Roger Cliffe is the Quality Director at Vodafone. Here he talks to improvementandinnovation.

com about his role in launching and supporting Six Sigma in the emerging markets within the EMAPA regions for the Vodafone Group.

Roger Cliffe Roger joined Vodafone in 2002. His previous work in Quality Improvement covers the financial services, steel, aerospace and chemical industries in the USA, Japan and Europe. He is a frequent speaker at international Quality Conferences. He is a fellow of the IQA, has been a Senior Assessor for the European and British Quality Awards for 10 years and a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. He is also a member of the Board of the British Quality Foundation and Midlands Excellence. He is a keen long distance cyclist, has a wife, three children and a classic car and now lives in Solihull. _________________________________ IMPROVEMENTANDINNOVATION.COM: What does Six Sigma mean to Vodafone? Roger Cliffe: Six Sigma is the internal brand which we use for all of our business improvement activities. It contains the standard Six Sigma methodology, structure, governance, disciplines, and competencies, but we also use elements of Lean, Kaizen, Process Improvement and Process Management. As an organisation, we have been doing Six Sigma now for about 2 and a half years, UK Wide. These business and process improvement methods are being extended across the entire company. What led you to Six Sigma?

We thought long and hard about the style and the approach to business improvement as well as how we would brand it, and how we would govern it. We did some pilot work using some Black Belts; not a full programme, but some projects using the Six Sigma methodology were introduced into one of our Business Units. Six Sigma was attractive to us because it enabled us to hit the key parts of the process with laser sharp attention and we produced some real and actual results. Things that matter to an organisation such as Vodafone are how to get tangible, pragmatic results that really have a bearing on the way the business operates. The organisation has little patience for long term culture change initiatives that dont really yield any benefits to the bottom line. Of course, we have had a cultural change as a result of Six Sigma but the main reason for adopting it is simply that it is a better way of doing business improvement than we had ever been able to do before. Thats the main driver the fact that its tangible, focused and disciplined which is what Vodafone really needed. "Six Sigma... is a better way of doing business improvement than we had ever been able to do before" Given that there hasnt been this kind of initiative before at Vodafone, what challenges have you faced in implementing Six Sigma? The reason that there hasnt been anything like this before is that Vodafone as an organisation has been changing and evolving so rapidly, with new products, new services, whole new technologies put in place in a relatively short space of time. The pace of change is phenomenal. So in the organisation there have been reservations about putting anything in that might slow that development cycle and process. In reality, doing Six Sigma properly will actually improve your time to market, so its the type of approach which we thought would best match our organisation. Vodafone has historically harvested a relatively immature process environment, in comparison to other large manufacturing companies. We have ISO 9000: 2000 and initiatives to meet those requirements, but we hadnt really got a systematic method for improving our business. Process improvement was previously unstructured, but now Six Sigma has added that structure, and it really has given us some spectacular results over the last 2 years. We are getting financial benefits of over half a million per Black Belt project, so we are getting some really spectacular

savings. As a result, we are looking now at building up the number of Black Belts to 80, with 350 to 400 Green Belts. We target five projects in two years per Black Belt. The first project a Black Belt does is called a nursery project, and is always a single project. Thereafter black belts are allowed to do more than one project at a time. They also supervise GB projects and they run WOW (War on Waste) workshops, which are our version of GE Workout processes. 1.1 The concept of Quality
The concept of Quality is very similar to the concept of beautiful or good. It is very difficult to define and one definition can be the opposite of another. At the same time, we must deal with reason and attempt to define clearly what we are hoping to achieve in the study of this topic. According to some of the major thinkers on Quality, its presence is hardly ever acknowledged but its absence is always noted. However, if we were to ignore Quality as if it never existed, it would be possible to make a strong case against such an omission. All that would need to be done is to ask if anything would be different without Quality. The answer would undeniably be - yes, things would be very different. The presence of Quality is what makes fine arts, music, paintings, aesthetics in architecture, of the goods we use and the sort of life we lead, the environment, the interaction we have with our family, colleagues, business partners and the wider community - all experiences we enjoy or from which we benefit in some way. If we removed Quality from all this, the experience of life would be very different. One of the definitions of the word Quality could be "worth". Once we accept that, we are moving along the path towards the greater paradigm. We see that logically, our lives would be very different if the concept of Quality did not exist. Empirically, Quality is seen in a good essay, a pleasant and efficient business transaction. A visit to the supermarket from where we get everything that meets our expectations indicates the presence of Quality. If we had come across items that were out of date, damaged or too expensive, we would view them to be shortcomings that we noticed in our transaction. We see then that Quality is a concept beyond the systems that we will talk about later in this subject. It remains a concept, a shapeless yet all-pervading understanding of how things are when they are properly aligned and we experience them smoothly, without any negative reactions to our experience. This brings us to think that Quality is only subjective - each person has his or her own ways of measuring it and no objective ways of defining or measuring if it exists. Yet, we must not mystify this subject; in the study of Quality you will come across objective measurements that are defined by different thinkers on the topic. We must accept that there are ways of improving everything that we do. We, as humans, have been doing this from the dawn of time. That is what

brings us from the caves to the comfort of our houses and bettering our role in life. This includes, of course, the improvements in our ways of waging war and causing extensive harm to the "enemy" while restricting harm to ourselves as much as possible. This extends to our awareness of the damage to the environment, the cost to society of operations of corporations, of building roads, air and sea ports, setting up production plants in different locations and the impact of doing so on the environment, wildlife and society. Our perceptions of Quality drive this improvement in our thinking just as much as our drive for economic benefits. In literature, Quality is sometimes talked about as "what the customer wants". The customer is then defined as "internal" (someone who is within the area of process, the one who experiences whatever is done immediately when it is done) and "external" (someone who, typically, buys what is done or receives it as a final output). This makes everybody who interacts with you a customer, even if it is a colleague. We are still far from a formal and clear definition of Quality. Pirsig (1999, p. 251) defines Quality as "... the response of an organism to its environment." He describes the use of analogues to describe the environment for an organism as "Quality" because, he says, these definitions are used by the organism as experiences to make and progressively develop its state of existence. This reflects what we had discussed earlier. Quality becomes all-pervading, absolute. It drives our way of being and living. There is much more to be explored in understanding Quality. That is like setting out on a journey and lies beyond the parameters of the current study guide. However, we encourage you to continue that exploration on your own and discover in its course the various traits of Quality in various contexts. For our present context, let us read the following quote, based on the ancient Chinese text Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu. The quality that can be defined is not the Absolute Quality. The names that can be given to it are not Absolute names. It is the origin of heaven and earth. When named it is the mother of all things. Quality [ romantic Quality ] and its manifestations [ classic Quality ] are in their nature the same. It is given different names [ subjects and objects ] when it becomes classically manifest. Romantic quality and classic quality together may be called the "mystic". Reaching from mystery into deeper mystery , it is the gate to the secret of all life. Quality is all-pervading. And its use is inexhaustible!

Fathomless! Like the fountainhead of all things ... Crystal clear like water it seems to remain. I do not know whose Son it is. An image of what existed before God. ... That is why it is called elusive Meet it and you do not see its face Follow it and you do not see its back ... From Pirsig R. 1999, pp. 253-254 We see from this the universal nature of Quality. We see it in ancient and modern works of architecture, literature, science - our wider experience of life. The construct of Quality is with the person who is doing something that he cares for. Because he cares, he assures the Quality of his output. The breakdown of Quality occurs when the link between care and output is broken. If he does not care for what he does, he does not care about the Quality of his output. We see here the link between the internal and external traits of Quality. We see also the motive to improve what we do. In later chapters, we will repeatedly come across this concept of improvement incrementally in the pursuit of Quality. Fundamental to the impetus to improve is the realisation that something is not at its best possible stage. This acceptance is at the heart of Quality because it starts the journey towards knowledge, the journey of Total Quality, continuous improvement in ISO 9000, the criteria for external and internal focus in Malcolm Baldridge award. The link between the internal and external focus is crucial because it is the link between the maker, or doer, and the consumer. The link, in other words, between the producer and the customer. This is the essence of the study of this subject. If the producer is producing something that he does not care about, except in revenue and profit terms, there is a breakdown of Quality. The care for the customer, who is the final user of the product, is not kept in focus in the production process, except in just meeting her needs so that she actually buys the product. We will see that Quality literature talks about more than meeting customer needs, even while keeping them at the centre of the production function. From the above, it may be felt that the corporate focus being on the customer is justified for the long term success of business. Some thought would clarify that the focus on the internal and external is not only corporate but also individual. In a business sense, this is the aligning of corporate goals with individual goals.

The current Quality drive has brought many areas of expertise together. We see, for example, operations research, project management, economics, statistics, systems analysis, various branches of engineering, marketing, general and strategic management, financial management, and many others coming together to achieve the best output for the organisation. The aim of the drive to improve and sustain Quality is primarily to improve business performance (through reducing poor quality and related costs) and to develop a conducive corporate culture to do this

1.2.1 Measuring Quality and performance

To be able to have a tangible effect on improving business performance, Quality strategy must determine what is being done and then suggest ways of bettering it. This involves different methods of measuring performance. Some of these methods are:
y y y y y

measurement against internal standards measurement against customer needs business performance measurements in financial terms benchmarking internally and externally to set best standards Quality measurements that are holistic and seek determining of total performance.

We will now briefly consider each of these methods and outline what they imply.
y

Internal standards: The elements that these would typically look at include the direct cost of maintaining quality: o warranty o cost of failure to perform to specifications o costs of setting up and maintaining measures to prevent failure o inspection costs o on time delivery o success of first performance o value added o manpower costs, including cost of not having suitable personnel o inventory levels and turnover o profit from performance. Customer needs: The most often used methods of measuring customer satisfaction are to measure complaints and claims. There is a fundamental problem with this system of measurement because it is widely reported that only 4% of dissatisfied customers actually take the trouble to complain (see for example Bergman and Klefsjo 1994, p. 287). However, each dissatisfied customer will speak to 11 others about his experience, while a satisfied customer speaks to only three (this in itself is a measure of how we have come to expect Quality in our daily dealings). The implication of all this is to actually carry out customer focused studies to get a true picture of customer sentiment. Business performance: The basics of measuring business performance are to determine corporate against set goals. In measuring performance against goals, it is important to take into

account factors like changes in the market, the business performing its functions as designed, the response to changing market needs, the time taken to respond to such changes, and the outcomes, measured both in financial and market share terms. Key to studying business performance is to include the identification and study of any failures to improve future performance. The measuring function should include input from the customers, employees, business partners (suppliers, sub-contractors), as well as financial and non-financial returns. Benchmarking: The aim of benchmarking should be to improve performance and enhance competitive advantage through a process of identifying ways to improve processes. This can lead to identifying new, or better use of, technology or management techniques. The most important areas of benchmarking are to identify the right areas to benchmark, the right organisations/areas, define the questions to which answers are sought, and define ways of recording, analysing and implementing the information obtained. For any benchmarking effort to be successful, the commitment of everyone from senior management to the front line workers to implement the lessons learnt and improve the processes is critical. The essential outcome from benchmarking will often be some desired change to the existing situation. This change can attract resistance from within the organisation. Good communication of the intentions, processes and benefits will help in adoption of the change. Quality measurements: This is probably the most difficult to measure because it is meant to be a measure of all activities carried out by the organisation, including the impact on the community within which the organisation performs. Various Quality philosophies have their own systems of measurement ranging from the readily quantifiable systems of ISO 9000 to more holistic and probing systems like TQM, Six Sigma and the Malcolm Baldridge award. The differences emerge because of the roots of Quality systems, which are traced to engineering processes. The further the philosophy has moved to conceptual recognition of Quality, as discussed in the first half of this chapter, the more probing are the measurements. Broadly, the measurements reflect the Quality system that is implemented, the extent and formality of the system in the organisation, and the purpose to which the outcome of the measurement will be put.