Overview

The first part of the course focuses on the concept of Quality and on its evolution, in particular during XX Century, thanks to the contribution of several companies and the works of the Quality Gurus.

The second part introduces the Six Sigma methodology, which was developed in the 80’s by Motorola, and elevated to a managerial philosophy by General Electric in the 90’s. Considered as an evolution of Total Quality Management, Six Sigma aims at improving quality by aligning the output of a company’s processes to market requirements.

In the last part of the course, students will be provided with a “tool-box”, containing a number of quality management tools and techniques, which could be applied in a large number of situation, in both industrial and service companies.

Programme

1)     Course objectives and contents

The course aims at offering fundamental criteria, reference frameworks and tools to manage continuous improvement of operations of manufacturing and service organizations.

The first part focuses on the concept of quality, its evolution over time, in particular during XX Century thanks to the works and preaching of various companies and quality gurus. The second part presents the main quality improvement approach of Six Sigma (a quality management initiative first carried out in Motorola in the 80's), namely the DMAIC cycle (Define-Measure-Analyse-Improve-Control). In the last part, the course will present tools and techniques useful to ensure quality of new products or services to offer to the market.

2)     Main topics

Part I – Products and services Quality Management

-        Introduction to the Concept of Quality

-        The History of Quality Management

-        Quality Philosophies: Juran, Deming, Taguchi, Crosby, Ishikawa

-        Organization of the Quality Management Department

-        Quality Management Systems and the ISO 9000 set of standards

Part II – Six Sigma

-        Six Sigma organization

-        Six Sigma project management

-        performance measurement of Six Sigma improvement projects: efficiency (costs) vs effectiveness (customer satisfaction) indicators; statistical thinking and measuring process capability

Part III – tools and techniques for quality improvement

-        Voice of the Customer techniques:

o   The VoC approach in Six Sigma

o   ServQual model to measure service quality

o   Measuring Customer Satisfaction

-        Tools and techniques to improve existing processes

o   DMAIC approach in Six Sigma

o   Quality Management tools: problem solving tools

o   Quality Management tools: how to correctly represent data with a graph

-        Tools and techniques for new products/processes

o   Six Sigma DFSS approach

o   Quality Function Deployment technique

o   Design of Experiment and Taguchi’s robust design

-        Tools and techniques to improve quality of supplies

o   Acceptance sampling

o   Vendor rating