Six Sigma in ship management?
We have received this enquiry here at onesixsigma and would like to open it up to the community:
"Pls advise if you know of Six Sigma methology being used by any Ship Owning company. Ship Management is a service industry, how do you see Six Sigma methodology being implemented in this industry. "
From Capt Prabhat Sharma
Six Sigma
Submitted by Prabhat Sharma (not verified) on 19 May, 2008 - 09:39.
Dear Sir,
Ship management is an outsourcing service. Ship owners contract their vessels to ship managers who supply Crew, Technical service, Purchasing service (stores spares for maintaining the ship), Accounting service and Commercial management too (gainfully employ the vessel). It is a labour intensive service. Ships staff are contracted and are not permanent employee. They are not in the employ of the ship management company. While Shipmanager supplies the crew for manning the ships, their employent contract is with the ship Owner. Once the crew is off the ship, they have no contract with any one and are free to go and find a job with a different owner or ship manager. This is in theory, in reality ship managers have a retention rate of about 80 to 85 pct. There is a great shortage of skilled seafarers and thus good ones are in great demand and a lot of pouching ius taking place. Salaries are rising by the month.
The duration of on board service at one time is between 3 to 6 months. The ship manager provides the tech supdt who is located ashore and he oversees the technical upkeep of the vessel. Similarly there is a Safety bloke, a Commercial bloke and many others who form a shipmanagement team in the Ship managers office.
Pls advise how you see Six Sigma, lean Sigma or any other methodology being used in such an environment.
Shipping by virtue takes ages to change. We still use a Charter Party form in dry cargo trade which is more than a century old and most if not all of it is deleted and boxes inserted with more suitable text while a more modern form from BIMCO is gathering dust.
Thanks and best regards
Capt Prabhat Sharma
General Manager
SeaQuestSandigan Ship Management, Geneva.
Six Sigma for Processes having data
Hi Prabhat,
As you might be knowing that you can implement six sigma in any process which is having data and measurement system. if you can more elaborate on the ship management process then only i can suggest you the way you can implement right process improvement technique as its not always six sigma you have to implement you can try with Lean, Business Performance management method (Strategy Maps, Balanced Scorecard, etc) or 7QC-7MP tools.....
regards