Case Analysis - Six Sigma at 3m, Inc.

Case Analysis - Six Sigma at 3M, Inc.

1. What will be the benefits, costs, and risks of the Six Sigma program, and how they will be tracked and reported?

Six Sigma program could be defined by benefits, costs and risks.

For the organization, the Benefits of Six Sigma will be:

- Low cost savings

- Analyzing data for making assessment

- Product or service's quality improvement by the customers' requirement

- Practical supply chain management

- Increase stabilization and improvements

- Saving process cycle time and wasting less

- Skillful staffs and vocational training

In the individual level, it will be different, such as:

- Vocational training and professionalization of individuals

- Proper knowledge of technology utilization

- Internationally recognized reputation, which met international standard of skill

We can see the real success of Six Sigma, which is initiated and implemented at the 3M and resulted positive impact on the company. The customers, employees and shareholders have definitely benefited to this success.

Costs: Process cost involves more people, while implementing the Six Sigma program. To implement the project properly, there should be specialized team with high skills or should improve existing employee's ability. The team member selection, which impacts on cost of employing and capacity building, is essential. Although, this cost should be carefully considered in terms of saving extra cost of consulting and timing by the 3M.

Risks: As well, risk should be reduced in order to escape of failing project in Six Sigma program implementation. Due to keep its success, companies exercise some sufficient actions of avoiding risks along with Six Sigma program.

There are some steps to avoid risk, such as right selection of project, objectives and investment, as well Six Sigma's standard methods utilization and introduction to the organization.

2. How should the various functional areas in the organization be included in the Six Sigma initiatives, and what role should senior and middle management play in this change initiative?

As a project implementing process cycle, there are Six Sigma initiatives that should be included, such as:

- Marketing / Growth (Commercial cycling, Sales, Marketing, Customer satisfaction)

- Operations / Cost (Production and Retailer)

- Finance / Cash (Inventory and Receivables)

As well, Management Strategy, Human Resources, Information Technology and Risk management are crucial in changing initiatives.

Managers should encourage employees during the changing initiative. It means that managers' encouragement to give motivation to employees is essential in order to succeed in the cultural change when restructuring organization. And this must show managers' eagerness for benefits of Six Sigma initiatives for customer satisfaction.

3. What role should Six Sigma play in corporate strategy?

It is well-known that Six Sigma creates proper procedure through continues improvement of the production and process. The basic principles of this system are a careful consideration of customer needs and business requirement, a measurement of performance gap, an analysis of fundamental source and an implementation of frequent correction along with modification. Therefore, Six Sigma takes part in the corporate strategy, such as connecting metrics/targets to critical quality factors, and addressing capability lacks with opportunity to improve project initiative.

Hence, Six Sigma covers some important techniques to execute the corporate strategy. Sometimes it is necessary to change or improve basic procedure of company for accurate procedure and management.

In the level of improving procedure, 3M Inc. had undertaken two core management actions of Strategic Project Selection (SPS) and Project Management Infrastructure (PMI).

For the Strategic Project Selection (SPS), Six Sigma had improved the procedure of Strategic positioning, Customer requirement and Prioritization in terms of the strategic objectives of the company.

For the Project Management Infrastructure (PMI), the program ensures the procedure improvement according to the standard method such as Standard project management methodology and Project leader accountability.

SPS and PMI's impacts on each other results program success.

4. What are the human resource implications for deploying Six Sigma (e.g., employee selection, roles, organization structure, reward systems)?

In order to implement Six Sigma program successfully, a support