Kick terrorists a** with Six Sigma ! (forget Ju-jitsu) :D
Six Sigma : Can it be a tool against terrorism??
At a time, when fighting the war against militancy has become arguably the most important issue facing the World, experts are looking into an unlikely weapon to aid their fight: Six Sigma. Six Sigma is nothing like a laser-guided smart bomb but rather a statistics-heavy regimen of analysing problems that has saved corporations billions.
We all know that, Six Sigma is a set of statistical and management tools that can make leaps in improvement. When something reaches Six Sigma, it has a failure rate of 3.4 per million, or 99.99966% accuracy. However, being just 99.0% accurate can sometimes spell disaster. It means: At least 200,000 wrong drug prescriptions each year. Around 2 short or long landings at major airports each day, 5,000 incorrect surgical procedures every week. ,50 dropped newborn babies each day and so on. So question is "can an arcane management process save lives by helping prevent militant attacks"?
Mikel Harry, the father of Six Sigma, says it can, in a major way. He estimates the World would be safer from terrorist attacks by a factor of hundreds or thousands. Six Sigma is "powerful stuff" that could work even in the sprawl of the governments, Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell says.
Consider the mountain of information that flood into the Intelligence agencies, such as intercepted phone calls, applications to pilot schools, etc. Suppose e-mail is intercepted that includes a disguised threat on an important target. A quick decision must be made to discard the e-mail or take it seriously. Discarding bad information is crucial because useless data can paralyse decision makers further up the line. There may be 50 points where such pass-fail decisions must be made about the usefulness of a piece of information. In Six Sigma talk, these points are called "decision nodes." If each of those 50 nodes passes judgment on 60 pieces of information each day, there are 300 opportunities for a decision error each day as intelligence moves up the chain to Security Chief and Head of Govt.
If decision nodes average 99.38% accuracy, they are at Four Sigma, which is about the accuracy of services such as prescription writing by doctors and airline baggage handling. If improved to Six Sigma, accuracy is 99.99966%. That means only one of about every 294,000 pieces of vital information would be erroneously discarded. At Six Sigma, there is a 99.9% chance that all 300 decisions are accurate on a given day. There is a 97% chance all decisions in a month will be right. Where there is only a 15% chance that all decisions are right on a given day at Four Sigma, there is a 15% chance that all decisions will be right over a five-year period at Six Sigma. Such efficiency would be invaluable when lives are at risk. That's how attaining Six Sigma in the war on terrorism could make the World 1,800 times safer.
Deploying Six Sigma against terrorism would be little different than when it was used to determine that most steps in a Japanese patent system's application process were wasteful. The cost of each filing was slashed to $1,200 from $48,000. Communication satellites are rented out by the seconds and are not always used efficiently. General Electric used Six Sigma to make sure its satellites were being used 97% from 63%, adding $1.3 million a year in revenue. Former CEO Jack Welch, who drove Six Sigma deep into GE's culture before his retirement, counts himself among the cautious optimists that Six Sigma could work against terrorism.
But Things are not so simple. Even diehard fan like Michael Dell warns that it could take years for intelligence agencies to fully implement Six Sigma but adds, "It's possible." Fighting terrorism isn't really much different than marketing, Harry says. Marketing executives, like intelligence experts, must digest mountains of mostly useless data, analyse the fraction that is important and persuade decision makers to get the right product on the shelf just as consumer tastes are changing. At its best, marketing influences consumer tastes, which like terrorists, are a moving target.
Even after hearing about the billions saved at companies like GE, others have abandoned the Six Sigma effort in frustration. Companies that don't stick it out for at least five years soon revert and lose all progress. That doesn't bode well for the governments, where attention spans often don't survive election cycles. Also, there will be "a gantlet of pain" to get it implemented.
Experts say it won't work without an "obsessive, compulsive" leader behind it, someone like Jack Welch. "Who in the Government can claim to look similar", there lies the whole crux.
At a time, when fighting the war against militancy has become arguably the most important issue facing the World, experts are looking into an unlikely weapon to aid their fight: Six Sigma. Six Sigma is nothing like a laser-guided smart bomb but rather a statistics-heavy regimen of analysing problems that has saved corporations billions.
We all know that, Six Sigma is a set of statistical and management tools that can make leaps in improvement. When something reaches Six Sigma, it has a failure rate of 3.4 per million, or 99.99966% accuracy. However, being just 99.0% accurate can sometimes spell disaster. It means: At least 200,000 wrong drug prescriptions each year. Around 2 short or long landings at major airports each day, 5,000 incorrect surgical procedures every week. ,50 dropped newborn babies each day and so on. So question is "can an arcane management process save lives by helping prevent militant attacks"?
Mikel Harry, the father of Six Sigma, says it can, in a major way. He estimates the World would be safer from terrorist attacks by a factor of hundreds or thousands. Six Sigma is "powerful stuff" that could work even in the sprawl of the governments, Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell says.
Consider the mountain of information that flood into the Intelligence agencies, such as intercepted phone calls, applications to pilot schools, etc. Suppose e-mail is intercepted that includes a disguised threat on an important target. A quick decision must be made to discard the e-mail or take it seriously. Discarding bad information is crucial because useless data can paralyse decision makers further up the line. There may be 50 points where such pass-fail decisions must be made about the usefulness of a piece of information. In Six Sigma talk, these points are called "decision nodes." If each of those 50 nodes passes judgment on 60 pieces of information each day, there are 300 opportunities for a decision error each day as intelligence moves up the chain to Security Chief and Head of Govt.
If decision nodes average 99.38% accuracy, they are at Four Sigma, which is about the accuracy of services such as prescription writing by doctors and airline baggage handling. If improved to Six Sigma, accuracy is 99.99966%. That means only one of about every 294,000 pieces of vital information would be erroneously discarded. At Six Sigma, there is a 99.9% chance that all 300 decisions are accurate on a given day. There is a 97% chance all decisions in a month will be right. Where there is only a 15% chance that all decisions are right on a given day at Four Sigma, there is a 15% chance that all decisions will be right over a five-year period at Six Sigma. Such efficiency would be invaluable when lives are at risk. That's how attaining Six Sigma in the war on terrorism could make the World 1,800 times safer.
Deploying Six Sigma against terrorism would be little different than when it was used to determine that most steps in a Japanese patent system's application process were wasteful. The cost of each filing was slashed to $1,200 from $48,000. Communication satellites are rented out by the seconds and are not always used efficiently. General Electric used Six Sigma to make sure its satellites were being used 97% from 63%, adding $1.3 million a year in revenue. Former CEO Jack Welch, who drove Six Sigma deep into GE's culture before his retirement, counts himself among the cautious optimists that Six Sigma could work against terrorism.
But Things are not so simple. Even diehard fan like Michael Dell warns that it could take years for intelligence agencies to fully implement Six Sigma but adds, "It's possible." Fighting terrorism isn't really much different than marketing, Harry says. Marketing executives, like intelligence experts, must digest mountains of mostly useless data, analyse the fraction that is important and persuade decision makers to get the right product on the shelf just as consumer tastes are changing. At its best, marketing influences consumer tastes, which like terrorists, are a moving target.
Even after hearing about the billions saved at companies like GE, others have abandoned the Six Sigma effort in frustration. Companies that don't stick it out for at least five years soon revert and lose all progress. That doesn't bode well for the governments, where attention spans often don't survive election cycles. Also, there will be "a gantlet of pain" to get it implemented.
Experts say it won't work without an "obsessive, compulsive" leader behind it, someone like Jack Welch. "Who in the Government can claim to look similar", there lies the whole crux.
posted by GD at 12:22 PM
1 Comments:
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