• Background on Six Sigma
• Background on KPA Ltd.
• The Founder, Chairman and CEO of the KPA Group
  
• The KPA Six Sigma Roadmap for Small and Medium Enterprises
  
• KPA Six Sigma Downloads

KPA is an internationally recognized center of excellence in areas of quality management and quality improvements. It's areas of expertise include:

• The Juran Trilogy of Planning, Improving and Control
• Lean Manufacturing
• Statistical Process Control
• Quality by Design and Design of Experiments
• FMEA and Risk Management
• Six Sigma

Background on Six Sigma

What is Six Sigma? Six Sigma provides companies with a series of interventions and statistical tools that lead to breakthrough profitability and quantum gains in quality, whether a company's products are durable goods or services. Sigma is a letter in the Greek alphabet used to denote the standard deviation of a process (standard deviation measures the variation or amount of spread about the process mean).

A process with "Six Sigma" capability means having twelve standard deviations between the upper and lower specification limits. Essentially, process variation is reduced so that no more than 3.4 parts per million fall outside of the specification limits. The higher the sigma number, the better.

The "Six Sigma" term also refers to a philosophy, goal and or methodology utilized to drive out waste and improve the quality, cost and time performance of any business. On average, one Six Sigma project will save an organization between $150,000 and $200,000. Black Belts with 100% of their time allocated to projects can execute five or six projects during a 12 month period, potentially adding over $1 Million to annual profits.

Six Sigma Implementation is through projects. Projects can be of different size and duration. We define a project as a structured and systematic approach to achieving Six Sigma levels of improvement. Six Sigma levels of quality are achieved using the Define Measure Analyze Improve and Control Problem-Solving and Improvement methodology. Crucial to any successful Six Sigma implementation are its Champions. These senior management personnel are charged with driving and supporting Six Sigma to achieve business and operational objectives by driving out waste and increasing customer satisfaction.

An employee of an organization that will participate on Six Sigma team is referred to as a Green Belt. A Green Belt will have sufficient knowledge to support and champion Six Sigma implementation and to participate in Six Sigma projects as team leader or team member.

A managerial level or technical specialist assigned full responsibility to implement Six Sigma throughout the business unit is referred to as a Black Belt. This term as well as Green Belts were coined by Motorola. A Black Belt is a Six Sigma implementation expert. Each project is expected to have at least one Black Belt as a team member.

Many companies have experienced the benefits of Six Sigma. One particular example is provided by Robert W. Galvin, Chairman of the Executive Committee, Motorola, Inc., in his forward to the book Modern Industrial Statistics by Kenett and Zacks:

"At Motorola we use statistical methods daily throughout all of our disciplines to synthesize an abundance of data to derive concrete actions�.How has the use of statistical methods within Motorola Six Sigma initiative, across disciplines, contributed to our growth? Over the past decade we have reduced in-process defects by over 300 fold, which has resulted in a cumulative manufacturing cost savings of over 11 billion dollars". Modern Industrial Statistics: Design and control of quality and reliability by Kenett and Zacks, Duxbury Press, 1998.

For more more information on Six Sigma browse the material below and/or send an email to: [email protected]

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Background on KPA

KPA was founded in 1990 to improve the competitive position of its customers by promoting the implementation of advanced management methodologies. The company's expert consultants are currently involved in a wide range of organizations from the industrial, service and public sectors in Israel and Europe.

KPA has helped organizations in a variety of industries achieve ISO-9000 certification and win the Israeli National Quality Award.

KPA provides expertise in practical tools, techniques and methodologies for attaining and maintaining competitive position and quality leadership. These are tailored to meet specific customer needs while delivering world-class services and include: Strategic Planning, Six Sigma initiatives, Change Management Methodologies, Enterprise knowledge Development, Business Process Surveys, Customer Satisfaction Surveys, Team Facilitation, Organizational Development, Performance Appraisal and Compensation Systems, Statistical Analysis, Software Quality Engineering, Management Dashboards, Design for Six Sigma and Robust Design Methodologies.

KPA Six Sigma training program has been accredited by several companies to train Black Belts and facilitate Six Sigma projects. For example, the Kodak Corporation has accredited KPA to mentor the Six Sigma initiative of the Dead Sea Bromine Group where it trained over 25 Black Belts, 120 executives and Green belts and facilitated 20 improvement projects. The company was awarded twice the Israeli National Quality Award named after the late premier Izhak Rabin. Other companies Green belts and Black Belts trained by KPA include Cisco, Perrigo, IAI, Chromalloy, Kamada, Alliance, Phillip Morris, AVX, National Semiconductors, Magic Software, Savyon Diagnostics, Chemagis, Motorola and SCI Sanmina. Overall KPA has trained over 100 Black Belts and 600 Green Belts.

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The founder, chairman and CEO of the KPA Group

Ron S. Kenett, Ph.D. is Chairman and CEO of the KPA Group and KPA Ltd. and Research Professor at the University of Torino, Torino, Italy . He has over 25 years of experience in restructuring and improving the competitive position of organizations by integrating statistical methods, process analysis, supporting technologies and modern human resource management systems. As a Professor of Management at the State University of New York, he was awarded the General Electric Quality Management Fellowship. For nine years he served as Director of Statistical Methods for Tadiran Telecommunications Corporation and, previously, as researcher at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. His 160 publications and 7 books are on topics in industrial statistics, performance appraisal systems, risk management, biostatistics and quality management. Ron ico-authored books include Modern Industrial Statistics: Design and Control of Quality and Reliability (with S. Zacks and a forward by Robert Galvin, Past Chairman of Motorola Inc.), Duxbury Press, 1998, Spanish edition 2000, 2nd paperpack edition, 2002, Chinese edition 2004, Multivariate Quality Control: Theory and Applications (with C. Fuchs), Marcel Dekker Inc., 1998 and Process Improvement and CMMI for Systems and Software (With E. Baker and a foreword by S. Yau, past president of the IEEE society), Taylor and Francis Auerbach Publications , 2010. Ron's Ph.D. is in Mathematics from the Weizmann Institute of Science. A partial list of companies he has consulted for includes: Intel, AT&T, AVX, EMC, National Semiconductors, Motorola, Dun & Bradstreet, Tadiran, Applied Materials, Israel Aircraft Industries, Amdocs and ECI. He is Chairman of the Board of Takeoff, an organization whose mission is to help start-up companies develop business and marketing plans and establish strategic partnerships. Ron is Editor in Chief of the Wiley Encyclopedia of Statistics in Quality and Reliability, on the advisory board of Quality Technology and Quantitative Management  and several other scientific journals. Professor Kenett is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, Senior Member of the American Society for Quality, Past Member of the Board of the Israeli Statistical Association and Past President of ENBIS, the European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics .

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The KPA Six Sigma Roadmap for Small and Medium Enterprises

KPA's Six Sigma roadmap for small and medium enterprises consists of a six months intensive program combining training and implementation projects. The training consists of 16 full time equivalent training days and the projects span six months. Following completion of the projects and the training program the project leaders get certified as Black Belts, the team members as Green Belts.
A typical small and medium size enterprises will identify 2-3 Black Belt candidates and launch 2-3 six sigma projects defined after an initial one day training of the enterprise management team.

Projects are conducted in small teams lead by the enterprise candidate Black Belt. A KPA Black Belt mentors the various projects and provides the necessary training. In order to graduate as a certified Black Belts, the candidates must demonstrate results. As part of the Six Sigma Black Belt training, KPA will review, critique, and advise the Black Belt candidates.

The KPA Six Sigma roadmap covers the following topics in a mix of frontal and hands on training and implementation steps:

A specific roadmap implementation spans six months with two weeks of full time training and one day/week of a combination of training and project team meetings. The management of the projects relies on a specially designed Six Sigma Project Review Form.

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KPA Six Sigma Downloads

For an overview presentation on Six Sigma - click here

For a sample Six Sigma project status report - click here

For a brief on Six Sigma in service processes - click here

If the presentations do not open up or appear blank save them first and then open the pdf file with Acrobat.

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