Delta Plastics Six Sigma -

Delta Plastics

Six Sigma - Within the modern business world, there are a number of theoretical processes that allow for the analysis and synthesis of production, service, and sales quality. Most are designed to uncover errors in manufacturing, redundancies, and the like. Sis Sigma is a business management strategy originally designed for use by Motorola in the early 1980s. It was put in place in order to not only uncover, but to solve, certain manufacturing processes that were not working appropriately. It improved the company by defining a clearly focus on measurable issues that could be quantified and linked to profitability. It also increased an emphasis on management's commitment to utilizing the strategic planning system to actually implement a cause-effect relationship within the manufacturing model. The major strategy for Six Sigma is to improve the quality of all processes by identifying and removing the causes of errors (or defects if manufacturing) and maintaining a synthesis of streamlined, non-redundant efforts. In effect, it is a set of quality management methods which include statistical analysis, to create a way of viewing whether the company's strategic plan is working. Six Sigma is a tool, it is not an edict. Like many tools, it is dependent upon two things: 1) How it is used, and 2) The quality of the data (Adams, 2003).

Delta Plastics, Inc. -- Data given to the Director of Manufacturing at Delta Plastics shows the number and type of product defects per week (see Appendix A). One of the keys to evaluating the performance data was based on a new "super plastic," that can sustain large temperature changes throughout the manufacturing process vs. The standard plastic that had been used regularly by the company. The company began using the new plastic only a month prior to the data sets, but the Director of Manufacturing, Jose, believed that the new material, while perhaps superior in terms of temperature viability, resulted in more defects during the production process than the standard material they had used for years.

Analysis - A preliminary analysis of the data shows the following:

Using the standard process, the following number of errors occurred: Week 1 (55); Week 2 (46); Week 3 (46); Week 4 (36); Total Errors -- 183

Using the new super plastic, the following number of errors occurred: Week 1 (51); Week 2 (54); Week 3 (63); Week 4 (73); Total Errors -- 241

Thus, the total number of errors using the new plastic was approximately 24% greater using the new plastic; but was this enough information to determine its efficacy?

However, closer analysis shows that there are really only two categories in which the Super plastic is clearly more error prone than the regular: bubbles and cracks. In the case of scratches and thickness variations, the super plastic outperforms the regular- perhaps because it is more heat resistant. There is also clearly more variation in the superplastic errors than the regular, with only bubbles being the unacceptable problem for the old system.

Based on the results from the data, we need a bit more information to provide a complete analysis of the situation. We do not have data that tells us what the total runs were on the items so that we can calculate error percentage and we do not know if each error results in the same degree of cost to the company. If we assume that on an average error basis, then we can generally say that the new plastic resulted in about 25% more errors per four-week period than the old plastic. With this preliminary data, we would conclude that it is more cost effective for the company to retain the previous material.