6 sigma in a quality control system for ISO 9001

Gent. :
We are about to start a 6 sigma program in the shop. This will help us to achieve ISO 9001. I hope! All department heads have hade a 1 week training course . Which was put on by a major pump Mfg. Please give me any advice or suggestions on how to make this work.

Mad Mazak said:

Gent. :
We are about to start a 6 sigma program in the shop. This will help us to achieve ISO 9001. I hope! All department heads have hade a 1 week training course . Which was put on by a major pump Mfg. Please give me any advice or suggestions on how to make this work.

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We are AS9100/ISO9001. I could be wrong, but I don't see where that has anything to do with 6 sigma. As far as I'm concerned, 6 sigma is nothing but a bad joke, propagated by mindless middle managers to create meaningless jobs for themselves.

I have a similar opinion of Six Sigma. It does give you some useful analysis tools, but has nothing to do with ISO certification. If I was going through the certification, I would want someone who's been through it to manage the process and help with audits, and hire one person to do all the documentation.

We are ISO 9001/ 13485 / FDA. We hired a good consultant to write our 9001, then added 13485 and FDA 4 years later. The subject of Six Sigma, Lean, or or any other add-on system has never came up in any audit.
Is your customer asking about ISO or Six Sigma ? If you are looking to register to ISO 9001, doing it AND Six Sigma is going to double your complexity and workload.
Stick with hiring somebody that knows ISO to help you write your manual, save Six Sigma for another year, and figure out if you really need it at all.
Also, a one week course in Six Sigma is about as useful as a one week course in machining.

You are confusing ISO 9001, which is documentation, with manufacturing procedures for high quality production. You can have really poor quality and yet be certified 9001, so long as you document how you produce scrap.

Contrary to what a few naysayers say, 6 sigma is achievable and worth while in a volume production mode. Does not apply to small lots.

Tom

Rather than waste money on the hucksters (six sigma and all the others) invest in a copy of Dr. Deming's library- he wrote the book on this stuff, literally.

I'll be the contrarian voice here -- I've seen dozens of companies that have improved both their market share and profits by not screwing up so much and sending their mistakes on to customers. Examples range from auto companies trying to compete with the Japanese decades ago to telecommunication satellite launch vehicles to surgery centers.

That said, a sort of QC and ISO mafia can form that's all about process and procedure and loses sight of the end objectives. To actually estimate six sigma by sampling something, for example, you need to be receiving or making a lot of it.

What product and quantities are you dealing with? Where do you actually need to improve (scrap, rework, field failures, warranty costs, market share, etc.)?