous quality improvement.
These sister books are unique and comprehensive “how to understand and implement” a Global Quality Management System, Lean System, Six Sigma methodology, and Business Excellence Strategy to achieve world-class business excellence. The author has succinctly summarized the business excellence concept and the body of knowledge of this book by illustrating the business excellence pyramid with the following foundations: Management Systems at the system level, Lean System at the operational level, Six Sigma methodology at the tactical level, and Business Excellence at the strategy level.
The Global Quality Management System: Improvement through Systems Thinking is about the Global Quality Management System (GQMS). It starts by paying homage to leading Quality “gurus.” Having illustrated systems thinking as opposed to the command and control system, the author then stresses the fact that command and control system can at worst “influence people to behave in ways which dissatisfy the customer and/or sub-optimize performance.”
The main emphasis of any quality management system is on the process. The Global Quality Management System: Improvement through Systems Thinking stresses the importance of the process—its identification, definition, improvement, and control using “Turtle” diagram and its extension to “SIPOC” (suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, and customers) diagrams. The processes discussed include, among others, main business processes such as the HR (Human Resource) Process, the Finance Process, the Project Management Process, and, importantly, the “Process of improving the Process.”
Every documented GQMS has focus on customer requirements and management system processes, which lead to customer satisfaction. To this end, the author has included advanced processes to comply with ISO 9001, ISO/TS 16949, and AS 9100 standards, and elaborated on management improvement through extensive PDCA (Plan–Do–Check–Act) analysis and the problem-solving methodology involving the famous eight disciplines process (“8D”). The “Check” and “Act” phases are discussed extensively through audit processes and a PCPA process (Process Control Plan Audit) as practiced by most automotive and multinational corporations.
Lean Transformation: Cultural Enablers and Enterprise Alignment is about the Lean System. Section I explains why Lean Implementation usually fails. It goes on to show the approach for Lean Transformation by highlighting the “Cultural Enablers” for the employees (including the management) and how management should align the Lean Transformation process. In Section II, the book explains principles of continuous process. Section III is about the Lean Tools and how they can be deployed for continuous improvement. Section IV is about Lean Performance Measures and how to assess Lean performance. Assessment of the Lean system tools is a very interesting feature of this part and enables an organization to remain focused on the standardization of the Lean System and boost the organization’s sustainability efforts.
The author has succinctly portrayed the main principles of the Lean System as follows:
1. Define customer requirement correctly and arrive at customer value so that you are providing what the customer actually wants.
2. Identify the value stream for each product/service family and remove the non-value-added (wasted) steps for which the customer will not pay and that don’t create value.
3. Make the value stream flow continuously to shorten throughput and delivery time aggressively.
4. Allow the customer to pull product/service from your value streams as needed (rather than pushing products toward the customer on the basis of forecasts).
5. Never relent until you reach perfection, which is the delivery of pure value instantaneously with zero waste and zero defects.
The Tactical Guide to Six Sigma Implementation is about the unique way in which the so-called difficult concept and practice of Six Sigma methodology are depicted. It includes the collection of tools needed for all five phases: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control (DMAIC) and proven best practices to identify which few process and input variables influence the process output measures. To begin with, the author describes the basic concepts of variation, spread of data, and Sigma through basic statistical concepts. Before embarking on the five phases (DMAIC), the author clarifies what is needed for business performance measurement through the concepts of “Balanced Scorecard” and important measuring units for quality performance. Notable measures discussed are DPMO (defects per million opportunities), Rolled Throughput Yield, Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ), Business Failure Costs, Cost–Benefit Analysis, Return on Assets (ROA), and, lastly, a method of evaluating projects and investments known as Net Present Value (NPV) or Discounted Cash Flow (DCF).
The five phases (DMAIC) form the bulk of The Tactical Guide to Six Sigma Implementation. The step-by-step approach taken by the author to explain the key concepts and tools required in each one of these phases requires special mention.
Define Phase: Starts with the definition of the VOC or the Voice of the Customer. Here, the QFD (Quality Function Deployment) tool is described in a simple and easy way to translate the customer’s voice into the language of the engineer. The QFD is then utilized to define and document a Business Improvement Project Charter based on the customer and competitive intelligence data. The project tracking tools such as Gantt chart, Critical Path Analysis (CPA), and Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) are explained in detail. The Critical to Quality (CTQ) flow-down is introduced to define the customer satisfaction in four areas: Quality, Delivery, Cost, and Safety for internal and external customers.
Measure Phase: The author has identified and discussed 16 different aspects of process characteristics. Having done this, MSA (Measurement System Analysis) is described in great detail to ensure that the integrity of the measured data of important characteristics, the measuring equipment, and the human aspect of the measurement system are maintained within allowed R&R (Repeatability and Reproducibility) acceptance criteria.
Analyze Phase: Here, the root cause analysis methods for the problems encountered are discussed. The main techniques described include regression and correlation, ANOVA, FMEA, Gap Analysis, Waste Analysis, and Kaizen.
Improve Phase: The process improvement methods discussed in this phase are prioritization through C & E Matrix (Cause-and-Effect Matrix), Kaizen using Lean Tools and Six Sigma, PDCA, and Theory of Constraints.
Control Phase: Key concepts and tools illustrated in the control phase are SPC (Statistical Process Control), TPM and OEE (Total Productive Maintenance and Overall Equipment Effectiveness), MSA, Control Plan, and Visual Factory. In order to sustain the improvements, the tools referred to are as follows: Lessons Learned, Training Plan, SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures), Work Instruction, and ongoing performance assessment.
The DFSS (Design for Six Sigma) methodology is a very useful and logical extension of the Six Sigma phases. The tools discussed in DFSS include DMADV (Define, Measure, Analyze, Design, and Verify) and DMADOV (Design, Measure, Analyze, Design, Optimize, and Verify). Design for X (DFX) includes reliability analysis and design of tolerance limits. Special design tools described are Porter’s five forces analysis and TRIZ (Russian for “Theory of Inventive Problem Solving”).
Any Six Sigma book cannot be called complete without a case study. To this end, the author has chosen an improvement project to improve the batting in the Cricket Game using Lean Six Sigma approach.
Business Excellence: Exceeding Your Customers’ Expectations Each Time, All the Time is about Business Excellence Strategy. There are many models of Business Excellence practiced by many countries of the world. At best, these models lay down Business Excellence Assessment criteria, but the author has felt that the main requirement of the organizations intending to embark on business strategy is a special body of knowledge with which the Business Excellence strategy can be implemented successfully. The inclusion of strategies for Leadership, Strategic Planning, Customer Excellence, Operational Excellence, and Functional Excellence for HR and IT will prove to be very useful for the initiated management. Assessment of Business Excellence strategy through the use of the Balanced Scorecard, Employee Survey, Achieving Performance Excellence, and Cost Out is a very effective chapter for the Business Excellence Strategy.
Finally, as you will put these sister books of knowledge into practice, you will find out the shifting roles of leaders and managers in your organization. It is not enough for the leaders to just keep on doing what they have always done. It is not enough for them to merely support the work of others. Rather, leaders must lead the cultural transformation and change the mind-sets of their associates by building on the principles behind all these excellent tools.
The author’s account of these difficult and vast subjects is very praiseworthy and a proof of his vast industrial experience of more than four decades working with MNCs in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. This is an inspirational work that is easy to be learned and applied by the lay reader. I highly recommend this book to all students, teachers, executives, and organizations who want to learn and implement GQMS Lean Six Sigma systems and Business Excellence strategies.
Madan Mohanka
CMD and Founder
TEGA Industries Limited
Kolkata