scholarly journals Six Sigma in Urban Logistics Management—A Case Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4302
Author(s):  
Justyna Lemke ◽  
Kinga Kijewska ◽  
Stanisław Iwan ◽  
Tomasz Dudek

A city as a system that constitutes one of the most important areas of human activities. The significant role to fulfill their expectations pay the goods transport and deliveries. These issues are the subject of urban logistics. In broad terms, urban logistics may be construed as a number of processes focused on freight flows, which are completed in cities, including deliveries, supply, goods transfer, services, etc. Due to the different urban logistics stakeholders’ expectations, these systems generate many challenges for managers, especially in the context of city users’ needs and their quality of life. Today, there is a lack of broadened approach and methodology to support them from the processes’ efficiency perspective. To fulfill this gap, the purpose of this paper is to apply the Six Sigma method as a support in last mile delivery management. Six Sigma method plays important role in production systems processes management. However, it could be useful in much wider perspective, including transport and logistics processes. The Authors emphasize that the Six Sigma method could be efficient approach in the last mile delivery processes’ analysis in the context of their efficiency. It helps positioning the customer satisfaction level and quantify the delivery processes defects, related to the undelivered goods. Following that it could improve significantly the last mile delivery processes efficiency. The concept is illustrated by a sample evaluation of one of the urban logistics processes: completion of deliveries. To this end, urban logistics processes were defined. In particular, the delivery completion process was mapped, and the process client was defined along with their expectations. The defects that occurred in the process were identified and analyzed. A DPMO (Defect per Million Opportunities) indicator was established for three randomly selected months. In addition, a root cause analysis of errors was performed. The sigma level for the studied process ranged from 2.61 to 2.89. The factor that had the greatest impact on the number of defects defined as failed deliveries was customer’s absence. The obtained results indicate that the delivery process should be examined in more detail.

Mathematics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 13
Author(s):  
Eduardo Álvarez-Miranda ◽  
Jordi Pereira

E-commerce sales have led to a considerable increase in the demand for last-mile delivery companies, revealing several problems in their logistics processes. Among these problems, are not meeting delivery deadlines. For example, in Chile, the national consumer service (SERNAC) indicated that in 2018, late deliveries represented 23% of complaints in retail online sales and were the second most common reason for complaints. Some of the causes are incorrectly designed delivery zones because in many cases, these delivery zones do not account for the demographic growth of cities. The result is an imbalanced workload between different zones, which leads to some resources being idle while others fail to meet their workload in satisfactory conditions. The present work proposes a hybrid method for designing delivery zones with an objective based on improving the quality of express delivery services. The proposed method combines a preprocess based on the grouping of demand in areas according to the structure of the territory, a heuristic that generates multiple candidates for the distribution zones, and a mathematical model that combines the different distribution zones generated to obtain a final territorial design. To verify the applicability of the proposed method, a case study is considered based on the real situation of a Chilean courier company with low service fulfillment in its express deliveries. The results obtained from the computational experiments show the applicability of the method, highlighting the validity of the aggregation procedure and improvements in the results obtained using the hybrid method compared to the initial heuristic. The final solution improves the ability to meet the conditions associated with express deliveries, compared with the current situation, by 12 percentage points. The results also allow an indicative sample of the critical service factors of a company to be obtained, identifying the effects of possible changes in demand or service conditions.


2012 ◽  
Vol 622-623 ◽  
pp. 472-477
Author(s):  
Ali A. Karakhan ◽  
Angham E. Alsaffar

The aims of this study are to measure the defect rate and analyze the problems of production of ready concrete mixture plant by using Six Sigma methodology which is a business strategy for operations improvement depending basically on the application of its sub-methodology DMAIC improvement cycle and the basic statistical tools where the process sigma level of concrete production in the case study was 2.41 σ.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 1309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdur Rahman ◽  
Salaha Uddin Chowdhury Shaju ◽  
Sharan Kumar Sarkar ◽  
Mohammad Zahed Hashem ◽  
S. M. Kamrul Hasan ◽  
...  

This paper demonstrates the empirical application of Six Sigma and Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control (DMAIC) methodology to reduce product defects within a garments manufacturing organization in Bangladesh which follows the DMAIC methodology to investigate defects, root causes and provide a solution to eliminate these defects. The analysis from employing Six Sigma and DMAIC indicated that the broken stitch and open seam influenced the number of defective products. Design of experiments (DOE) and the analysis of variance (ANOVA) techniques were combined to statistically determine the correlation of the broken stitch and open seam with defects as well as to define their optimum values needed to eliminate the defects. Thus, a reduction of about 35% in the garments defect was achieved, which helped the organization studied to reduce its defects and thus improve its Sigma level from 1.7 to 3.4.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-80
Author(s):  
Felisia Sutomo

Quality is one of the key success factors to achieve competitive advantage. When companies succeeded to improve quality of the service or product given, they will have the possibility to increase their market share and eventually their profit. One of the methods to increase quality is by doing six sigma analysis that focuses on the cause of the problem. The research is done in PT Cemara Agung, one of textile industries in Indonesia. Research method used is descriptive study. Literature study, observations, and interviews has been done in order to search root cause and generate recommendations. The analysis shows that almost fifty percent of the main cause in defect products is happened to the weaving department, which then cause the profit of the company decreased as an impact of the spoilage produced. By doing six sigma analysis and finding recommendations to resolve the problems, the company is expected to be able to reduce the quality cost, increase the quality and eventually increase the profit of the company.    


Author(s):  
Darshak A. Desai ◽  
Aurangzeb Javed Ahmed Shaikh

PurposeThis paper, a case study, aims to illustrate the application of Six Sigma in a small-scale ceramic manufacturing industry. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the empirical application of DMAIC methodology to reduce failure rate at high voltage (HV) testing of one of the most critical products, insulator.Design/methodology/approachThe case study is based on primary data collected from a real-life situation prevailing in the industry. The case study methodology adopted here is at one small-scale unit wherein the authors have applied DMAIC methodology and observed and recorded the improvement results, especially, reduction in failure rate at HV testing of insulator and, thus, increase in Sigma level.FindingsThe results found after implementation of the solutions are very significant. The rejection percentage has been reduced from 0.5 to 0.1 percent and consequently the Sigma level has been improved from 4.4 to 5.0.Research limitations/implicationsThis success story can be a guiding roadmap for other such industries to successfully implement Six Sigma to improve quality, productivity and profitability.Practical implicationsThis case study will serve as one of the resource bases for the industries which have till not implemented Six Sigma and benefited from the same.Social implicationsImproved quality and productivity leads to better economy. This case will help industries to serve the society with better economy with improved quality and productivity.Originality/valueThough ceramic industries in India are having enormous potential for growth, majority of them, especially, small and medium industries are either not aware of or not implementing Six Sigma to reap its multidimensional benefits of improving quality, productivity and profitability. This study highlights the benefits reaped by small-scale ceramic manufacturing industry opening up the avenues for its application at other such organizations.


IEEE Access ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
Chia-Nan Wang ◽  
Ngoc-Ai-Thy Nguyen ◽  
Thanh-Tuan Dang ◽  
Hsien-Pin Hsu

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 883-908
Author(s):  
Na Li ◽  
Chad Matthew Laux ◽  
Jiju Antony

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to use a practical case study approach to demonstrate the power to use lean Six Sigma (LSS) to improve service process in a higher education institution (HEI). The paper also illustrated the barriers and challenges met and lessons learnt for the LSS adoption in this HEI. Design/methodology/approach Prior to the study, extensive literature review was conducted to understand various aspects of LSS in HE industry. The authors use a single descriptive case study as methodology to explain how DMAIC was applied within a HEI environment. Findings In this LSS case study, the team found HEI service process contains a large human behavior component, which dramatically increases the unpredictability of the entire service delivery process and increases the complexity of the process and the ability of the improvement team to identify the root cause. This case study demonstrates the numerous challenges will occur in working with the intangible factors that are both hard to recognize, quantify and rarely tracked by organization. Practical implications During the research, the pre-award service process was studied, data were recorded and various statistical tool and techniques were used to discover and resolve the root cause. The lessons learnt of the LSS adoption in this service process in HEI and the problems encountered were all recorded in this study, which will be helpful for future research in HEI industry. Originality/value From the literature review, LSS has been widely adopted in manufacturing industry, increased adoption in service, but there has been limited academic research about the implementation in nonprofit, service sectors, particular to higher education industry. The major benefit of implementation LSS in both manufacturing and service is considerable improvement to the bottom line. However, in this HEI case study, it has opened up the direction to implement LSS to better serve your customer as ultimate mission instead of financial gains.


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