unsuccesful six sigma company

Hi Sinan,  I think everyone company that has used Six Sigma has seen failures and successes due to Six Sigma methodology – including Motorola and GE.  Every methodology has its short comings.  Having said that, could it be possible that your investigation is looking at Six Sigma as a miracle pill. 
Most companies introduce new programs on a “trial and error” basis, without throroughly knowing why the last one failed.  So far, I have looked at 3 companies (I am not doing a thesis) and each one has failed because they tried to apply Six Sigma without doing two things: (1) They completely ignored their past and existing quality programs.  (2) they did not assess their needs before jumping on the Six Sigma bandwagon. 
(The 3 companies were – OSRAM, ASML and Alcatel.  I am looking at Philips now, although they have had partial success)
There are a lot of articles that were written in ASQ (American Society for Quality) Quality progress magazine about VOC (Voice of customer) being the key to a successful Six Sigma implementation. Another article questions whether metrics is really the pivotal point and shows that just by combining Pareto principle with the Scientific thinking (Y=F(X)) you can achieve breathrough success….
Please let me know if I can be of further assistance. 
Aditi

I have also seen companies, that couldn’t understand the real meaning of six sigma. For example the lack of support from management can produce theese results. One may ask, why are you using 6S if there is no support, ’cause the custumer wants us to use this methodology.
Another problem could be at the definition side of the problem. In every step of the DMAIC, you might make failures, especially if there is noone who has the “mistified knowledge” of 6S.

I worked in the high frequency component division in Alcatel, which was Kabel metal (Germany), now RFS America.  The competitor is Eupen in Belgium and Andrews in Chicago.  Six Sigma is a business strategy so how a company designs its business portfolio is key to determining whether Six Sigma is going to be successfull companywide.  Having said that, Alcatel decided to base its business strategy on merging with neigboring industries and offering their products and services as a bundle.  (Compare to Dell’s business strategy).
What kind of details would you like?
Aditi

Hi,
Off course the problem with Six Sigma is that you these are very expensive trainings and that mostly these are not good applied at all in the company. In fact the company I work they are already busy think 5 years but still no profit today. It’s an easy calculation, calculate the expenses and calculate the benefits by Six Sigma….
Good Luck,
H
 

Six-Sigma is all about data driven decisions. If the data is not correct, then the worng decision will be made. The data needs to be correct and it needs to be measured correctly. Otherwise, failure will result!
Caroline mentioned above that her boss said he knows all the problems. This is a classic SS problem.
Do not listen to peoples opinion, listen to the data!
There was an interview last week in FT with the CEO of Xerox saying how Six-Sigma has turned her company around. They are now adopting Lean Six-Sigma.
I believe if used correctly, it is a very powerful tool. But it needs good deployment and it needs management buy in. Enthusiasm needs to spread among the company for it’s methods for it to stand a chance.