Essay --

7) Knowledge Management and Six Sigma: Exploring the Potential of Two Powerful Disciplines, Paige Leavitt 1) Six Sigma should not be viewed as a quality program that is commissioned to reduce defects but as a methodology that helps companies better meet the needs of their business. KM shares this goal. 2) Voice of the customer in the DFSS process is also a potential area for a collaboration of ideas. â€Å"In Design For Six Sigma, knowledge of the customer-centric requirements is a key input †¦ to the design process,† said O’Dell. â€Å"And if you could use knowledge management tools to better understand what the customer is saying to sales people and service people, that information comes back to the folks who can make a difference in the design process.† 3) APQC's Lessons Learned "The problems, issues, and opportunities in organizations are not about reducing defects; they are about responding to new opportunities, using the voice of the customer knowledge," said O'Dell. "With both Six Sigma and KM, I’m telling you that you’re going to get more of what you want - if you begin to open the conversation to a different way of thinking about solving some of these problems over the long term. Because both Six Sigma and KM have tremendous power, they also have some issues that they need help with." Professionals in both arenas can learn from each other. Six Sigma can learn from KM how to recognize knowledge, as well as processes. Joseph Hofer-Alfeis from Siemens said, "Six Sigma is oriented to the quality of products and processes. If you think of a knowledge-intensive business, 'Six Sigma for knowledge quality' -- the quality of the proficiency, the quality of knowledge flows, and the quality of description knowledge -- should also be a ... ...nage the targeted process (e.g., an insurance sales agent or supervisor), while otherswork to support the process (e.g., an information technology expertwho provides support to the insurance claimsprocess).Unique project teamsare put together for each of the projects, and disbanded after these projects are completed, handing off resulting improvement-actions to process owners—people who routinely operate the processes. 5) Although each project has different objectives and specific tools employed, overall these projects follow a standardized, structured five-phase project management approach known as ‘‘DMAIC’’ for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control phases (Schroeder et al., 2008). 6) Project leaders are trained in the use of practices for collecting, combining, and synthesizing the knowledge of team members for use in process improvements (Hoerl, 2001).