Keywords

Six Sigma, Policy Deployment, Six Sigma Project Failures, FPL QIP, PDCA

Abstract

Many organizations are struggling to improve customer-focused quality in today's highly competitive domestic and global markets. At the same time, these organizations have failed to implement the Six Sigma methodology into their daily control and strategic planning processes. Six Sigma deployment failures have been categorized as coming from many sources, both management related and person related. Some of the key management related Six Sigma project failures have been identified and discussed in this research work. For continuous improvement to truly take root, organizations must realize that just successfully applying quality tools on any process will not necessarily provide dramatic results, unless the concepts of policy management and deployment are institutionalized. A model called "Six Sigma Policy Deployment" was developed and has been proposed which may help mitigate Six Sigma project failures that are presently attributed to management and organizational issues. By integrating Policy Deployment, the Six Sigma DMAIC (Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control) problem solving approach, and the classic PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) Cycle, the potential for breakthrough improvements in any organization can be enhanced. The model was contrasted against a list of 30 sources of failure in typical Six Sigma projects in order to validate its applicability to mitigate these failures. Furthermore these failures were matched with the work of recent quality theorists in order to validate their occurrence and relevance. A case study section is presented to illustrate FPL's Quality Improvement Program and the Six Sigma Lifecycle, which are bases for the new model. This section also highlights how the use of the proposed Six Sigma Policy Deployment model could help to mitigate potential Six Sigma project failures.

Notes

If this is your thesis or dissertation, and want to learn how to access it or for more information about readership statistics, contact us at STARS@ucf.edu

Graduation Date

2004

Semester

Fall

Advisor

Elshennawy, Ahmad

Degree

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Department

Industrial Engineering and Management Systems

Degree Program

Industrial Engineering and Management Systems

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0000250

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0000250

Language

English

Release Date

December 2004

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Download

Included in

Engineering Commons

Share

COinS