Letters

The good, the bad and the ugly

In my opinion, Quality Digest's coverage of Six Sigma has presented the good, the bad and the ugly, and that's a good thing. I think of Six Sigma as just another tool (an amalgam at that, of existing tools) to help define and solve problems with data. In most cases, I feel it's overblown by proponents seeking to make money or further their careers.

 Continue your questioning coverage.

--Paul Sanford
Quality Assurance Manager
Hexcel Corp.

Don't stop presenting both sides--so few publications do. This is one of Quality Digest's strongest attributes. I look forward to reading articles from the experts, which point out advantages and disadvantages, allowing me to come to my own informed decisions on whether or not the topic is right for our company. Keep up the good work!

--Patrice B. Hambleton
Manager, Quality Assurance
Konsyl Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Reflections on "anonymous"

I certainly agree that it's healthy for a professional journal to maintain a balanced viewpoint on quality initiatives like Six Sigma. You need to publish some of the hype, but you also need to publish some of the concerns and criticisms.

 The one point that I have a serious issue with is publishing an anonymous commentary, such as August's "Last Word." Quite frankly, this comes across more like an episode of The Jerry Springer Show rather than a professional exchange of ideas. There is a good reason why professional journals don't publish anonymous letters to the editor. Sure, they do allow someone to hide their identity from vengeance-seeking bosses, but they also allow the person to avoid taking responsibility for his or her words. People who allow their names to be published think twice before they speak; anonymous authors don't have to. They can simply vent by making a series of flippant remarks without worrying about their accuracy. If your anonymous General Electric author were willing to share his or her name, we could have a mature, professional exchange of ideas. As it is, all we can do is throw insults at each other in Jerry Springer fashion.

 I'm also with GE and have been involved with Six Sigma for about five-and-a-half years. I have also had the opportunity to have my thoughts on GE's implementation of Six Sigma published. To deny that Six Sigma has had any beneficial effect on the company is like denying that we landed on the moon or that the Earth is round. GE has certainly made its share of mistakes along the way, and there are kernels of truth to many of the individual points made by the anonymous author. However, his or her conclusion that Six Sigma is a "parasitic disease" at GE is analogous to saying that the polio vaccine was actually a big mistake because there were some ethical problems in how the clinical trials were originally carried out. I don't believe such outlandish comments would have been made if the author had to stand behind them. Quality Digest, rather than the author, must accept the lion's share of the criticism for this unfortunate situation. I would humbly suggest that your journal be more professional in the future.

--Roger Hoerl
Manager, Applied Statistics Laboratory
GE Corporate R&D

As one who has spent 26 years gainfully employed in the quality profession, and the last 20 as an ASQ certified quality engineer, I've had the dubious distinction of watching many quality fads come and go. I find Six Sigma to be a particularly pernicious one, however, in that it seems to have within its nature the rare ability to cast doubt on, and/or detract from, the credibility of many of the fundamental quality concepts that Walter A. Shewhart, W. Edwards Deming, Joseph M. Juran and Armand V. Feigenbaum (to name but a few) taught us.

 Many of the Six Sigma materials I've seen lately appear to be little more than "snake oil" masquerading as sound statistical techniques. The danger I see in this is that when the truth about these bogus practices and the charlatans who "teach" them are discovered, the reputation of the real statistical methods and the many true quality professionals who have and continue to apply them will be severely diminished.

 One of my company's primary tooling suppliers is also a supplier to Motorola. To hear of the wasteful expense that Motorola has caused this supplier to incur in the name of Six Sigma is to truly understand the "propagation of errors" this sincere but misguided attempt at quality improvement offers to unsuspecting U.S. executives in search of the next "silver bullet."

 It's easy to understand why the folks at GE extol the virtues of their Six Sigma so-called success. What would the shareholders say if GE's leadership admitted that the last several years of company growth were primarily attributable to the dynamic world economic markets of the 1990s--over which these leaders had little control--instead of Six Sigma, for which they could claim total control? It's always more fun to take credit for success, whether or not we actually have any control over the system that delivers it. I'm looking forward to seeing whether Jeffrey R. Immelt (GE's new president and chairman-elect) continues to pour even more resources into this ultimately doomed endeavor, or whether he will declare victory and immediately withdraw from the battlefield.

 My vote: Enough of Six Sigma! Let's get on with restoring the scientific nature to the quality and reliability profession.

--Jim MacMurdo
Manager, Quality Assurance
Ideal Industries Inc.

Six Sigma at Iomega

Your article regarding the favorable benefit of Six Sigma at Iomega (August 2001) does not give the true picture. You start out by describing the fall of the share price from $10 to less than $4 by May of 1999. Enter the new president Bruce Albertson and implementation of Six Sigma with the details of significant cost savings and hundreds of trained Six Sigma personnel.

 So what happened to the share price? You never closed the loop by revisiting the price. The price certainly must have skyrocketed based on the success of Six Sigma!

 In fact, the company has lost money; the share price, traveling below the market indices, has plummeted to less than $1.75 a share; Albertson was let go by the board of directors nearly three months ago; and thousands of personnel have been let go.

 So much for Six Sigma and timely articles.

--Louis F. Hannigan
The Pleiades Co. Inc.

I was dismayed at the timing of the news concerning Iomega's downturn in business and its plans to cut approximately 35 percent of its workforce and my simultaneous reading of Robert A. Green's article in the August 2001 edition concerning the company's push for the Six Sigma conquest.

 I bet Green and the poor employees of the Iomega Six Sigma team are feeling pretty dismayed. It's a shame that Iomega inherited a leader from nonreality-based GE that has allowed this to happen, especially with his grandeur ideas of Six Sigma being a cure-all for basing many business decisions.

 Being directly involved in manufacturing and process quality for 23 years, I've seen the quality fads and marketing trends come and go, and Six Sigma is the most complicated and vague so far. It's really a shame that through industry, customer pressure, or egocentric/uninformed management, companies have been forced into using these expensive and labor-intensive programs to control their quality practices, all in the name of playing the global/national marketing game.

 Good quality comes from a company's business plan and the mindset of promoting that plan through effective utilization of personnel and processes in a progressive manner. Various quality system specifications (whether it's Mil-Spec, ISO 9000 or industry-based standards) are sufficient to control quality and business concerns if they are understood, complied with, documented and improved upon continually. No matter what is used, it's the job of senior management to use these tools and the associated information effectively.

 However, just when I thought I was alone in wanting never again to hear another item or story on Six Sigma, I read your "Last Word" column in the same issue. For the critics, this is proof that Quality Digest is unbiased and provides articles consistently on both sides of current issues.

--Tom Allen
RDS Manufacturing Inc.