Enron. Worldcom. Tyco. Cendant. Bernie Madoff, once chairman of the NASDAQ, is now cooling his heels in jail. The ex-CEO of Comverse is arrested in Namibia, the CEO at United Healthcare is forced to step down, and Patricia Dunn of Hewlett Packard is charged in an ethics scandal. And, of course, AIG has no problem doling out millions in bonuses to the very people who drove the company and the country into a financial crisis. It seems that no matter where we look today, the erosion of ethics and basic moral principles of right and wrong have taken us to the point where trust in our institutions and the very systems that make our society work are in imminent danger of oblivion.

This paper proposes a methodology for starting up new equipment (also applicable to new products) to minimize problems typically associated with start-ups.

The reader will attain a fundamental understanding of how advanced quality planning and a statistics-based start-up strategy have been used successfully in industry to commission over $750 million worth of new and existing equipment over the last 15 years with vast reductions in the real costs of specifying, commissioning, and operating equipment.

The East Chicago, Ill., plant of the former Inland Steel Co. (now Ispat Inland) was considering changing the type of rolling mill lubricant used on a temper mill. Mill lubricants are critical to a variety of product and process characteristics in rolled product since they transmit the force of the mill rolls to the surface of the material being rolled, in this case varieties of steels. Rolling lubricants can affect mill reduction efficiencies and speeds, as well as the surface quality and roughness and metal fine generation.  This article shows how an analysis was done to select the new lubricant that saved over $70 million dollars. 

Summary

Six Sigma is a useful management philosophy and problem-solving methodology, but it is not a comprehensive management system.  Many experienced practitioners of the quality sciences are becoming concerned, as Six Sigma is increasingly the only focus of managers while the day-to-day activities suffer neglect.  Managers implementing Six Sigma may wonder where all those past cost savings claimed by the Six Sigma teams have gone since they are not showing up on the bottom line today.  This paper presents an integrated daily management technology that complements the project-driven problem-solving DMAIC methodology.  This daily management structure systematizes monitoring, prioritizing, and reacting to daily variation in a way that mobilizes the entire workforce to continuously improve the process in a way that compliments Six Sigma and improves your chances of success.