Six Sigma: Define and Measure

First and foremost, I want to convey my utmost gratitude, praise, and appreciation to Holly Ott for her skillful execution and expertise conducting the course. She made the course interesting as an online course can be. Even for someone who has been out of college for 30+ years, she made it understandable. Not that I did not need to do some significant scratching of the head and dig up some supplemental information, but I did learn a great deal.

The material presented and knowledge (yes, even my old grey hair head can still retain some information) will be used as I work on implementing a new process at my company. The process is tied to the Request for Maintenance Action (RMA). As a manufacturer and distributer of ground based and naval radar systems, the process for customers to return parts that fail in the field was cumbersome and chaotic at best. Additionally, our customers were not very happy with the Turn Around Time (TAT) of receiving their repaired or replaced parts back. These times often exceeded 3 to 6 months. Unless previously agreed to for specific parts, this was completely unacceptable. Furthermore, there are some parts that are failing on a more regular basis. Thus, quality measurements and improvements were in need. Capturing the metrics of the failure rates will drive the organization to reevaluate the design or supplier and hopefully foster improvements for future system deliveries. The data collected will also be used to drive obsolescence, FMEA and FMECA analyses.

The process is somewhat complicated as there are customer reports involved that need to be evaluated, shipping and trade compliance concerns, supplier and vendor interactions and agreed to evaluation pricing, customer purchase orders, vendor purchase orders, work authorizations, etc. etc.

I have just completed the process mapping flow (with help from what I learned in the class) and have received comments back from the review. I have also been working with our Oracle subject matter experts to develop the process tool and alerts to be used. There is a great deal of historical data that also needs to be captured and input into Oracle. From there, once the process is finalized and all stakeholders are in agreement on the use of the tool. I will develop training slide decks for the requisite responsible individuals.

My ultimate goal along with the quality organization is to see a significant reduction in TAT as well as capture statistics on what parts are failing the most, under what conditions, and work with engineering and our supply chain to either modify or redesign or seek alternate suppliers that can meet the failure rate requirements. Everything we work on is driven by Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) and Mean Time To Repair (MTTR). The limits of which are set by customer requirements. And yes, this goes down to something as small as a connector to something as large as a big drive gear.

In closing, while my company does have some process and methods for capturing this critical data for RMAs, it is, as I said dispersed and un- organized. I am confident that what I have learned in the course will help me significantly as I drive the process and help my company achieve a better RMA status and less customer complaints.

I look forward to taking more edX courses and will certainly look for others from TUM if Holly is teaching.

Sincerely,

Elias A. Elias

The course content is very much helpful and informative. The course really helps to gain insight into the lean production and six sigma. The concepts are very much latest and related with industry.

The course has helped me a lot for securing the internship at Schaeffler Company. The material has proved to be very much useful with the project I am working in Schaeffler.

The instructor, Dr. Holly Ott, was one of the best I had ever experienced, coming from an in-class and online university-level course perspective. Not only were her lectures engaging and informative but she showed a genuine interest in the subject matter. She went above and beyond what I would expect from any prof and in addition to providing a great portion of the lectures herself, was also a frequent poster in the discussion forums. The guest lecturers that were brought in were world-class experts and it showed. They were able to explain increasingly difficult concepts using basic examples and to me, that is a sign of someone who really knows what they’re talking about!

I also wanted to mention that taking good notes in this course is a must since there are so many different concepts being thrown at you that unless you take good notes now, you may be a little bit confused later on. I still sometimes re-read my notes or re-watch a video to get a better grasp on a topic and see if and how I can implement it at work and in my daily life.

Thank you, Professor Ott, all of the guest lecturers and TAs, and the rest of the TUM team that worked tirelessly to bring this MOOC to us!

Hello,

I am Nuruzzaman Faruqui from Dhaka, Banglades. I am an Electrical Engineer and working in a Mobile Telecom Company with the technical Project Team of my company. I have to work & perform with different project all over the year. For me this a is very good initiative to enrolled in this course. Course content is fantastic. I have just completed this course (Six Sigma: Define and Measure) . I found this course very helpful for who are working with project implementation. There is lots of tools & technique i learned. I learned lots of thing to maintain Quality. For maintaining quality this course is master of introduction. I learned how to define a problem and then how to measure and also how to define and measure all the problem in mathematically. My learning from this course :

1. To maintain Quality how to start with.

2. How to Define a problem

3. How to measure.

4. The implementation of Statistical Mathematics in real field.

5. How probability can be used as a countable way by using math.

6. The difference between Probability & Statistic.

7. The mathematics of Probability & Statistics.

8. About TUM School of Management.

9. Real life example how to apply DMAIC steps: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control.

10. Vast using of Normal distribution and lots of implementation statistical & Probability mathematics and finally what is 6 Sigma program means and from where it is born ("It was introduced by American engineer Bill Smith while working at Motorola in 1986. Jack Welch made it central to his business strategy at General Electric in 1995. A six sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of all opportunities to produce some feature of a part are statistically expected to be free of defects")

11. Defiantly learned about TUM and Beautiful presentation of all classes and flawless description of all topics from Professor Holly Ott, it is outstanding lecture of all.



This is a great course for the people who are working with projects. Thanks all the course coordinator and peers who helped me in different way and judge me by beautiful comments on my works. Thanks for fantastic presentation and choosing and explaining topics to be understand by the classical mathematics of statistics & probability. I really loved this course.

Thanks & best regards,

Md. Nuruzzaman Faruqui

Rollout Management Senior Manager

Network Service Management

Banglalink Digital Communications Ltd.

Tiger’s Den, House 4 (SWH), Bir Uttam Mir Shawkat Sharak

Gulshan 1, Dhaka 1212, Bangladesh

The professor Holly Ott understands what a S.M.A.R.T (specific measurable attainable realistic time) quality objective actually is for a each of her lectures. Furthermore she follows the 3E( FEMA Reinforcing the perception of fair treatment 3E) of communication which most people fail to do in lectures. Some students do not give her enough credit for how she sets up her lectures and her practice question are very good preparations for her quizzes/homework assignments. I have seen a lot of professors in my lifetime none of them of them were ever actually good, very intelligent people that mostly are perceived as critics, but none of them understood the word "Be Humble" while in a lecture especially when you are meeting your students for the first time. I have only met one other professor like her in my lifetime, that was professor Allen Claus who taught me to love organic chemistry again just by sticking to the quality objective, unfortunately I was not able to stay that field, but my point is, considered this Professional Certificate by TUMX

I took this course to understand the terminology of lean production and Six sigma, it has been very helpful in my day to day tasks, especially the fish bone diagrams and the five 5 WHYS that I constantly use to solve problem statements.

For example, if you have never heard the acronym DPMO or 8D I suggest you take this course and the next two for the professional certificate. but if you are more interested in being a critic about grammatical errors that were not intentional and obvious to see, do not take the course. I like the grammatical errors from time to time because to me, it means the people are actually humble and they are human.

My advice to TUMX Staff and Holly Ott don't change a thing about this professional certificate, you guys are doing a excellent job.

My Credentials: I have a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and I currently work as a Amazon Associate at MKE1

If my English structure is incorrect I apologize back in my high school days I was stuck with teachers for three years that spent 45 minutes a day talking about their marriage problems or money problems or just showing videos on subject instead of teaching it and that was in advanced English courses. Had the same problem with one college English course I took for a requirement, thank god for books. Got to love Self interest groups and Nepotism sometimes its not beneficial to students.

Well, I hope this helps.....

Sincerely Juan F.

My name is Cole Shaigec and I am a management student at the London School of Economics. I highly commend Dr. Ott and her colleagues at TUM for their work in putting together this spectacular course.

Dr. Ott is an exceptionally skilled teacher. She conveyed the material in an engaging, clear, and concise manner that I was easily able to understand despite my complete lack of experience in the field. Her enthusiasm for the material is infectious and is evident throughout the course.

With respect to the course content, I greatly appreciated the inclusion of real-world examples to demonstrate how the Six Sigma methodology is applied in practice. I found this to be a very effective means of elucidating the subtle nuances of Six Sigma's basic theoretical underpinnings while also illustrating some of the common challenges encountered by Six Sigma practitioners.

The course taught me many key lessons that I hope to apply in an operations management internship next summer. It impressed upon me the importance of viewing business process optimization efforts as a means of improving customer experience rather than as ends in and of themselves. Additionally, it demonstrated the importance of cross-functional collaboration to ensure the success of process improvement projects. Most importantly, it introduced me to a new, data-driven way of thinking about business operations, which I believe will serve me very well in my future endeavours.

I strongly recommend this course to anyone who is interested in improving their understanding of business processes and I look forward to completing the next two courses in this series in order to obtain my Six Sigma Yellow Belt certification.

Hello, I am Prashant Bhavsar from India, working for an Automotive Industry in India.

Let me first thank Prof. Holly Ott for her incredible skill for making this course easier. Her presentation and delivery of the course was excellent and made it easy for someone like me who is out of college from last 20 years.

Here I want to add about the best things I liked about the course.

We have been going through equivalent courses but I never came so close to understanding the concept so well. Specifically about the course , the best thing was the idea of conceptualizing the content through self-doing. The exercises after each module were so excellent that you can learn every thing that has been taught during the module presentation.

Application of the training through exercises and the discussion forum was excellent.

The examples of the Case studies gave a good insight about the problem solving technique applying the Six-Sigma. I liked the explanation and application of DMAIC Process.

The mathematical part was always made enjoyable by Prof. Holy Ott. Thanks once again for your skills to make each and everything so simple. The statistics part was excellently understood.

One thing during the course that I enjoyed most was the probability distribution module and its example solves. Excellent material to learn and apply in actual work.

I liked Process-Mapping module as well. Being a part of an automotive industry and a test engineer for NVH(Noise, Vibration and Harshness) function, there are application of Process flow in my work application as well. I surely will apply the technique in my work.

The application of Six-Sigma process of Define and Measure for technical work will be applied for the Major problem solving in our function.

I would love to have the Print option of the test after solving all the questions in the module.

There is no easy way to take the module content in example solves. Example solves were great help to understand the content and will always need to be revised. So print-out of this content with the solution would always help.

I would like to share my experience, that although you might always revisit the module's video content for revising, but it would be always better to have small notes of important content while you will be studying the modules online.

I would like to thank the edx Support team and Prof. Holy ott for this wonderful online module.

Thanking you

Sincerely yours

PRASHANT BHAVSAR

INDIA

It was a great honour to provide a review related to the Six Sigma Online Course by the Technical University of Munich through EDx.

Browsing the internet, you’ll find that tons of institutions, organizations and various groups are offering similar Six-Sigma Training Course. They usually have a time frame of a straight 2 to 3 months (some on a daily or weekly basis), which will be challenging if you have a full-time job and a family that you take care of. The cost can also range from USD1,000 to USD6,000, forcing you to finish the course despite realizing its complexity or ending up partially refunding some of your money. To top all of this, you need to question the credibility of the institution providing it. Do they really have the right knowledge and experience related to Six-Sigma?

The Technical University of Munich (TUM) is a well-know institution, and I immediately check the course the moment I found out they are offering the six-sigma course. My only worry is the price (quality comes with a cost) and the time it will require, plus the fact that I don’t speak German. Lo-and-behold! The entire course is for FREE! And for less than USD500, you can have a verified certificate. They also provide the course in English Language at your own phase even at 2 am you can take it anywhere. Defending on when you enroll, it allows you to finish it within a year.

Since Six Sigma encompasses a lot of tools, techniques and processes, it is very critical of how it will be presented to the audience by the presenter. WOW! Even the introduction itself make me feel very much welcome to MUNICH that I was hoping to come and visit the place and the professor one day! The course was also presented and categorized in a step-by-step process that acceptable to the wide range of diverse audiences. Prof. Holly Ott and Dr. Grunow NAILED IT! They’ve explained the topic very precisely and well, the majority of the audience can understand that.

From the Theory, Application and up to relative Examples, all the parts of the Six-Sigma course will help you fully understand and motivate you to implement it within your organization. I love the one-page Diagram they’ve shared to the students, plus the form to help and guide them towards achieving the Green belt. Amazing! The course is for free but the quality of the knowledge you’ll receive is priceless.

I WILL TOTALLY RECOMMEND THIS COURSE TO MY FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES!!!

Kit Siang Tan, working in a power tool company as an R&D Engineer.

1. I learnt from this course a solid foundation on how to judge the quality of the processes involved in manufacturing parts I developed for my products. Given that certain dimensions defined are super critical to ensure functionality and performance, it is crucial to also know how to narrow down root causes, and plan for process improvements.

2. Quality assurance is as important to be tracked for long term as it is for short term. Usually in PDP, we ensure process capability until SOP. When everything is good, products are manufactured and launched to the customers. I understand that it is important to ensure quality even after a few years from SOP, and this course gave me some basic guideline on how to maintain a capable process to achieve quality parts.

3. This course somehow motivated me to truly listen to the voice of the customers. Design requirements are familiar to me, but through this course, I see the importance of defining proper and excellent critical-to-quality characteristics that are highly relevant to the VOC.

This course teaches you the foundation knowledge required to master Lean manufacturing. Passing the 3 courses of Edx with Tum university you can achieve a yellow belt certificate in lean manufacturing that is a great acknowledgement and starting point to develop a career in any manufacturing company. Green belt certificate can also be achieved through this university based in Munich.

The classes are given using recorded videos in English. Subtitles and power point presentations to improve e following of the classes are also made available. Every chapter is wrapped up with a quiz.

If you have studied statistical mathematics at bachelor level, you might find this course basic but the way it all links up with the quality and engineering perspective will teach you useful tools that are applied in many engineering companies.

I recommend the course to any engineering professional, project manager or student looking out to round off their experience. This course helped me stand out of the crowd and give a turn to my career.

I finished the course studying 4 hours a week.

I have study business administration 25 years ago, So I remembered material I learned years ago, viewed from a modern view. The material is very well structure and the presentation from Professors Holly Ott, Martin Grunow and the team is excellent.

The course is one of the three courses for the Professional Certificate in “Six Sigma and Lean:

Quantitative Tools for Quality and Productivity”

During the three courses I learn how to translate customer demand/specifications into measurable characteristics and measure the baseline performance I can analyze the data statistically and design experiments for improvement and set in place controls.

The last course “Lean production” helps me how to identify wastes and value flows, understand variability, relate customer demand to the production planning for developing pull-systems. It is important that the material I learned can be applied in many different industries.

After completing this course, I realized its implications on a main task in my work in the field of cell-based immunotherapy: continuous process monitoring.

APPRECIATED ASPECTS:

- The concepts are well introduced, starting always with the big picture down to its details, then back again to the big picture. I appreciate this approach for its effectiveness in relaying the messages.

- The examples/practices and the solutions complement very well the explained concepts, particularly in being realistic examples, one can relate to. Additionally, examples from real industry settings and their issues (candles or boots) give context to the course.

- The rounding up lecture at the end is appreciated for its capacity to put the course into perspective. For someone who appreciates the big picture, I was satisfied.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT:

- The test questions could be less oriented towards the definitions and instead on the implications of the concepts. My suggestion is to provide a problem (for example: children complained that their ice cream falls off the cone while they were eating it), then question the FMEA details and definitions (for example: loose arrangement of the scoops or insufficiently stiff ice cream, falls under POTENTIAL FAILURE, CAUSE or DETECTION in an FMEA template)

- Lecture 8 contains an example that got complicated when "proportions out of spec" came into action. Maybe the idea behind was to round up all the previous lessons into 1 exercise, but its gets too complicated for the purpose. This was the only episode where I felt the explanation proceeded too quickly to be understood.

Thank you instructors, students, industrial collaborators and communication staff for a well-rounded course. I would recommend it highly to colleagues.

Bechara MFARREJ

Research and Development in Cell-based Immunotherapy

Center for Cell Therapy

Institut Paoli-Calmettes

Marseille, France

Alaina G. Deitzel, Philadelphia, PA, United States

BSE, Bioengineering, experience in Metal Finishing Industry, seeking employment in the Pharmaceutical Industry.

This course brings a focused perspective on the definition of quality, and the information necessary to quantify quality. In the day to day performance of a job, it can be easy to rely upon instinct and solve problems with assumptions rooted in past experience. This course helps to focus and fine tune instinct and experience by demonstrating methods to calculate and prove what may actually be occurring in a process. Taking the time to use those statistical methods will save more time and money, while producing a quality product. For example, many industries rely upon specification guidelines and regulations. It was interesting to learn in the Process Capability lectures that it may not always be enough to be within specification. The process can be measured and improved further to bring about an outcome that is more cost effective and better meets the customer expectations.

I am only able to dedicate time to this course in the evening, after work and family time. The course is conveniently self-paced, and the ability to be able to download the course handouts in advance was very useful. Holly explains the course content in a clear and detailed manner. Statistics wasn't my favorite subject in college. This course was much better. It was not difficult to do well and keep a low- stress pace. It is obvious that the objective of the course administrators is to build knowledge and confidence in the subject area. It's been a while since I attended school. I appreciated and enjoyed this first course, and I am looking forward to completing the next two sessions and earning my certificate!