Liberty University Six Sigma & Supply Chain Management in Business Discussion Reply to the thread below with a reply of at least 360 words. Your replies mu

Liberty University Six Sigma & Supply Chain Management in Business Discussion Reply to the thread below with a reply of at least 360 words. Your replies must do the following:

Answer the question posed in the thread.
Respond to the practical example in the thread by sharing a practical example that differs from the one in the thread.
You must reference at least 1 scholarly source for the reply.

Note about responses: Seek to understand your colleagues’ threads (including the Supply Chain Management theory, the facts presented in their posts, their points of view, and finally, their real-world examples). Aim to communicate your own understanding of relevant facts, your values, and your perspective of the topic.

Six Sigma and Supply Chain Management

Concept

Six sigma and supply chain management can be interrelated within business practices. Six sigma is essentially a business method used to improve supply chain management processes. Six sigma applied with the lean approach can provide methodologies to help leadership and workers identify issues or areas needing improvement with the supply chain more accurately. Depending on the extent of the business, altering components of the supply chain can be challenging if not adequately profound. A lot of times, altering one small detail of the process can lead to costly malfunctions. Six sigma serves as an approach to equip managers and control officers with the necessary guidelines to effectively identify areas of improvement and how to implement the appropriate innovation.

In practical terms, supply chain is the process in a which a product or service goes from raw materials to the fabricated whole of the product or service. Managing in this department deals with analyzing the production process and identifying areas in which the company can improve upon and innovate to increase efficiency and lower costs. Six Sigma is one of many business methods that equips supply chain management professionals with appropriate guidelines on how to accurately identify such areas and also provides appropriate techniques of improvement.

Application/Example

Six Sigma has helped numerous of business all around the globe implement effective supply chain performance. Some ways businesses have improved upon with the implementation of six sigma are by decreasing waste, preventing defects, and improving performance (Purdue University 2019). According to research conducted by Purdue University, there are eight potential wastes that business leaders and managers should take into account when it comes to supply chain. These eight wastes are defects, overproduction, waiting, non-utilized talent, transportation, inventory, motion, and extra processing. Six Sigma is generally accompanied by the lean method which shifts the focus to bringing the most value to the consumers. The lean method is popularly used as a business practice when conducting six sigma to provide a common goal when identifying what is truly wasteful within the production phase. Ultimately, reducing the potential of these eight wastes through implementation of lean six sigma, will bring success to the company by establishing a more efficient and effective means of production.

A six sigma project is generally scheduled to take anywhere from three to six months to achieve financial goals for the company (Anbari 2002). DMAIC is an important acronym encouraged to familiarize as it stands for define, measure, analyze, improve, and control. This acronym essentially provides businesses with the proper order of factors needed in order to conduct an effective six sigma project. The implementation of DMAIC allows business managers to define objectives and scope of the project, measure collected data of the current situation, analyze the data to find the root cause of an issue, improve developed and implemented solutions, and then control these solutions. Six sigma is most commonly used as a practice to improve the scope of the business, the time spent during the production phase, the cost paid towards utilities and employee wages, and the overall quality of the product/service being produced.

Question for Classmates

If six sigma is primarily focused on improving production processes within a business, how does lean six sigma affect the value given to a customer?

References

Anbari, F. T. (2002). Six sigma method and its applications in project management. Paper presented at Project Management Institute Annual Seminars & Symposium, San Antonio, TX. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.