Carmen Corrado, Roche's vice president of pharmaceutical manufacturing, says, "Six Sigma was developed at Motorola in the late 1980s to provide focus on improvement and help accelerate change in a competitive environment."
Here, Corrado describes Roche's approach to Six Sigma:
"We have adopted a 'Lean/ Six Sigma' approach to address speed, quality, and cost that drives productivity, revenue growth, and sustainability. This is accomplished by conducting 'Voice of the Customer' [VOC] interviews with our marketing associates to determine if the current package designs meet our marketing criteria, relating to cost, performance, and the potential for using more environmentally friendly materials.
"Six Sigma is not a program or a technique. It's a robust system that provides flexibility and helps businesses be more responsive, efficient, competitive, sustainable, and profitable. Six Sigma focuses on Process Improvement (fix); Process Design/Redesign (replace); and Process Management (shift from oversight and directing of function to understanding and facilitating processes); Sustainability through the use of Process Mapping (improving, designing, and managing processes are the primary focus); Root Cause Analysis (cause and effect diagram); Statistical Process Control (serves as an alarm system); and Trend Chart (time order as the value is observed)."
Read the feature article, Roche goes green, saves greenbacks.
