Six sigma example in service industry!

Langsee,
Could you take it slightly further please.
Lets take one made up example on ‘on time delivery’.
Customer is expecting delivery in 3 days. To meet 6 sigma conditions, would it mean that our process should be capable of delivering with in a day (upper process control limit) or near around in routine (I am taking a very simplistic view for understanding).
Now above doesn’t seem practical to me in a service industry. If yes then what is the methodology to achieve it. Does it mean we have surplus resources at hand (goes against Lean) or that we have to simplify our steps to such a level (seems far fetched idea) that he efficiency is very high.
Regards
Manish
 
 

Outlier
I think, your explaination that one could go for lower sigma levels instead of six sigma reliability makes some sense. Hopefully I would get my hand on a real practical exapmle some day.
But I wonder if that makes ”six sigma for service industry” less attractive tool since it can not achieve the reliability of six sigma.
Thanks
 
  
 

It would help me a great deal if you could give me a real example where six sigma tool was used to achieve whatever level of reliability. But please do mention the  control limits and the service levels achieved.
I have been working in a service industry for more than 10 years and would love to use it to improve the consistency.
Thanks

Hi Guys,
Big thanks to all the contributors. It has definitely helped me in my understanding. Message I get is as below –
1) Number of you have pointed that its about using six sigma methodology & reducing the variation rather than worrying about achieving 6 sigma levels. I always associated six sigma with achieving 6 sigma levels so that is very helpful.
2) Number of contributors have used six sigms methodology in service industry to control & monitor the process so that answers my question.
However only thing I would add here is that it would be more helpful in my understanding if any one of you could mention following in your examples – a) what actual parameter were you trying to control, b) spec levels c) control limits achieved d) what was the frequency of collecting samples & how many observations were taken each time e) Very Important -Was it possible to detect from the trends before the process actually went out of the control (please answer even if you thought this was a dumb question as this very important for me)
As Tony asked me, I would like to share my experience of achieving higher efficiency in service industry. My experiene tells me that following factors are very helpful –
1) Prioritising the work in order of its importance to the timely completion of entire process. I have seen process delayed because of FIFO. Moreover I find it very useful if tasks that take lesser time are completed side by side while doing a task that takes longer time.
2) Record keeping – Often doesn’t get that priority, data is not readily available & we lose time in tracking information.
3) It would always improve the quality & make process lean if any work being done is not left half done. What I mean is that the work must be left at a clear stage with notes as to what is to be done next. Often the work is left half cooked and we loose lots of time in getting the pieces together before proceeding further.
4) For projects – Spending time on project planning using tools such as gantt charts (identifying all activities)& identifying critical path (CPM).
5) Clearly identifying & communicating responsibile person for each activity – seems obvious but I find that in real scenario this is one of the key reasons for work not being done on time. 
6) Communication & training – Often it is assumed that the activity is simple and training is not required. Key cause of the quality problem. In my expereince, I have seen things being interpreted in different light.
7) Last but not the least – Use of DMAIC principles to improve the process & make it as simple as possible. One thing that I would add after this discussions is to control the variations as well.
In the end, I would like to add that in the last couple of weeks, I had little more time to go thru Michael George’s ”Lean six sigma for services”. It was interesting to find that above fit in very well with things described in the book.
In my experience, I have seen one person doing the same work by using above principles that 3 persons used to do previously.
Manish