Using Six Sigma to improve office processes may be a relatively new phenomenon, but since the success rate of such quality improvement initiatives is high enough, it will not be wrong to proclaim that the future is certainly bright for such implementations.
Here, we look at how Six Sigma helping businesses to improve their office processes.
Defining Quality and Efficiency Standards
Six Sigma has made it a lot easier for business to define quality and efficiency standards as applicable to office processes, something that is a prerequisite for achieving the desired results. What Six Sigma does is that it converts vague quality and efficiency orders such as "reduce errors", "work fast" etc. into more definitive terms such as "reduce errors by 15 percent in three months", "process 20 files per hour" etc.
Now, all this new definitions may seem to be increasing the workload of employees, but that is certainly not true, because Six Sigma relies on time-tested tools and techniques that generate the most appropriate and realistic estimates of employee performance. In fact, employees stand to gain from such definitions because then they will know exactly what the company expects from them.
Additionally, since Six Sigma stresses replacing old inefficient systems with new newer, more efficient technologies, it is highly unlikely that the employees will have to do anything more that what they already might be doing. Businesses also stand to gain because then they can make accurate and timely predictions about human resource requirements.
This allows them to make the best possible use of existing resources, something that consequently results in huge cost savings.
Streamlining Existing Office Processes
Since office processes are quite different from manufacturing processes and since the human aspect needs to be given special consideration while initiating improvement measures in office processes, Six Sigma focuses on gathering input and feedback from employees before starting the tweaking process. Such input and feedback is gathered both at the time when the implementation team is in the process of selecting the right improvement methodology and when a methodology is finally short-listed for final implementation.
Getting such input and feedback is vital because it is the only way a business can possibly devise an improvement initiative that finds favor with the employees as well as gauge their initial reaction to a proposed improvement initiative. Since the success of such projects depends a lot on employee cooperation and support, it makes sense to take them into confidence right from the start. It is only then will the business be able to streamline its existing office processes without causing unnecessary employee disgruntlement or distrust, factors that are not conducive for the future growth prospects of any given business enterprise.
As we can see, Six Sigma does help a lot in improving the quality and efficiency of existing office processes, but what businesses should never forget is that employees are not machines that can be set to perform at specified levels of efficiency, all the time. As such, businesses need to adopt a more tolerant approach while using Six Sigma for improving their office processes.
About the Author
Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solution's Six Sigma Online offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Maximizing Rice Production Through Robotic Technology
The National Agricultural Research Center (NARC) of Japan has engaged in a robotic project that fully mechanized rice production with a global positioning system (GPS) capability that can painstakingly transplant rice using sensors and computers which can be independent from human activities or the use of human labor. The transplanting machine can make an accurate plan and direction on where to transplant around a six inch long rice seedlings. The rice seedlings are grown over two weeks on a long mat, using hydro-phonics culture system.
The long mat containing the seedlings is unrolled from the machine, and each seedling is sown into the soil, six in a row each time. Twenty rolls of mats weighing a total of two hundred eighty kilograms (280 kgs.) are needed to cover a one hectare area. The transplant robotic machine is estimated to cost a farmer for acquisition cost around sixty thousand US dollars (US$ 60,000).
However, the technology is still under evaluation at present. But once proven ready for commercialization, price of the equipment may decrease to accommodate especially the farmers in developing nations where the traditional old methods of rice production are still prevalent.
Mass production of the same can lower the price or cost of the technology. A Controller Area Network (CAN) bus is set up to oversea the activities of the rice transplanter through its Equipment Control Unit (ECU), where all the sensors, motors and a main computer are all connected.
Prior to the transplanting operation of the machine, the four corners of the field and the travel path have to be plotted. During transplanting, the main computer controls actions to minimize the deviation from the desired travel path in accordance to position and direction data. The travel speed of the transplant robotic machine can be revised from the main computer in order to make any adjustments from the deviations of transplanter's path. The main computer commands the robotic to stop at the end o a field, lifts and turns it to the next path. As observed, deviations from the planned path is at ten centimeters.
To measure direction and inclination of the machine, an Inertia Measuring Unit (IMU) that has fiber optic gyro sensors and accelerator is used. The NARC is actually on a six row transplanter that already exists in Japan. Ninety nine percent of rice farms in Japan are already mechanized and even rice transplanting is reportedly in practice by one hundred percent of Japanese farms.
Apparently, Japan's average rice yield is six metric tons per hectare compared to the developing countries of three and a half metric tons only per hectare. Transplanting maximizes land use and cuts weed presence. Japan has its own mechanized rice planter since 1966 yet, but it was dependent with human labor pushing the transplanter while the farm worker's feet are on knee deep on the ground.
With the present GPS system, Japan's rice production may be fully mechanized from land preparation to harvest time. The NARC has proposed that in order to be cost efficient in producing this farm equipment technology, it has to compact the system by combining the sensors and computer segments on a rice transplanter, combine harvester, fertilizer and a tractor segments are shared as the first stage of their plan.
In the next stage, they are planning to develop an autonomous combine harvester using the Controller Area Network (CAN) bus to share with GPS receiver, IMU and a main computer attached to the rice planter.
About the Author
Arnold Cafe is the author of Ideas Galore, http://affleap.com/blog and an active internet marketer.
The long mat containing the seedlings is unrolled from the machine, and each seedling is sown into the soil, six in a row each time. Twenty rolls of mats weighing a total of two hundred eighty kilograms (280 kgs.) are needed to cover a one hectare area. The transplant robotic machine is estimated to cost a farmer for acquisition cost around sixty thousand US dollars (US$ 60,000).
However, the technology is still under evaluation at present. But once proven ready for commercialization, price of the equipment may decrease to accommodate especially the farmers in developing nations where the traditional old methods of rice production are still prevalent.
Mass production of the same can lower the price or cost of the technology. A Controller Area Network (CAN) bus is set up to oversea the activities of the rice transplanter through its Equipment Control Unit (ECU), where all the sensors, motors and a main computer are all connected.
Prior to the transplanting operation of the machine, the four corners of the field and the travel path have to be plotted. During transplanting, the main computer controls actions to minimize the deviation from the desired travel path in accordance to position and direction data. The travel speed of the transplant robotic machine can be revised from the main computer in order to make any adjustments from the deviations of transplanter's path. The main computer commands the robotic to stop at the end o a field, lifts and turns it to the next path. As observed, deviations from the planned path is at ten centimeters.
To measure direction and inclination of the machine, an Inertia Measuring Unit (IMU) that has fiber optic gyro sensors and accelerator is used. The NARC is actually on a six row transplanter that already exists in Japan. Ninety nine percent of rice farms in Japan are already mechanized and even rice transplanting is reportedly in practice by one hundred percent of Japanese farms.
Apparently, Japan's average rice yield is six metric tons per hectare compared to the developing countries of three and a half metric tons only per hectare. Transplanting maximizes land use and cuts weed presence. Japan has its own mechanized rice planter since 1966 yet, but it was dependent with human labor pushing the transplanter while the farm worker's feet are on knee deep on the ground.
With the present GPS system, Japan's rice production may be fully mechanized from land preparation to harvest time. The NARC has proposed that in order to be cost efficient in producing this farm equipment technology, it has to compact the system by combining the sensors and computer segments on a rice transplanter, combine harvester, fertilizer and a tractor segments are shared as the first stage of their plan.
In the next stage, they are planning to develop an autonomous combine harvester using the Controller Area Network (CAN) bus to share with GPS receiver, IMU and a main computer attached to the rice planter.
About the Author
Arnold Cafe is the author of Ideas Galore, http://affleap.com/blog and an active internet marketer.
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