Six Sigma Implementation in TCS

TCS initiated Six Sigma implementation in its GE account in the Global Engineering Development Center of Chennai. In this center TCS executed projects for various businesses of GE including Computer Aided Design, Engineering Automation and Product Data Management Solutions. GE is a quality conscious company and had high standards of quality requirements. To achieve the desired level of customer satisfaction TCS decided to adopt the Six Sigma approach to bring down defects.

As the Six-Sigma implementation is customer driven, in this approach defect is considered to be anything which causes customer dissatisfaction. The target of Six Sigma was to bring down the number of defects to 3.4 per million units which really dictates flawless execution of all major processes. To implement Six Sigma TCS formed a team whose responsibility was to drive the implementation of this exercise. The team was headed by a Champion whose responsibility was to define the objectives, decides the steps to be taken, measures the improvements and ensures sustainability of the progress. Next in hierarchy was the Master Black Belt who created the network for Six Sigma, created training plans and supervised the projects. Under them were a number of Black Belts who shared the best practices and were actively involved in the implementation. Each Black Belt had some Green Belts under them who actually led the process improvement teams, trained the other team members and were accountable for the results of the teams working under them.

The next step was to provide training to all teams who would be working for implementation of Six Sigma. The actual work was divided into four different phases viz. Define, Measure, Analyze , Improve and Control. In the Define Phase the processes to be improved were identified and the customer requirements were converted into CTQ’s. In the Measure phase the defects in the current processes were measured. In the Analyze phase brainstorming was done to pinpoint the reasons which were causing the defects. In the Improve phase, the existing processes were modified to bring down defect levels within acceptable limits.

 

The implementation of these activities helped TCS to achieve a level of 5.86 σ in the GEDC centre for a number of projects in GE account in 1998-99.
References : http://www.tcs.com/resources/white_papers/Pages/QualityImprovementTheSixSigmaWay.aspx

Supratik Saha is a PGP student of Indian Institute of Management, Raipur and has worked in Tata Consultacy Services for 33 months. He has done his B.Tech. in Computer Science & Engineering from Siliguri Institute of Technology, West Bengal and can be reached at totoslg @ gmail . com