By Sohini Bagchi
Bangalore, Aug 22, 2005

With quality management and cost benefits becoming the mantra in today's IT-circle, a growing number of Indian companies are gradually discovering that Six Sigma is a powerful catalyst that can successfully combine higher quality and substantial cost savings to achieve breakthrough results.

Speaking to CXOtoday on the benefits of this approach to Indian enterprises, V. Ramamurathy, Black Belt in Six Sigma and management consultant remarked, "Indian enterprises often feel the increasing strain of the rapidly shrinking global village. As a company's survival and profitability depends on its change management strategy, enterprises across sectors are realizing the growing advantages of deploying Six Sigma across different departments to chop off cost and improve performance."

"Simply defined Six Sigma is a defect reduction methodology that transforms organizations by forcing them to focus on the quality of the customer experience. The term sigma refers to deviations from an ideal level of operation, where each level of sigma, starting from one, allows for fewer defects," explained Ramamurathy.

Despite its origin in manufacturing, at Motorola in the 1980s, and later on spread to nuts-and-bolts powerhouses like General Electric and Honeywell International, CIOs across verticals are adopting Six Sigma for its fact-based, quantifiable insistence on continuous improvement and its ability to doggedly root out and improve defects in processes.

According to noted Six Sigma guru, P. Kapila, who has more than 15 years of experience in this area, "When applied to IT enterprise, Six Sigma aims to measure and improve both internal processes, such as network speed and reliability, and line-of-business processes in which IT has a role, such as how well an online ordering system is working."

In India, IT majors such as Satyam, Wipro and Infosys are pushing Six Sigma practices across all levels, and training hundreds of its staff members.

"Six Sigma brings many changes in the work culture wherever it has been deployed, creating an open and transparent culture where ideas are invited from everyone. There is lack of hierarchy, and the focus is on a learning environment. It leads to quality thinking at every level and in every operation in a software development organization," said Kapila.

Satyam has embarked on a major drive to implement Six Sigma, and has already achieved the 4.8 level in more than 300 projects. The company is implementing an action plan to equip all of its associates with analytical skills through Six Sigma training and aims to bring in significant cost savings through productivity improvements in its processes.

C. R. Nagaraj, senior vice president quality, Satyam, feels that in order to optimize processes, the company used Six Sigma, and this practice saves a lot in costs. The company has also made substantial investments in Six Sigma for its BPO arm- Nipuna, in order to save cost through defect and cycle-time reduction.

Another landmark is the recent launch of Microsoft's Accelerator, a framework developed for Six Sigma. The product customized for Six Sigma practitioners, combines Microsoft's enterprise product management (EPM) and business process management (BPM) solutions thereby helping enterprises to effectively manage Six Sigma projects, easily measure their financial impact, optimally utilise and track manpower resources.

"Any company's existing project management and portfolio management programmes should complement Six Sigma's quality and customer goals-and indeed, many PM vendors have begun including Six Sigma tools in their software offerings," pitched in Rama Bhagi, manager (SQA), Wipro Technologies. He feels the methodology helps improve operational efficiency, customer satisfaction, and business parameters.

Some of the other Indian companies such as, TACO and Zeta Pharma have just begun to implement the Six Sigma approach as part of their work culture. As far as CRM, ERP and other customer initiatives are concerned, Sun Microsystems is one company that has made significant improvements from its customer relationship management system by applying Six Sigma principles.

"We have already made huge performance and process advances in our CRM system," said Junaid Mohiuddin, program manager and Black Belt for worldwide CRM in Sun's global sales operations. "When disciplined Sigma is applied to ERP rollouts or infrastructure improvements, you increase your chances of success by many factors," added Mohiuddin.

"Six Sigma provides CIOs with an objective, measurable way to justify technology investments. Further, it serves as a judgment-free common language between IT and other project stakeholders within the company," tips off Ramamurathy, who feels that CIOs have a good reason to implement this process as it brings quality on the corporate radar in a big way.

Though the concept is still at a testing stage in India, with poor penetration in the government, financial and service sectors, Kapila feels that many of the country's largest enterprises are gearing up to look trim and vigorous these days and perhaps adoption of Six Sigma is the answer.

Source: CXO Today