Foreword
Thoughts About the New Six Sigma
by Gary Cone
I have had the privilege of observing from the inside several of the most highly regarded companies and business leaders of the late 20th and early 21st century. Motorola and Bob Galvin, Compaq Computers and Rod Canion, AlliedSignal and Larry Bossidy, and General Electric and Jack Welch comprise my list. Not bad. All were extraordinarily exciting places to work at a point in time, but none compared with working at Motorola''''s Automotive and Industrial Electronics Group (AIEG) in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
I often worked 18-hour days. I moved a factory from Building 1299 in Chicago while living in Buffalo. I built a factory for a customer in Milano, Italy, while living in Chicago. I took an assignment driving better-quality systems, cycle-time reduction, and Six Sigma in such far-flung places as Taiwan, Italy, France, and England, and as close to home as New York, Texas, and Illinois. I spent my life on airplanes and in hotels, and my shoulder still aches from the 25-pound Zenith Data Systems "laptop" I carried so I could use Lotus 123 to do simple simulations and a DOS version of Minitab for statistical analysis. It was the most fun I ever had.
I have taken some time to reflect on why this was so. Compaq was a miserable place for me to work. It was "world class" but losing money and market share. The company was certain there was nothing to learn. At Zenith Data Systems, I was a vice-president, and I couldn''''t stand it. At the time, Zenith was the third-largest PC supplier in the world and an innovator in the PC world (this is a factfirst laptop, first notebook, first integrated Ethernet as a standard), but it could not hit market windows. The company was proud of the innovation and saw no need to learn.
What was different? Did I throw away the best job in the world when I left Motorola? I certainly thought about it.
Let''''s look at a few of the specifics…
Building the customer''''s factory
The customer had its back against the wall. The European Union had mandated fuel injection in all cars in less than a year and a half, and although the customer had a product, the manufacturing cycle was long (about three days), the yield was low, the product was going through a 24-hour burn-in, and the field reliability was poor (about 2 percent failures per month!). The customer had the opportunity to own the southern European market for fuel injection, but most of its customers were considering Bosch because of the problems. The deal was that Motorola could have 50 percent of its fuel injection electronics business (there is a lot to fuel injection besides the electronics) if we could help the customer design the right product, design the right process, and implement both with its people. I had so much faith in the methodology that I thought we could do this in a foreign country in a factory not owned or managed by Motorola. Motorola again allowed me to take one person (Karl Werwath, a brilliant process manager that I had sense enough to stay out of his way). We launched a product in 13 months, one month early, which required no burn-in and had a Sigma level equal to our best product in Seguin, Texasour best factory. The process we followed is now referred to as Design for Six Sigma; it was the collaborative work of a team of design engineers in Chicago and Torino, and a team of process engineers in Seguin, Angers, and Pavia. We were having fun. We were learning.
AlliedSignal
I was responsible for its Six Sigma deployment within the automotive sector, a $6 billion business. AlliedSignal made such things as seat belts, air bags, brake pads, air brakes for trucks, turbo chargers, spark plugs, and oil filters; my prior experience and our examples were about silicon wafers and electronics assemblies. We no longer had the safety net of Motorola University, and our intellectual property was unusable. Larry Bossidy expected results. I was teaching six Black Belt classes per year with 3540 people in each class. With the aid of Steve Zinkgraf, we were creating intellectual property on a just-in-time basis. We were following the action learning model we learned at Motorola. We had tremendous results. We were having fun. We were learning.
GE
It wanted 70 percent of all projects in nonmanufacturing areas! Although we had several examples of the techniques working outside of manufacturing, and we all knew it would work, 70 percent? Wow, what a stretch. Jack Welch expected results. The GE folks figured it out. They have the Baskin Robbins of Six Sigma, there are so many flavors, and I lost count years ago. Black Belt/Green Belt may have many different meanings and intellectual properties, but they all work. What is the common thread? They were all driven by a common vision and a common set of metrics (just like Motorola AIEG). They were having fun. They were learning.
For me, Six Sigma has been mundane since those first heady years of GE and AlliedSignal. What a wild time. All professionals get at least Green Belt training. No one gets promoted without being certified in Six Sigma. Going after billions of dollars in savings per year! Jack and Larry were wild men, and they got what they asked forand measured and rewarded. And they were just following the example of the real visionaryBob Galvin. They did not do anything Bob hadn''''t done, they just did it bigger, with a tad more flair, to an audience of Wall Street analysts. Since then, it is just a lot of "I want to be like Jack." The method has stagnated and has been compromised to a great extent by the services offered by many providers:
Black Belts in two weeks, no, waitone week!
Black Belts with no training, just an affidavit and a test
Standalone Web-based training for Green Belt and Black Belt
Everyone claiming to be a Master Black Belt
I can count on my hands and feet the number of Master Black Belts with more than five years of experience. Everyone is expecting huge pay increases after being trained in basic process discipline by his or her employer! Too many expect to achieve results like GE by hiring a former GE Black Belt or Green Belt. There are a lot of disappointed people.
Let''''s stop the insanity. There is no net gain in intellectual property from taking shortcuts. You can''''t be like Jack; you have to become your own leader. You are not a genius because Six Sigma is bringing results in your somewhat-unique niche. Disciplined, structured logical techniques, along with knowledge sharing with coaches, and measurement will bring positive results. The results are enhanced if management steps up and supports its people. The results are even better if management breaks down barriers and creates a culture where it is unacceptable to have process knowledge and not share it. The results are phenomenal if the work is focused in areas that are important to the paying customer.
The New Six Sigma delivers three things:
An accurate accounting of the history of Six Sigma
Thank God, now maybe we can dismiss all of the nonsense that is out there. I would just remind all of the current leaders at Motorola to respect the courage of all those who believed and adopted and learned and pushed the envelope. They had fun and would not trade the experience, but they were (and are) working without a net.
A clear articulation of the role of leadership
Tom McCarty describes the framework that enables Six Sigma better than I have ever seen. His section on Six Sigma''''s present, along with Adhocracy, by Bob Waterman, should be required reading for all leaders and all MBA students. It is what Larry, Jack, and most importantly Bob Galvin knew. Leadersembrace Align, Mobilize, Accelerate, and Govern, or you will fail. Most of what is being called Six Sigma today does not comprehend this, and those efforts lack relevance just like most TQM efforts. If you are unclear whether I''''m referring to you, ask your employees. Given the chance, they will be honest with you.
A roadmap and leadership to take Six Sigma to the next step
Motorola knows it starts by embracing and nurturing leadership. Six Sigma never was about stagnation or learning to apply technology, although certain things like statistical software for PCs and knowledge-sharing networks are really useful. This is about sharing what you know, considering and trying what you have not yet used, and gaining great satisfaction from others taking it further than you ever envisioned. I''''ve often described this as "tools usable and used." Tools come into the toolset when they demonstrate their usefulness. Matt Barney has proposed usable tools. Now it''''s up to the leading-edge practitioners to demonstrate their use.
The learning has awakened from a slumber. Motorola is reclaiming the lead with a clear objective of not losing its way. It is under no delusion that this cannot happen.
This book should be called The Real Six Sigma.
Let the fun begin.
Gary Cone
President & CEO,
Global Productivity Solutions
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