9 SHORT ASSIGNMENTS

9 short assignments

9 short assignments

Many organizations know that they have the best chance of keeping their current customers by making their customers happy, exceeding their expectations, and providing a service superior to those of the nearest industry competitor. Whether a company is in its first year or in its 30th year of operation, keeping current customers and adding on new ones is always a paramount issue for company viability. In these difficult economic times, a critical issue more than ever for companies is to keep their customer base, add to it, and deliver the promise of excellence every day to customers, locally, domestically, and in global markets. Six Sigma ModelThe idea of quality for the customer is seen in the diagram of the Six Sigma model of excellence. The businessballs.com website states that,Six Sigma began in 1986 as a statistically-based method to reduce variation inelectronic manufacturing processes in Motorola Inc. in the USA. It is used as an all-encompassing business performance methodology, all over the world, inorganizations as diverse as local government departments, prisons, hospitals, thearmed forces, banks, and multi-nationals corporations (Hoops T. 2008).

The Six Sigma model has been applied to many different types of businesses and each has been able to make it a workable option for developing criteria for managing its employees with the results of bringing the company together as one initiative to provide the best service possible to the consumer. This concept is not produced in a vacuum. Theorists note that the “Six Sigma is a very flexible concept used in the following ways; to an statistical engineer Six Sigma might be a production quality metric; to a customer service employee, or a CEO, Six Sigma can represent a corporate culture (Hoops T.2008). It seems that virtually every business is capable of applying the theory of Six Sigma. But what is it and how does it apply to the current business model most used in businesses today?The Six Sigma is a way for businesses to serve their customers to the best of their ability every day and in every way. As Chapman states, "at the heart of the methodology is the DMAIC model for process improvement. DMAIC is commonly used by Six Sigma project teams and is an acronym for:1.Define opportunity.Measure performance.Analyze opportunity4.Improve performance5.Control performance (Chapman, 2005).

3- Six Sigma has been adopted by many companies both in the United States andaround the world, the main areas in the service industry where six sigma has seen themost work are banking and financial services, healthcare, construction, supply chainmanagement, accounting, customer relations, public utilities, material procurement,education, libraries, order processing, the airline industry, safety and even thegovernment and non-for-profits (McGraw, 2008 pp.293- 294).

Example of Six Sigma ApplicationThe following example shows how the model is used. If an insurance company is interested in using the Six Sigma model it will use the DMAIC as its model of how to find more customers, keep the ones it already has, and service them to the best of their ...