Six Sigma at Raytheon

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Six Sigma at Raytheon

• Aric Amberden
• 4/18/2007

2
Background

• Six Sigma is a process improvement methodology
• Supports CMMI level 5 by statistically measuring
  results of processes and improving processes.
• First implemented at Motorola in 1986
• Adopted by Raytheon in 2001

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What does Six Sigma Mean

• The term Sigma refers to standard deviation in
  statistics
• Typical processes operate at 3s reliability,
  meaning the results are acceptable 99.7 of the
  time
• Six Sigma processes are 99.9999998 reliable

4
Six Sigma and Variation
Target
Lower Bound
Upper Bound
Typical process (red line) has out of bounds
values a substantial amount of the time
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Six Sigma and Variation
Target
Lower Bound
Upper Bound
6 sigma process (blue line) has defects 3.4 in
1,000,000 times
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Six Sigma in Practice

• Results of Six Sigma are only guaranteed if the
  methods are followed correctly.
• Employees must be properly trained and motivated
  to follow Six Sigma

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Six Sigma Training Levels

• Specialist
• Tackle projects in their individual area
• Relatively short training period
• Expert
• Tackle larger scale projects
• Train for several months
• Mentor specialist candidates
• Master Expert
• Highest level at Raytheon
• Architect projects spanning whole business

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Six Sigma in Practice

• All Raytheon employees are trained as specialists
  in their first year of employment.
• Each specialist attends a 2 day training session
  and is mentored by an Expert.
• Each specialist must complete a project directly
  related to his or her current assignment each
  year.
• Finishing multiple projects per year is highly
  encouraged.

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Six Sigma Specialist Projects

• Visualize Identify what can be improved
• Commit Gather a team identify stakeholders
  committed to the project
• Prioritize Rank steps by greatest sources of
  cost or variation. Ranking allows us to focus on
  areas that will yield the greatest improvement.
• Characterize Analyze the root causes of cost
  and variation identify what could be improved
• Improve Implement the improvements
• Achieve measure the amount of improvement, and
  celebrate the success.

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Six Sigma Project flowchart
Visualize
Performance Gap
Prioritize
Commit
Pareto Analysis

Goal Projected
Categories
Achieve
Big-Hitters
Improve
Improvement Plan
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Example Project

• I maintained an internal website for tracking
  documentation at Raytheon
• It was written in static html and there were
  daily requests for updates.
• The amount of documents increased to the point
  where the maintenance was getting impossible to
  sustain.

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Example Visualize Commit

• Visualize In an ideal world, the amount of
  documentation could continue to increase w/o
  increasing maintenance effort.
• How would that be possible?
• Commit A team including myself, the
  documentation owners, and users of the site
  gathered and committed to achieving this goal.

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Example Project Prioritize

• Prioritize Investigation quickly identified the
  largest sources of effort derived not from
  actually making the changes, but from
  communication with the people requesting the
  changes.
• Re-work was the second largest source, occurring
  when the changes were implemented improperly

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Example Project Characterize

• Examining the communication problem further it
  was determined
• Communication delays were caused by conflicting
  work schedules
• The requestor always had a clearer understanding
  of what changes were needed than the developer.
• The source of rework was almost always rooted in
  a miscommunication

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Example Project Improve

• By developing web forms for inputting changes,
  communication with the developer could be
  eliminated entirely.
• The requestor could input changes directly
  without possibility for misunderstanding.
• Development cost of forms and database was small
  compared to current maintenance efforts.

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Example Project Achieve

• Turnaround time went from an average to 2 days to
  half an hour or less.
• Developer maintenance time went from full time to
  1 to 2 hours per week.
• The number of documents no longer directly
  influenced how long it took to maintain the site.

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Conclusion

• Specialist projects each save the company time
  and money.
• Every employee is actively involved in process
  improvement.
• Process improvement through Six Sigma has a
  positive impact on the bottom line and ultimately
  customer satisfaction.