The purpose of this case is to expose students to the issues involved in impleme
ID: 3792516 • Letter: T
Question
The purpose of this case is to expose students to the issues involved in implementing Six Sigma in 3M, a large multinational corporation. The case tells us that the new 3M CEO and Board of Directors have already decided to implement Six Sigma. It is just a question of how the program will be rolled out, what challenges are being faced, and what benefits will be achieved.The case describes some of the key features of the 3M Six Sigma program, since it is assumed that most students are not familiar with Six Sigma. The discussion questions then focus on understanding the potential benefits and costs to 3M, the relationship of Six Sigma to corporate strategy, the impact on the human resources and its effect on innovation.
Students should come away with not only an understanding of what Six Sigma is, but also an awareness of the pitfalls and the implementation problems that might be encountered. At the end of the teaching note, we raise the question whether Six Sigma is enough and does it interfere with innovation?
Questions:
1.What will be the benefits, costs and risks of the Six Sigma Program and how will they be tracked and reported? 2.How should various functional areas in the organization be included in the Six Sigma initiative and What role should senior and middle management play in the change initiative? 3.What role should Six Sigma play in corporate strategy? What are the human resource implications for deploying Six Sigma (e.g. employee selection, roles, organizational structure, reward systems)? 4.How will Six Sigma affect the innovative culture of 3M and is Six Sigma enough? The purpose of this case is to expose students to the issues involved in implementing Six Sigma in 3M, a large multinational corporation. The case tells us that the new 3M CEO and Board of Directors have already decided to implement Six Sigma. It is just a question of how the program will be rolled out, what challenges are being faced, and what benefits will be achieved.
The case describes some of the key features of the 3M Six Sigma program, since it is assumed that most students are not familiar with Six Sigma. The discussion questions then focus on understanding the potential benefits and costs to 3M, the relationship of Six Sigma to corporate strategy, the impact on the human resources and its effect on innovation.
Students should come away with not only an understanding of what Six Sigma is, but also an awareness of the pitfalls and the implementation problems that might be encountered. At the end of the teaching note, we raise the question whether Six Sigma is enough and does it interfere with innovation?
Questions:
1.What will be the benefits, costs and risks of the Six Sigma Program and how will they be tracked and reported? 2.How should various functional areas in the organization be included in the Six Sigma initiative and What role should senior and middle management play in the change initiative? 3.What role should Six Sigma play in corporate strategy? What are the human resource implications for deploying Six Sigma (e.g. employee selection, roles, organizational structure, reward systems)? 4.How will Six Sigma affect the innovative culture of 3M and is Six Sigma enough? The purpose of this case is to expose students to the issues involved in implementing Six Sigma in 3M, a large multinational corporation. The case tells us that the new 3M CEO and Board of Directors have already decided to implement Six Sigma. It is just a question of how the program will be rolled out, what challenges are being faced, and what benefits will be achieved.
The case describes some of the key features of the 3M Six Sigma program, since it is assumed that most students are not familiar with Six Sigma. The discussion questions then focus on understanding the potential benefits and costs to 3M, the relationship of Six Sigma to corporate strategy, the impact on the human resources and its effect on innovation.
Students should come away with not only an understanding of what Six Sigma is, but also an awareness of the pitfalls and the implementation problems that might be encountered. At the end of the teaching note, we raise the question whether Six Sigma is enough and does it interfere with innovation?
Questions:
1.What will be the benefits, costs and risks of the Six Sigma Program and how will they be tracked and reported? 2.How should various functional areas in the organization be included in the Six Sigma initiative and What role should senior and middle management play in the change initiative? 3.What role should Six Sigma play in corporate strategy? What are the human resource implications for deploying Six Sigma (e.g. employee selection, roles, organizational structure, reward systems)? 4.How will Six Sigma affect the innovative culture of 3M and is Six Sigma enough?
Explanation / Answer
1.What will be the benefits, costs and risks of the Six Sigma Program and how will they be tracked and reported?
A:-The 3M has forecated the six sigma program hope that it bring greater than the $1 billions that are spent on research and development.not only it returns the money spend on research and development
but also increasing the customer satisfaction,improving product quality,and energizing the organisation,improving the services and processes.
the 3Ms are able to effective utilisation of the advanced technology and electronic media.and in more the benifits are as follows.
1.Tracking of the project is easier.
2.Increased sales , revenues and cost reduction.
3.high end sophisticted managers
4.savings are tracked by financial department on each individual project.
5.risks and complexity of the program is analkysed easily.
6.IMproving the supply chain management for better cash flow.
7.standard approach for common understanding.
Tracking and reporting:
The six sigma projects have growth ,cash and cost.in order to start tracking the operating income with a generation of cash and the effectiveness of training the number of projects in process and completed.
The risks of the program are the costs, the complexity of the program, and difficulty in measuring results for service processes and transaction-based processes.
2.How should various functional areas in the organization be included in the Six Sigma initiative and What role should senior and middle management play in
the change initiative?
Various functional areas in the organisation included in the six sigma initiatives are with a different approach focusing on more quality of a product.
with the inclusion of six sigma in a company it not only strangthens all aspects in the company but also the initiates a long and short term focus in competitiveness.
by this the senior and middle managers would take an active role in training their employees in a new approach on the job.
3.What role should Six Sigma play in corporate strategy?
What are the human resource implications for deploying Six Sigma (e.g. employee selection, roles, organizational structure, reward systems)?
The six sigma is about a bussiness change.Mainly the corporations employ the six sigma as a bussiness method to improve their business with a greater value.the main reason why the corporations
employ this method is that it is having a greater value of customer satisfaction and savings cost.in previous they used an old model called the 'DMAIC' stands for the define,measure,analyse,improve and control.
For new product development they used the DFSS model which started off with identifying customer's
requirements then translated them into product specifications
4.How will Six Sigma affect the innovative culture of 3M and is Six Sigma enough?
The six sigma provides a single approach for a common language.and 3m employees has a jump start into it.so it has a fast start.
when we use one system its amazing how much information we can share and how we share and leverage what we have learned.so the six sigma helps to acclerate everything we do.
the six sigma focuses on data back things up and .the data is very powerful,energizes and motivates people in this way the Six Sigma affect the innovative culture of 3M .
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