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Six Sigma Software
Six sigma is a methodology developed to eliminate as many defects as possible from products, process and transaction through understanding the information recorded in these areas. The underlying objective is to improve efficiency by removing errors. The ability to do things better, faster and at reduced costs is something all businesses will naturally strive to achieve.
Implementing Six Sigma Software
Many solutions and practices have been developed over the years to support Six Sigma. It is impossible for one tool to cover all areas of Six Sigma Software especially across a variety of industries.
Many six sigma projects fail due to a number of key factors:
- Over complicated methods and inadequate business tools
- Too broad a scope, trying to deal with everything at once
- Takes too long to implement, Organisation reverts to old practices in the post six sigma project vacuum
- Lack of support or buy in from both management and employees
Improvement projects tend to fail for the following reasons:
- Poor leadership & organisational culture
- Inadequate tools, great in theory but don't work in reality e.g. task based planning
- Misguided initiatives, pet projects which do not contribute to the strategy
A Solution Must Be Sustainable
A common criticism of business change and transformation projects is that the status quo quickly returns after the project. It is imperative that any tools and processes deployed are easy to use and make sense to the people using them. This sounds too obvious; yet the fact is that people consistently get this aspect of the implementation so obviously wrong.
Opinion Versus Reality
Activity based costing tools and methodologies have been commonly deployed over the past 20 years and beyond.
Atlantic engaged four clients recently in Activity Based Costing exercises prior to deploying the Atlantic Timesheet Recording module. The contrast between the perceived opinion and the actual evidence gathered using Atlantic could not be greater.
- Two project orientated organisations expressed the opinion that 18% of their staff's time was spent on non-project work. Results obtained by tracking their actual effort using AG Solutions showed this figure to be 48%
- The IT departments in two large organisations expressed the opinion that 20% of their staff's time was spent doing support work. Results obtained by tracking their actual effort using AG Solutions showed this figure to be 52%
This is an example of Six Sigma at its best. The business had the historical knowledge of what it was doing wrong and a sustainable means of continually measuring the steps taken to improve the performance.
As an example of a methodology, this simple example illustrates how the business realized the benefits promised by six sigma without having to understand the complex theories behind a methodology.
Atlantic Business Solutions and Atlantic Corporate Vision should become the foundation of Six Sigma software projects highlighting time wasted, badly allocated resources, contractor over use, under and over staffing, workforce shift, bad planning, bad accounting, inefficient customer resource management, sales force management, the list is very comprehensive.
To implement and understand all these issues from scratch using six sigma software without powerful supporting tools like Atlantic Business Solutions and Atlantic Corporate Vision would be very difficult, if not impossible. Having the tools to measure and document all these areas over time allows you to concentrate on trouble spots but monitor all areas of the business so as business adapts you can achieve a continual improvement program making Six Sigma not a project but an integral part of the company culture.