I loved statistical process control, when I took it at the graduate level. I used it to demonstrate to management that, while we were good, we still had slop in the processes to eliminate and that caused rejects.
I've used it to highlight poor control strategies because we, indeed, were not in control. We just thought we were.
I learned this stuff before 6S came along and management wanted to apply it to human behavior. Good luck with that application.
6S became a black hole in some companies because they didn't have the right resources working on the projects. They were engineers but engineers lacking experience and had no knowledge of how to measure and control various process parameters. Consequently, the various Belts sucked large sums of money and produced no measurable results let alone ROI.
Then managers began to use 6S as a weapon to chastise people for poor performance. It's unfortunate that managers, some of them, look for ways to use good tools to threaten good people. They needed to look in the mirror for the real cause of a good many problems.
Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC
