PLM and Six Sigma: Complementary Strategies for Success (cont.)
Six Sigma is a strategic business approach that applies a consistent set of business practices and problem-solving methodology that uses your human assets, data, measurements, and statistics to identify the vital few factors to decrease waste and defects while increasing customer satisfaction, profit, and shareholder value – integrating people, processes, and information.
PLM is a strategic business approach that applies a consistent set of business technology solutions to support collaborative creation, management, dissemination, and use of product definition information across the extended enterprise, from concept to end of life – integrating people, processes, and information.
Both these enterprise initiatives are focused on achieving similar business goals, including:
- Improved quality
- Customer satisfaction and loyalty
- Process efficiency
- Increased employee value
- Strategic alignment with the extended value chain
- Growth
- Competitive advantage
- and of course... profitability
UGS teams are currently working closely with a number of large corporations heavily involved in Six Sigma that have selected us and our technology solutions to help enable their business initiatives. The approach all these companies take is: business strategy first, process second and then, and only then, technology. We were selected as a technology partner in all of these companies because our approach utilizes Six Sigma thinking and reflects our belief that business value should always be the driver for the tools and methodologies a company selects. Only when business goals are clearly defined is it possible to find a combination of process improvements and PLM technology can help deliver results.
If you would like to know more about how PLM and Six Sigma are mutual enablers, download a more detailed discussion of this topic. This article discusses the reasons companies adopt Six Sigma and PLM, how to evaluate return on investment (ROI) for PLM technology and various ways that PLM tools can be implemented to support Six Sigma companies throughout the lifecycle of their products.
Elsewhere in this newsletter you will also find an article about how our NX and Teamcenter products enable Design for Six Sigma (DFSS), which focuses on the upfront design of products and processes. If you would like to know more about DFSS, you can download a white paper on the topic.
