Motorola had it all. 57 years of solid growth including the production of the world’s first mobile phone in 1973. In the late 1980’s Motorola bought into the Six Sigma Scam. Six Sigma destroyed quality. Poor product quality resulted in contracts being lost. Motorola collapsed. From a peak of 150,000 employees in 1990, it was forced to sack 90% of its staff, to a become a shadow of its former self.
HOW the COLLAPSE STARTED
The fiasco started with a university drop out, Mr Bill Smith. Mr Smith’s only paper focuses on a molding process that happened to drift "as much a 1.5 sigma", because he tampered with it. Mr Smith claimed that tampering was necessary because his parts shrank up to 15% on cooling. 15% shrinkage sounds more like his wife’s sponge cakes than anything Motorola might manufacture.
Smith claimed that quality can be improved by making the requirement less strict. That is, Smith advocated widening specification limits to improve quality. This is the opposite of what should be done.
ANOTHER VIEW of Mr SMITH
Contrary to Mr Smith’s own article, a LinkedIn post from one of Smith’s buddies, claims differently. He claims Bill “had samples of 4” and “... What is the expansion of the normal using the t distribution for samples of 4? Approximately 1.5“.
Dr Wheeler comments: “Everything Gary Cone wrote is based on a complete misunderstanding of basic statistics." "Standardized T is less spread out than a normal distribution."
Mr Cone's claim of 1.5 sigma is as much nonsense as Smith and Harry's.
The DRIVER - NEED for QUALITY
In the late 1980’s Motorola CEO Bob Galvin recognized the need to improve quality, in order for Motorola to continue to grow. Bob was an MBA with an Arts degree. He knew nothing about quality. He was a prime target to be scammed. He turned to Mr Smith, and one of Smith’s buddies, Mikel Harry.
Harry claimed a PhD but lied about its subject area. Harry was not a statistician nor an engineer. His supposed PhD came from Mary Lou Foulton Teacher’s College. Like his buddies, he knew nothing about quality. He later admitted: “Six Sigma champions are con men”, "Six Sigma is just smoke and mirrors" and "Six Sigma is a snow job".
A drop out, a con man, and an Arts degree. What could possibly go wrong? Bob put the con man in charge. A fox guarding the hen house.
GALVIN's GOAL
Motorola’s 1987 Annual Report describes their goal of “achieving Six Sigma” by 1992. The 1991 Annual report shows a graphic of an out-of-control process with its mean shifting +/-1.5 sigma. It makes no mention that such wildly out-of-control processes are unpredictable. A quality disaster. It makes no mention that any amount of defects is possible from such a process, even if specification limits are widened, as dim witted Mr Smith advocated.
Every Six Sigma process is unpredictable. None of the Six Sigma literature recognizes this elementary fact. Any level of defects is possible from unpredictable processes.
EPILOGUE
In the target year of 1992 for “achieving Six Sigma”, Motorola’s Annual Report made no mention of Six Sigma. It made no mention of any goal having been achieved. Six Sigma isn’t mentioned at all by Motorola after 1998.
by Dr Tony Burns BE (Hon 1) PhD (Chem Eng)