Critical Business Issue:

A product for the military was designed by utilizing the principles of "Design for Manufacturability" and all the team members in manufacturing attended a "Utilizing the Six Steps to Six Sigma" training session.

Having a design that could be built effectively in the factory and then applying the tools of Six Sigma created an environment which resulted in significant reductions in time and cost over the life of the product. The results achieved are shown below: Actions Taken:

Application of the Six Steps to Six Sigma by the Customer Relationship Management team. This resulted in segmenting the customer base based on projected revenues and reallocating resources and personal contacts to the right customers.

Indicator	1985	1987	1989	1991	1993
Defects per million operations	4611	1424	325	45	9.3
Sigma Level	4.10	4.48	4.91	5.42	5.78
Cycle Time (days)	42	6.40	5.00	3.90	4.10
Production Efficiency (pieces/day)	.49	2.47	3.20	4.23	3.55*
* Production rate decreased by 50% but capability needed to be maintained

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