Issues you must consider when using Six Sigma

Six Sigma has become the manufacturing method of choice for many businesses. Many manufacturing business owners see this manufacturing method as the way to create higher efficiency in their company and create a higher quality of product that makes their customer happier. Six Sigma has been shown to successful help manufacturing businesses streamline everything within their business and enhance the productivity of the entire company. Best of all when product defects (a major source of waste within manufacturing), are reduced the entire company becomes more profitable. However, there are certain factors that you should take into account when you are using Six Sigma. Knowing what these are will help the manufacturing business owner to make better decisions regarding the use of this manufacturing method. Here are issues you must consider when using Six Sigma-

- Understand your market-You will need to understand the importance of market quality. This means that you will need to be able to compare the product that your manufacturing business makes to all of the competition. You want to be able to insure that your product will be the top one out there. It is important to keep in mind that your market will set the accepted standard of quality. You must be able to exceed this if you are going to attract the largest number of customers to your manufacturing business.
- Understand your flexibility-This issue will deal with how much flexibility you have on your production line. You will need to carefully asses how your employees respond to changes. Can they make changes quickly enough to meet your customer's demands? You must be able to staff your manufacturing business with employees that will be flexible. In addition, you will need to have the machinery and other tools on hand that will help you to meet your customer's wants and needs, as well.
- Understand employee focus-This issue has to do with training employees to be focused upon success. Your production process will need to be as streamlined as possible in order for it to be successful. You will need to train your employees sothat they are focused on doing their jobs as well as they can. Your employees will also need to be trained to recognize and deal with problems quickly when they are still small. If there is a lack of employee focus there is little chance that Six Sigma will help your manufacturing business to improve.
- Understand production processes-This issue is has to do with dealing with work in progress. You will need to be able set up quality control checks that will help your production team know if they are getting the right outputs from the manufacturing line. You should also have a process that tracks how much time it takes from receiving an order until it is fully done and delivered to the customer. When you have this idea of time you can also put in the compensatory time it may take to fix a machine (if it breaks down), or deal with some other issue on the line and still meet your customer's deadline.
- Understand using simplicity-This issue means that you will need to focus on removing anything from the production process that does not add value to the finished product.You should look at every detail of the production process in order to identify these factors. This can include but is not limited to: extra processes or steps, delays in supply chain, or even employees that are not producing. When the production process is made as simple as possible then the manufacturing business can be as profitable as possible.