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SW Six Sigma is offering certification classes in several Midwest cities with certification for lean six sigma green belts and black belts.  Courses will be for both service industries as well as traditional manufacturing. Our students have saved millions for their employers. One project at a small Indiana hospital saved 170 emergency room bed hours per month. Our methodology helped the nursing supervisor solve a significant problem and save the hospital over $1,000,000.00 annually while earning her green belt certification. These are the type of savings that can be generated by your employees when they attend our public site classes.  Sign up for a class today. It is the best investment you can make!

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Success stories

The following are specific examples of results achieved by students taking one of my lean six sigma courses.

Hospital Emergency Room Throughput
One of our students, a nursing supervisor, identified a concern that her small hospital in Indiana routinely had to turn people away from the emergency room. After identifying the problem she developed a project to reduce time spent moving patients from the emergency room to regular hospital beds. With our guidance, and by applying the tools taught in our class, she led a team in writing a plan to reduce emergency room waiting time by 42%. When put into action the plan resulted in greater emergency room throughput with a potential revenue increase of over $1,000,000 to the hospital annually. This particular class met once a week for thirteen weeks at Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana.

Determining Root Cause of Product Surface Defects
Another one of our students worked for a company that was producing precision castings for a top Japanese automaker. The plant was rejecting over 30% of the product for surface defects. Since the company was unable to determine the root cause of the defects our student chose finding the root cause of this dilemma as his project. By using the Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control (DMAIC) tools learned in our class he was able to validate his company’s measurement systems using a Measurement Systems Analysis (MSA). He then performed a design of experiments (DoE) and found the root causes of the defects were a dirty jig and the use of shot blast on the as cast part. After eliminating the root causes, his company realized product acceptance levels in excess of 99.9%, resulting in a very happy customer and a $400,000 annual savings.

Note: It was the use of the tools we teach to find root causes by looking at the interaction of multiple variables that are just not possible without the use of the DMAIC tools and statistical software such as MINITABTM.

Reducing Materials Needed to Make Product
A third student in the class developed a project from a plastic injection molding company. They wanted to reduce the amount of resin used for each part they produced without compromising the quality of the part. She set up experiments using the tools learned in our class and was able to reduce material by 10 percent or $25,000 for each part. This was translated to ten parts in a large family of parts resulting in an annual savings potential of $250,000.

Transferring from Research and Development to the Manufacturing Floor
A project at a manufacturing plant involved taking a revolutionary change to an existing industrial circuit breaker from research and development (R&D), where the engineers were experiencing zero percent product failure, to the manufacturing floor, where they had thirty percent to forty percent product failure. After a few months of trial and error, they called me to assist in solving the problem. I was the resident six sigma black belt for the plant and we brought the R&D engineers together with local quality professionals and developed a plan. Using the DMAIC tools we were able to determine the root cause of the failures. We were able to produce the product on the manufacturing floor with zero defects. This resulted in increased sales of 4.8 million annually to the company.

By reducing the variation in the manufacturing batches on two of hundreds of parts from the suppliers we were able to eliminate the failures. We found that the variation in the suppliers R&D part batches varied significantly from the part batches produced in larger quantities for the manufacturing floor. We found this by performing MSA studies and designing an experiment at two levels that highlighted the variation and the interaction in product performance in the two parts. By having this knowledge we were able to control part to part variation and produce the product on the manufacturing floor with zero defects.

The Wrong Test
In another instance, we were able to defend the quality of our circuit breakers which were being returned in significant numbers from our German customer for failure. We took some of the returned products and put them through the same tests that were performed before they left our plant versus the testing done at our customers’ incoming inspection. This experiment showed that the customer was returning product that was rejected with the wrong test. By showing that the returned product performed satisfactorily using the proper testing procedures we were able to reduce returns by $300,000 annually.

These types of returns and ongoing benefits are typical of students who have completed our program. In fact, a recent study by the industry website ISixSigma.com has shown that the average six sigma project following the DMAIC methodology returns $188,000 in hard savings per project. So what do you have to lose?

We have the experience so call us today at (660) 619-1072!

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SW Six Sigma — Steve Webster
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