Lessons Learned from Six Sigma in R&D

"Eliminating defects" is difficult in R&D because the work defies systematic improvement. In the workshops of the Industrial Research Institute's Six Sigma in R&D Project, dozens of organizations have shown how Six Sigma concepts are taught to technical staff, how to involve R&D in corporate initiatives, and how to avoid spending a fortune on relatively little-used tools. This article conveys insights shared and extracted from the IRI workshops on both Six Sigma and Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) in R&D. With appropriate corporate strategy, Six Sigma and DFSS in R&D help to generate superior products and competitive profitability. Defining Terms As popularly used in industry, Six Sigma has come to mean a management strategy for quality and performance improvement that uses a metric of 3.4 defects per million opportunities as an anchor or guideline for performance. This metric provides a clear, focused and easily-understood standard for eliminating defects from work activities and communicating improved results. Random, seasonal and biased processes in R&D organizations are difficult to associate with concepts of statistical control. But not all processes in R&D organizations are random or biased--some are repeatable. Defect elimination focuses in part on the repeatable work in an R&D organization, and is one area of impact for quality improvement. Furthermore, some R&D work is focused on outcomes related to Six Sigma, such as inventing and designing products and processes that will perform at or better than Six Sigma levels. Thus, in an R&D context, Six Sigma represents a mindset that is a consequence of adopting 3.4-in-a-million as the guiding performance standard for the repeatable work. Building on the strategic and operational meanings of Six Sigma, Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) means to design products so that they are manufactured, and services so that they are measurably rendered, with defect rates at or below Six Sigma. Insights from the Workshops Companies have formally implemented Six Sigma for various reasons. These reasons, predictably, focus on decreasing cost, increasing speed to market, and improving product and process quality--quality as defined by customers. Because of the focus and sponsorship that these initiatives require, most use a somewhat similar top-down approach for implementing company-wide Six Sigma programs. A major component of this approach involves training a relatively large number of employees in methodically defining problems and applying quality tools. This methodical approach is the essence of the cultural shift for most organizations, which is why many people describe Six Sigma as a management approach, or paradigm for thinking about product and service quality. Further, the required methodology also constrains the implementation in a way that makes the approaches used in different organizations similar in methods, tools and tactics. Because Six Sigma implementations involve resolving persistent management issues--again, issues involving cost avoidance, improving revenue and customer-defined product quality--the problems it addresses and its problem-solving tools are similar to those of other recent quality improvement strategies, such as TQM. In our Six Sigma workshops, R&D professionals have talked about solving problems in meeting customer requirements, achieving new product development goals, as well as optimization of administrative, technical, production, maintenance, and managerial systems. Because the problems they are solving are usually pervasive, expensive and persistent, most organizations rely on extensive implementations of Six Sigma techniques, led from the most senior level and involving relatively large numbers of their professionals in order to communicate and support the necessary cultural and behavioral shifts. These company-wide implementations can be a sore point for R&D professionals, in part because they are already quite familiar with those methods, tools and tactics in a different context. …