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1. Introduction
The “Make in India” programme, launched in India in September 2014 focusses on growth of the manufacturing sector in the country. Currently, manufacturing in India accounts for 16 per cent of the GDP (Shiralashetti, 2012). The programme envisions, increasing the GDP contribution of the manufacturing sector to 25 per cent by the year 2025, create huge pool of employment and self-employment opportunities; and thereby improving the economic health of the country. One of the important step manufacturers are following under this initiative is investment in methodologies and tools for process reengineering and quality improvement. India has a large micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MSME) base and accounts for 45 per cent industrial output (Javalgi and Todd, 2011; Katyal and Xaviour, 2015). The major challenges faced by these units are competition from national and global players and limited availability of monetary, personnel, technological and other recourses. In the demand-driven economy, the path of growth for the MSME units also relates to the adoption of practices that facilitate production of reliable and quality products. Several MSME’s have realised the situation and have started adopting quality management practices. This research presents an application of Six Sigma define-measure-analyse-improve-control (DMAIC) approach for improving the process quality of anodising stage of an amplifier production process. The case study presented here is based on real-life data of an amplifier production unit.
The firm is interested in reducing the process variation and defects. In this direction a quality improvement project is initiated. The amplifier production process adopted by the firm is designed in seven sub-processes (stages). It is planned to execute the project in stages considering one stage at a time for quality improvement using Six Sigma DMAIC methodology (Hamza, 2008). The project started with quality improvement efforts applied to the chassis preparation stage (Gupta et al., 2016). The study presents the implementation of Six Sigma programme to the anodising stage of the production process that follows the chassis preparation.
There are numerous approaches for quality management and improvement including statistical quality control, Six Sigma, zero defects, total quality management, quality circle, etc. Since inception in 1980s by Bill Smith at Motorola (Barney, 2002) for quality improvement of manufacturing operations, Six Sigma have been successfully used for quality improvement...