How To Address The Technical Defects In Products?
With more and more companies outsourcing their work it had become a significant question now. While products can be buggy which needs to be addressed by the engineers, a percentage of the defects in the products are found in their design or their components which were outsourced. This is where the question of improving the supplier's quality comes into question. A good product should be healthy functioning and also have a robust design, and for that the supplier's performance is vital. So to deal with this problem, several companies have adopted the six sigma approach and have involved their supplier company in the program too.
But, it is not as easy to involve them in the process and make them adopt the six sigma approach. One of the main problems of introducing six sigma in the supplier companies is that most of the supplier companies are small-sized or medium-sized organizations with probably 200 or 300 hundred employees. So a single approach will not work for all the companies, but different approaches have to be adopted.
4 Six Sigma Approaches Adopted By Companies
Here are 4 six sigma approaches that are adopted by the companies to involve their supplier companies into the six sigma program.
Thou Shalt Do Six Sigma
This approach is generally adopted by the more advanced industries like the automotive industry. In this approach, the supplier companies are required to use sig sigma in their processes. It is almost like a standard industry tool. This approach requires the supplier companies to submit sigma figures for process capability of all the supplied components. The supplier company needs to train its employees in six sigma.
One downside to this approach is that the supplier company has to comply with the demands of the customer company. In which case they may not fully commit to the Six Sigma approach and thus may not reach its full potential.
Involvement In Training
Sometimes customer companies allow their supplier companies to participate in their belt training sessions whereby the supplier companies can learn the six sigma methods and the tools. The customer companies offer free training on a few critical projects. But again this approach comes with a downside. This approach may or may not always work. This is because mixing the two belts of both customer and supplier companies may not always produce positive results.
The belts from either the customer company or the supplier company have to be well picked for them to produce some positive results which will in a way send this message to either of the company that they are serious about improving the quality of their product using six sigma.
Projects At The Supplier
This is yet another approach adopted by the customer company whereby projects are conducted on the supplier's processes. But to adopt this approach, the customer company has to be willing to give access to the supplier company to be actively involved in their processes. This approach helps in solving problems quickly as the resources are shared to address the issue. The supplier's process becomes transparent as they share resources the customer company understands the working and the needs of the supplier company.
But like other approaches, this one also comes with a disadvantage. Following this approach does not allow the suppliers to acquire the skills needed to solve such problems, but being part of the training sessions can make them want to adopt the method in the future.
Support Deployment
In this approach, the customers play a crucial role in setting up the six sigma training sessions for the supplier companies. In this approach, six sigma awareness program is conducted for senior executives at supplier companies and the procurement staff. This helps them to be aware of the application and how to use it. They learn the methods and tools. Suppliers are selected based on their competence to learn six sigma quickly.
Champion workshops are coaching classes are held for the employees and the sponsors responsible for supplier projects.
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