Improving Customer Satisfaction through Implementing Six Sigma – DMAIC Methodology and Enhancing Job Satisfaction in Indian Foundries

Abstract

An attempt has been made to implement a systematic six-sigma DMAIC (Define–Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control) methodology and enhancing job satisfaction in the production of flywheel at CPC foundry- located at Tamilnadu- India, which provides a framework to identify, quantify and eliminate sources of variation in an operational process to reduce defects in the castings and on time delivery to increase the customer satisfaction. This research defines a step-by-step guide using DMAIC methodology and it is evaluated with a case study resulting in an overall defect rejection percentage decreased from 13.73 to 4.68 and sigma level of the process has been increased from 3.19σ to 3.65σ. The effect of job satisfaction of employees on six sigma implementation was also enhanced and the study generated an 83 percent responses rate from 72 employees with purpose to increase the sigma level of the company. Therefore, the objective of this study is to improve the sigma level, on time delivery of products to maximize the customer satisfaction. In the proceeding stage, FMEA and design of experiment (DOE) were conducted to determine risk factors and optimal settings of the critical-to quality factors in the casting process. The performance measurement system was also employed to justify the six sigma implementation procedure to improve the confidence level of the company regarding customer satisfaction. Based on the findings the improvement steps was taken and applied effectively thereby better yield is obtained in the production process. Finally, the higher sigma level and customer satisfaction were achieved and standardizes the methodology after analyzing, optimizing the process variables. The results shows that the proposed six sigma can effectively implemented to achieve higher level of customer satisfaction and also its gain. This implementation model experiences along with directions for future research are also provided.