how can six sigma be applied to educational institution??

Dear Ms.Sarika tyagi,
I have seen your letter in onesixsigma.com, I am also doing project in this field. I have collected some materials and preparing reviews. If you are interested for sharing our knowledge/resources/skills in this field particularly in pre-stage will be useful to both of us. If you are interested can you send a mail to my ID.
E-mail id is coevit@rediffmail.com
Thanks with regards
K.Manivannan

Hi Sarika,

In additon to what Shirish posted, my suggestion to you is to [b]Understand who is ur customer first [/b]& then go ahead.
Best way is to Go to your customer & ask for his/her meltdowns.
However, to make things easier to understand, following are some of the areas (Voice of customer) i can think of.

1. If ur customer is an [b]Institute/University[/b]
he may be trying to find ways to improve/define
a) How to hire the best in the industry?
b) How to retain them?
c) faculty is there but they are working in a monotonus way. Fresh ideas are not coming up.

2. If ur customer is [b]Faculty[/b]
a) Lack of facilities e.g. a good library
b) Skill upgradation
c) Monotonous work environment

3. If ur customer is [b]Student[/b]
a) High Student:Faculty ratio
b) Examination Sysytem
c) Recent Courses Unavailable
d) Poor Industry Interaction
e) Placements

Based on the VOC, define ur goal statement & get going.
Hope this helps u.

Sarika,

Six Sigma is a very powerful tool and can be used quite progressively in educational institutions as I see it. I am not sure what is you field of research but...here are some ideas that I think you can use Six Sigma for:

1) Improving the learning cycle of the class

2) Reducing the admoinistrative costs for a course

3) Improving the overall grades for the class

4) Seat utilization in the univesity

I am really not sure if this is where you would like to make use of six sigma ... but this is what I could think of.

Regards
Shishir Prasad
Black Belt
Shishir.prasad@wnsgs.com

To my knowledge, I do not know of any examples of six-sigma being applied in Education although I have not made a detailed study of this.

I believe that there is scope for applying six-sigma in Education. There is a reasonable amount of work already done on the application of TQM in Education/HE in the UK, USA and other countries. There is also much work done on the use of the EFQM model and the Baldridge model in Education. These two areas would be useful starting points from which to formulate a strategy for six-sigma in Education.

[quote:f0e2f60d8b="sarika tyagi"]Hello
everyone,
I am a graduate student at northeastern university and am doing a research on how to apply six sigma in educational institutions.
I dont have good concepts on six sigma as i have just started knowing about it. I also am not actually able to know how exactly i should apply six sigma in my research.
Can anyone guide me in this path??? I will be obliged.

Thanking you,
sarika tyagi.[/quote:f0e2f60d8b]

Hi,

Initially you need to look at how TQM has been applied to HE sector. There are some fundamental and critical differences bwteen TQM and Six Sigma. You need to establsih a process (admission entry, Payroll, etc.) within the HE sector and then think about how DMAIC methodology could be applied. There are over 50 papers publsihed on TQM applied to HE sector. Should you need any further help, contact me directly.

My e-mail id is: j.antony@gcal.ac.uk

good luck

Dr Antony

My advice would be to find a local institution or Company who do not have volume oriented processes alone. Spend some time with their Belts and see practically how they have created stability, and have converted customer issues into stable processes that deliver to expectations.
You should have a big advantage over many of us in that you are probably close to your "customers" and are therefore able to elicit good input data rather easily.

One way forward is to consider what it is the want to investigate e.g. what are your Y outputs you want to measure, and then consider what are the factors that influence the output(s). Consider Y= f(x) cascades etc.
Much of the Six Sigma methodology can then be applied from here etc.