Six Sigma

"Victory will go to those who make fewer mistakes”

Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Napoleon, take your pick. Each one says the same thing in one form or the other. Victory is not necessarily yours for having the perfect strategy or approach, but it surely helps if you make fewer mistakes than your opponents.

Napoleon began the invasion of Russia on June 22, 1812. The invasion was doomed to failure due to ill planning, stretched supply lines, the harsh winter. The French suffered huge losses, from which they really never recovered.

Exactly 129 years later, on June 22, 1941, Hitler launched an invasion on the Soviet Union. The invasion was doomed to failure for virtually the same reasons as Napoleon's — ill planning, stretched supply lines and the harsh winter. In fact The Battle of Stalingrad was a turning point in World War II and is considered the bloodiest battle in human history, with more than 2 million casualties. We would perhaps remember it more by the film “Enemy at the Gates” based on the Russian Sniper Vassiliy Grigoryevich Zaitsev and his battle with Major König (played by Ed Harris) in the film. This single battle (according to some) was the start of the downfall of Hitler, confirming again the theory that while you may win by sheer brilliance, you most definitely will loose by making mistakes.

For a lot of managers, business is like war. Well, to prepare for it there are strategies, blueprints, usage of intelligence etc. The emphasis on winning by reducing your mistakes is one major focus area for most corporates. You can relate it to models of management, like Six Sigma, a buzzword for many in the corporate world. What’s the bottom line? Fewer mistakes mean more productivity. More productivity means more profits.

Six Sigma is basically a measure of quality that strives for near perfection, eliminating mistakes. Six Sigma is a data-driven approach and methodology for eliminating defects in any process — from manufacturing to transactional and from product to service. To achieve Six Sigma, a process must not produce more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities.

Over the years, practitioners in many organizations have championed these theories. However, there are equally large corporations that have not been able to implement procedures like six sigma in entirety. This then raises a question. Is a process in itself enough? Is it a means to an end or is it an end in itself?

Maybe we could look at one major success story in India to highlight success through the elimination of errors, and what little extra is associated with policies and procedures.

The famous Tiffin Carriers of Mumbai are a centuries old. Their roots lie in the British Tradition of “Tiffin” or hot lunch. Some say that the vocation arose from a need of the British and Parsi communities for hot lunches, while others say it arose from a requirement of British Officers getting their lunches piping hot in various outposts in Bombay. Whatever the actual story, probably a mix of both, the tradition has survived for over a 100 years.

The Tiffin Carriers association has a network of some 5,000 carriers who deliver hot lunches to more than 200,000 people every working day, returning the Tiffin-boxes to suburban spouses before the evening rush hour. This labor-intensive business has an astonishing history and an error rate of one in six million transactions. The success rate is better than six sigma standards and their Six Sigma business has no high-tech technology. It employs people with little or no education.

What it has going for it is a process, a belief in the process and adherence to the process that is almost mind-boggling. You do not need a sophisticated process to make things work. However, what you do need are the human elements of “diligence, hard-work, relationships and loyalty, amongst others”.

Repeated mistakes are a costly proposition. That is understood. Means and processes have to be evolved to eliminate errors. That however is not enough, what is required is the human touch, a belief in a system, hard work and sincerity.