Question

Consider the example of laptop manufacturing, a grocery store checkout system or any other process you have experience, and detail with examples 5 different dimensions of product quality and how you would measure them.

The question is below:

Detail 3 general goals of Six Sigma. With the same example of the same process as in Qn 4A, detail where these two goals can be applied.

Answer 1

The second part's answer to this question depends upon the example chosen in the above question. I have chosen the example of grocery store checkout system. and thus the answer is -

Six Sigma is tool to enhance and improve processes. The three goals of six sigma are -

• Improve quality- Six Sigma focusses largely on improving the quality of products and services being provided to the customers and employees of an organization. This enhances the chances of running a successful business. and thus leads to functional efficiency.
• Reduce variability - This is a main goal of SIx Sigma to reduce the variability in the organizations. This is one important thing that managers look forward to because this is the one that determines the operational efficiency of organizations. This is the main point of increased and decreased costs of the operations carried out in the premises. This technically means to reduce the variability by cutting costs and reducing defects to produce consistent quality outputs.
• Increase productivity - The one most important goal of Six Sigma is to increase the productivity of organizations. It focusses mainly on increasing the productivity of firms to increase profits. This can be implemented by reducing cycle times , reducing activities and steps in the process etc.

In the grocery store checkout systems, Six SIgma implementation can be used to bring efficiency in the grocery stores. It can be applied by adopting various checkout systems, one such is - the 'self-checkout' system. It is basically a system where the buyers are allowed to process their own purchases. This would enable the grocery store to implement these goals of Six Sigma -

It would help in reducing the steps in the checkout and helps speed up the checkouts which would reduce the cycle time and steps in the cycle time, achieving increased productivity and operational excellence. Self checkout system would also enable the grocery store earn customer satisfaction as they would not have to stand in long queues and preserve their precious time which would make them visit the store repeated times. It would result in building strong goodwill and earn higher profits. This system is a one time cost but would save the store in reducing the variability as costs will be reduced which was paid to employees and cashiers in the traditional cashier checkout systems. All these are the ways the goals can be applied in the store and would increase profits and productivity.