The world which laughed and ignored the Lean Six Sigma segment has reversed its stance and today leading corporates globally are implementing this and reaping benefits from it, said Don Drury, Executive Director, SSMI Asia.
Speaking at the International Conference on Organizational Excellence and Lean Six Sigma at Kings Court, Cinnamon Lakeside Hotel, Colombo, yesterday, he said that adopting of Six Sigma has resulted in companies all over the world being more efficient.
“In addition the practice has also helped to save over a half a trillion dollars annually for companies,” he said.
Regional Head Continuous improvement (CI) of NOKIA, Ashutosh Pandey, in a case study discussed at the event said that one of the biggest mistakes Nokia did to lose their global mobile number one position was not adapting to change.
He said that they also did not read the future trends of the industry in advance and decision makers could learn a lot from the Nokia case study.
“I think it is also fair to mention at this stage that when the company wanted to launch a smartphone, both our consultants and even McKinsey Global Institute research said that the global market was ready for it.”
“Though we had the device up and ready we delayed and then other producers like Apple launched it and it took the world by storm. By the time we came forward, it was rather late to catch up.”
However Nokia took note of the situation and after falling back has now caught up and today we have over 26 different kind of businesses which are powered and guided by the Six Sigma segment as well. Today we have even acquired Alcatel and have several global patents under our belt.”
He also said that many people may now know that Nokia has being in existence for over 150 years and started up as a paper pulp manufacturing company.
“Though Nokia’s tag line was connecting people, we saw that due to the hard work of our employees which resulted in their travelling extensively, families were being disconnected.”
Joining the discussion, Dr. Ashok Sarkar, from the Indian Statistical Institute, said that one of the major issues that went wrong for Nokia was that they did not look at what is happening outside.
The event was Sri Lanka's first-ever International Conference on Organizational Excellence and Lean Six Sigma, organized to celebrate 30 years of Six Sigma and to pay tribute its Co-founder, the late Prof. Mikel J Harry.
This unique event was organized by the Asian branch (Dr Mikel J Harry Six Sigma Management Institute Asia - Six Sigma Asia Private Limited) of Dr Mikel J Harry Six Sigma Management Institute Inc., USA, a pioneer institution in organizational excellence, related consultancy, training and deployment in the world.
Conference Chair and the Executive Director of SSMI Asia, Dumidu Ranaweera said, “The event also promoted the use of Organizational Excellence (OE) and Lean Six Sigma practices in the island.”
The event is supported by many leading institutes in Sri Lanka including Postgraduate Institute of Management (PIM), Institute of Personnel Management (IPM), ACCA Sri Lanka, CIMA Sri Lanka, SLASSCOM, TNL Radio, Lake House, Imagine Entertainment, Sandbox, Readme, Fastforward, Cinnamon Lakeside, Walkers Tours, Cason Rent a Car, Sri Lankan Airlines, Leaf d (Pvt) Ltd. and Dulgee Creations.
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