Six Sigma and Lean Principles Essay

HISTORY/BACKGROUND: QUALITY SYSTEMS IN BUSINESS



This study was designed to analyze the importance of quality systems in the workplace. Products and processes today require very tight tolerances, therefore; variability must be controlled within all processes. The physical work environment around you is also very critical in the drive for low cost, speedy delivery and high quality. The new century is here and many companies are asking themselves just how they are going to stay afloat in this economy. The answer is simple, with a proper quality system in place.

Hiroyuki Hirano is a genius of one particular quality system known as 5S. 5S is a quality system that was created to provide structure and cleanliness in the work place and it is also a good way to collect data from your processes and provide visual controls. 5S methodology has been around for a number of years, dating all the way back to Henry Ford in the early 1900’s. Henry Ford is the founder of many quality systems including the production line and what is known today as 5S. He was a brilliant man that was able to create efficiencies and high profits from work place organization and cleanliness. This is what the 5S methodology is all about. The 5S theory consists of 5 steps now known as Sort-Set in order-Shine-Standardize-Sustain.   Ford Motor Company was the first to develop this concept which was formally known as 5C: Clear-Configure-Clean-Conform-Custom. When the Japanese adapted this concept was when it became 5S.

Carl Frederick Gauss started a survey in 1818 which lead to the development of the normal distribution for describing measurement errors and establishes the notion of curvature. A little over one hundred years later in the 1920’s Walter Shewhart suggests that at 3-sigma from the mean, process correction is required. He established 6-sigma as a measurement standard of product variation. Fifty years after in the 1970’s Bill Smith, Motorola’s staff engineer, created a system of...