Aviation Six Sigma applications and methodologies

¶ … Sigma has often become the associated trademark for all processes involving a managerial approach towards increasing the efficiency of an organization. More and more, Six Sigma has become a tool that management can use in the aviation industry for the same purpose of streamlining operations and activity in order to drive a reduction in costs and an increased efficiency, with the final objective of maximizing profits. At the same time, Six Sigma proposes the increase in quality of the products delivered to the final consumer.

There are several distinct areas of the aviation industry that the Six Sigma methodology can target. On one hand, there is the turnaround time that airplanes spend in repair. There are two costs that such an activity incurs. The first is the cost of the actual repair. It is obvious that if the repair time is longer, then the costs are also increased due to more labor that needs to be paid, plus auxiliary fixed costs, such as the cost of the hangar where the plane is kept during the repair time.

Another important cost that needs to be considered is the cost of opportunity: the planes that are in a process of repair are not flying, which means that they are not making money for the company, which is not able to sell tickets on those planes. Every additional day that the plane spends in a hangar for repair is equivalent to millions of dollars lost in opportunity costs.

It is now clear why Collins Aviation Services introduced Six Sigma to decrease the turnaround time on servicing a standard avionics box from 22 days (of which only six were spent on actual repair), to just over four days

. The implementation of Six Sigma was not done only within Collins Aviation Services, but also with subcontractors, in order to obtain a maximized efficiency and improved quality throughout the entire chain of cooperation.

From a manager's perspective, there are several important elements to be understood from this example. First of all, Six Sigma is not necessarily strictly related to a manufacturing environment, but can be applied in other domains as well. Second, Six Sigma cannot be applied limitedly, but rather needs to include the entire chain of distribution and, in this case, of cooperation at different levels: subcontractors need to be taken into consideration as well.

The Six Sigma process in aviation implicated management to a significant degree. First of all, implementing Six Sigma is equivalent to a change in the organizational culture. As a new procedure, Six Sigma needs to be properly communicated at all levels of the company, understood by the employees and used in their day-to-day activity.

In the manufacturing industry, this is sometimes more straightforward to be understood and implemented, because the final result is a product, whose quality and characteristics can be directly measured. In a service industry such as the aviation industry, this is often not the case: the end result is more difficult to quantify. Thus, management is often charged with identifying the relevant measurable variables that can determine whether a process needs improvement and, if so, how Six Sigma can be used in that sense.

In the aviation industry, there are several variables one can expect Six Sigma to impact on. Quality can be measured in the number of passengers that choose to fly a certain airline. An increase in the number of passenger would potentially mean that the quality has been improved as a result of Six Sigma.

Communication with aviation customers is an essential area where Six Sigma can play an important role. This can include improving the customer feedback on different elements of interests that have an impact on customer satisfaction. For example, the feedback from the customer helps in the first step of a DMAIC analysis, key methodology of Six Sigma

. Defining the problem through the eyes of the final consumer will help an entity operating in the aviation sector understand how it can improve quality and productiveness to drive upwards one of the variables used to measure the success of the company: customer retention.

The other elements in the DMAIC methodology (Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control) are entirely relevant in the aviation industry as well. Measuring translates into identifying and quantifying elements that are part of the everyday activity of an airport, an airline or any service associated with the aviation industry. For example, following the case previously described with the airplanes that spent a large amount of time in repair, the measuring phase identified the fact that there was a problem in this area, including by quantifying the number of days that were used. More so, the measuring phase also proposed and anticipated the improvement phase, proposing that this number be decreased to x days.

In terms of the analyze phase, it means describing and better understanding all the different elements and causes that led to that situation. For example, why are the planes spending so much time in repair? What are the causes of this fact? Is it because the workforce is inefficient or because the quality of the equipment is inadequate, forcing labor to work more hours to complete the job?

All these elements will come together in the "improve" phase of the process, in which the analyst will be able to build on the measure and analyze phases and determine what are the distinct steps that need to be undertaken in order to be able to successfully improve the process. The improve phase should show concrete actions and steps that need to be done.