By Franklin Alli
Posted to the Web: Thursday, September 08, 2005

Chairman of Ikeja Hotels PLC, owners of Sheraton Lagos Hotel and Tower, Mr. Goodie Minabo Ibru, has charged the manufacturing and service industries to exploit Six Sigma in their operations.

Six Sigma is a management tool developed by Motorola in the 1980s that helped it realise superior performance results in its organisation.

Ibru, who chaired Trithel International Consulting’s special conference, tagged Six Sigma, held Tuesday in Lagos, said although, the model is relatively new in Nigeria but it has proved to be the key for survival in today’s corporate world where only the best survives.

According to him, Six Sigma had saved Motorola who developed the concept, more than $16 Billion in savings as a result of Six Sigma efforts.

Also, he said "I am delighted to tell you that Sheraton Lagos Hotel & Towers adopted Six Sigma as the driving force for its business about 2 years ago. Within this short period, it has witnessed improvements in every facet of the business from product delivery through service delivery to guest and employee satisfaction which have all positively impacted on the bottom line. It is also encouraging to note that City Bank and Cadbury Nigeria PLC now practise Six Sigma. With mergers and acquisitions becoming commonplace in the Nigerian corporate world today, Six Sigma should become very useful in helping to model, measure, modify and improve companies’ business strategies for increased profitability."

However, in an address of keynote, Faculty Member, Lagos Business School, Pan-African University, Dr. Obinna Muogboh, noted that in today’s fiercely competitive business environment, successful organisations and business leaders are actively seeking ways of improving performance through delivery of higher values to the customers and better returns to the shareholders, which he said Six Sigma delivers. " In many world-class organisations, Six Sigma has overshadowed techniques previously viewed as the continuous improvement tools of choice. This is as a result of the bottom-line effect — Six Sigma directly impacts financial results and customer satisfaction. However, even with the threat of globalisation, many Nigerian companies are still not aware of the tremendous power of Six Sigma as a competitive weapon and yet some are complacent and seem to be taking a "wait and see" attitude."

It is hard to argue with the logic of Six Sigma principles, and even harder to ignore its potential when looking back on its contribution to industry and society. Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, in the GE 1998 annual report, provided insight into the impressive result of Six Sigma initiative. He stated that GE Six Sigma improvement effort returned more than threequarters of a billion dollars ($750,000,000) in savings beyond their investment in 1998, with a billion and a half ($1,500,000,000) in sight for 1999.

Since that time, GE has been able to make additional Six Sigma savings of several billions of dollars." Also, he said , Six Sigma has improved the bottom line at several high profile corporations. At least 25% of Fortune 200 claim to have a serious Six Sigma programme. Companies such as -Lockheed Martin, Toyota, Motorola, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Texas Instruments, IBM, General Electric, Ford Motor Co., Sony, DuPont, Dow Chemicals, Microsoft, and American Express have successfully implemented Six Sigma and reduced costs literally by billions of dollars.

Many organisations in the Nigeria are operating below three-sigma quality levels. That means they could be losing up to 25-40 per cent of their total revenue due to processes that deliver too many defects — defects -that take up time and effort to repair as well as creating unhappy customers.

Executive Chairman of Trithel International whose company is the promoter of Six Sigma, Engr. Joseph .J. Akpieyi, said his company is committed to selling Six Sigma to both public and private organisations in the country.

His words " In this era of globalisation which is accelerating exponentially, we, in Trithel, ardently believe that Nigerian organizations cannot shy away from mastering the application of Six Sigma, which carries the tremendous allure of proven business successes, in the management of their businesses."

News source: Vanguard