Six Sigma: Its implementation

in Ford’s facility management

and maintenance functions
Received (in revised form): 1st December 2003

Robert Holtz
is the Maintenance Planning Manager for Ford Land and a Six Sigma Black Belt. He
holds a BA in Logistics Management from Michigan State University and an MSE in
Industrial Manufacturing & Systems Engineering from the University of Michigan. Since
his Ford career began in 1991, Robert has held positions ranging from Safety Engineer
to Project Manager, Maintenance Engineer, Systems Implementation Engineer,
Financial Analyst and Facility Planner. Robert became a Six Sigma Black Belt in 2000
and has led a variety of facility-related projects. In 2002, he became the Maintenance
Planning Manager responsible for standardising and improving operating processes,
support systems, performance reporting and maintenance engineering for an
organisation of 80 salaried and 860 hourly paid employees working in more than
60 facilities.

Paul Campbell
was recently named Director of Land Acquisition and Six Sigma for the Wexford
Development Group, a division of Wexford Homes, a regional builder and developer in
southeast Michigan. He was previously Ford Land’s Six Sigma Deployment Director
and is a Six Sigma Master Black Belt. He has published other papers on Six Sigma
and is a frequent conference speaker on the application of Six Sigma in Corporate
Real Estate and Facility Management and construction. After completing his BS in Civil
Engineering at Michigan State University, he worked in the highway construction
industry for several years before returning for his MBA. His 16+ years at Ford included
positions in Production Purchasing, Engineering Sales and Strategic Planning, prior to
joining Ford Land in 1995. He has managed numerous projects/programmes, including
a ‘Big 3’ manufacturing facility management benchmarking study and development of
the corporate roof management programme. He became a Six Sigma Black Belt in
2000 and led numerous projects. In 2002, Paul became a Master Black Belt and Ford
Land’s Six Sigma Deployment Director, where he was responsible for all aspects of
Ford Land’s Six Sigma strategy, training and integration.

Abstract
If readers have picked up any of a number of business
Robert W. Holtz periodicals within the past five years, they have probably heard
Manager, Maintenance Planning
Ford Land
of Six Sigma. They have read about it or heard someone talking
21500 Oakwood Blvd about the great successes that resulted from applying Six
Facilities Services Building, Room 132
Dearborn, MI 48124-4091, USA
Sigma. The intent of this paper is not to teach the reader all
Tel: +1 313 337 9700 there is to know about Six Sigma. Instead, it aims to provide a
Fax: +1 313 337 9700
E-mail: rholtz@ford.com
brief overview of Six Sigma (for anyone not familiar with it),
explain how Ford Motor Company has approached its
Paul A. Campbell
Director of Land Acquisition & Six
implementation and how it has been applied in facility
Sigma management and maintenance activities.
Wexford Development Group
135 Keveling Drive
Saline, MI 48176, USA
Tel: +1 734 429 5300
Fax: +1 734 429 3358
Keywords:
E-mail: pcampbell@wexfordhomes.com Six Sigma, process, improvement, maintenance process, facility process

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 Six Sigma

SIX SIGMA
Developed at Motorola in the 1980s and popularised by General
Electric and others in the 1990s, Six Sigma is a data-driven
approach to improving virtually any type of process. It has been
applied successfully in a broad range of industries and disciplines
— both manufacturing and business settings — at companies of all
sizes. Because of this versatility and the fact that all companies rely
on processes, Six Sigma continues to grow in popularity.
What is Six Sigma? The Six Sigma methodology has both tactical and strategic
applications. Tactically, Six Sigma is a powerful tool for improving
virtually any process not performing to the desired level. Using
individuals called Green Belts, Black Belts or Master Black Belts,
highly trained in the tools and principles of Six Sigma,
organisations can focus resources on underperforming processes to
achieve high-leverage results. It is an end to end process
improvement methodology, which uses objective data — rather
than opinions, emotions or corporate politics — to identify sources
of excess process-variation so that it can be eliminated. Reducing
variation leads directly to improving the consistency of process
performance and therefore its output. The subject process (the
process being improved) could be anything from an assembly line
to a business process — such as accounts receivable, lease
management and equipment maintenance.
Using a disciplined approach to process improvement, a team of
stakeholders in the subject process systematically applies what Six
Sigma calls DMAIC (an acronym for):

— Define: Clearly understand and state the problem, then capture

the expertise of the team in theorising what might be causing the
process variation.
— Measure: Collect reliable, objective data on the potential causes
of variation.
— Analyse: Study the data using graphical and/or statistical
analysis tools to isolate the ‘critical few’ causes of variation.
— Improve: Using the team’s expertise, develop and implement
improvement actions to address the primary cause(s) of
variation.
— Control: Put in place ongoing measures to monitor both the
process output and the factors that influence output variation,
thus ensuring that if the process begins to wander, action can be
taken quickly — before the process gets out of control (see
Figure 1).

Strategically, Six Sigma serves as a means for significant, long-term

cultural change throughout an organisation. Once a critical mass of
Six Sigma practitioners (and convinced observers) is reached, the
principles and tools can be applied to virtually any problem or
strategic decision faced by the organisation. Large companies,
including Ford, are now using the principles of Six Sigma to

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Holtz and Campbell

Figure 1: DMAIC Model

develop corporate business plans. This is the over-arching objective

of Six Sigma — to change the way an organisation thinks about
everything it does: its processes, its services, its business.
One of the strengths of Six Sigma is that these strategic
applications flow directly to the tactical. An organisational business
plan developed using these principles will naturally lead to
individual projects to improve specific processes that have the
greatest impact for the company. These two aspects combine to be
a powerful catalyst for cultural change and provide direct line of
sight from an individual’s efforts, all the way up to major corporate
objectives.

SIX SIGMA AT FORD AND FORD LAND

Ford Motor Company began wide-scale pursuit of Six Sigma in
Six Sigma early 2000. Unlike prior corporate initiatives, Six Sigma was
deployment at Ford deployed in every corner of the company worldwide — not just in
manufacturing, but also in purchasing, product development,
human resources, information technology and even in facilities
management and corporate real estate.
For the first three years, Ford focused its Six Sigma efforts
primarily on improving customer satisfaction (rather than only cost
reduction) and still managed to save roughly $675m worldwide.
More than half of that came in 2002. In 2003, Ford began to
accelerate Six Sigma’s cost saving capability by nearly doubling the
savings objective from 2002. In North America, Ford exceeded its
2003 year-end objective by mid-year (over $300m), with most
savings coming from the business functions. Ford’s total savings
from Six Sigma now exceed $1bn.
At Ford Land, Ford’s corporate real estate group, Six Sigma is
flourishing as well. The business plan is now developed using core

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 Six Sigma

Six Sigma principles. And by mid-year the year-end savings

objective had already been exceeded by over 200 per cent, with over
$7m in hard-dollar, profit-before-tax savings (and $16m including
tax savings). More and more applications are being found for Six
Sigma in the facility management and corporate real estate
functions.
Specific projects have included: addressing the office move
process, building/energy shut-down, lease reconciliation, utility
payments, taxes and depreciation and numerous building and
equipment maintenance-related processes.

SIX SIGMA IN FACILITY MANAGEMENT AND MAINTENANCE

Ford Land has applied Six Sigma to a number of maintenance-
How is Six Sigma related problems including:
used in
maintenance? — delays in the acquisition of materials
— occurrence of payroll errors for maintenance employees
— misclassification of work orders in MAXIMO (the computerised
maintenance management system)
— measurement of maintenance activity
— time delay in the completion of specific types of work orders.

Six Sigma methodology is also used to address maintenance actions

directly. Different project perspectives are used to provide the
benefit of focus, while allowing breadth in approach. These
perspectives include:

— minimise breakdowns — minimising the occurrence of

unscheduled maintenance (UM) by focusing on equipment class,
system, customer operation or facility
— minimise labour—optimising preventative maintenance (PM)
labour by focusing on an equipment class, job plan and facility
or trade group
— maximise equipment effectiveness — maximising equipment
operational effectiveness by focusing on equipment class,
customer operation, facility or system
— maximise customer satisfaction — maximising the qualitative
‘customer satisfaction’ of occupancy by focusing on equipment
classes, systems, facilities or customer expectations.

Six Sigma also helps to accelerate the organisational learning

necessary to create critical mass to change underlying performance
assumptions. Multiple teams focusing on similar problems from
different perspectives introduce a competitive, yet cooperative
environment, fostering creativity in finding solutions. These teams
share their experiences, approaches and even the raw datasets used
to determine process improvements, leading to more rapid
replication of improvements across a wider range of
opportunities.

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Holtz and Campbell

Ford Land has examined several different equipment classes

using at least one of the perspectives listed above. The first Six
Sigma project on any equipment class generally has the greatest
positive operational impact. Subsequent projects produce
incremental improvements. The approach has been to add breadth
to the Six Sigma focus, studying additional equipment classes. The
intent is to realise the biggest improvements first, and return as time
permits to focus on the incremental opportunities.

DEFINING THE PROBLEM

One recent project focused on minimising UM labour on
Define the environmental chambers. An environmental chamber is a test
maintenance problem enclosure where extreme temperatures and/or humidity can be
to focus on tightly controlled. They range from the size of a breadbox to the
size of a two-car garage. Ford Motor Company uses them to test
the performance of parts and vehicles across wide environmental
extremes.
The company was led to this opportunity after studying
maintenance types and hours across all equipment classes.
Although environmental chambers ranked fifth in total maintenance
hours, they had a high proportion of UM hours (51.6 per cent),
making them a prime candidate for improvement. A Six Sigma
Team was formed to address the problem. Led by a Ford Land Six
Sigma Black Belt, the team included the equipment owner
(customer), the trades who performed maintenance work on the
equipment, the supervisors of the trades and — as always — a
financial analyst. The initial scope of the project included all 350
environmental chambers in the Research & Engineering Campus
(about 60 buildings).
A fundamental concept of Six Sigma is the identification of
process output characteristic(s) that are critical to quality (CTQ)
from the perspective of the customer. For this project the CTQs
included:

— minimised equipment downtime

— flexibility in PM scheduling
— maximised operational effectiveness of the equipment.

For the purposes of this project, the team defined a defect as ‘an
hour of labour spent performing UM on an environmental
chamber’. They used various Six Sigma tools and principles, to
ensure their understanding of the problem, including: a fishbone
diagram to brainstorm potential failures (Figure 2); a SIPOC
(suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, customers) diagram to identify
contributing inputs and affected outputs; a high-level process map
for understanding the overall process and context in which this
maintenance was conducted; and a cause and effect matrix to
quantify the impact of inputs to customer CTQs. The outcome was
a better team understanding of the overall maintenance process and

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 Six Sigma

Materials People Measurements

Solenoid Reliability Resource Availability

Work Type (UM, PM, CM)

Refrigerant Conversions Resource Type
Equipment Categorisation

ENVR Operator WO Descriptions

Call Center Web Tracker vs. Maximo

M&O Supervisor WO Submission Type

Unscheduled Maintenance Hours

Gas Reliability of Components PM Procedures

Location of Machine Work Order Issuance

Age of Components Machine Scheduling

Electrical
Machine Capabilities Billing Process

Maintenance of Components Work Order Dispersal

Water

Air Quality

Environment Machinery Methods

Figure 2: Environmental chamber fishbone diagram

a firm understanding of the problem. Collectively, the team

hypothesised that the two most likely factors influencing
maintenance effectiveness were the availability of the equipment for
PM and the availability of the proper tradespeople to perform that
maintenance.

MEASURING THE PROBLEM

From Ford Land’s MAXIMO maintenance system, the team
obtained a dataset of all work orders for environmental chambers
Measure the size of including a brief description of work requested and characteristics
the problem such as: work type, location, priority, trades utilised and labour
hours to perform. The dataset included 985 work orders totalling
4,108 hours of total maintenance.
A common metric used in Six Sigma is DPMO (defects per
million opportunities). Using the team’s definitions for a Defect (an
hour of labour spent performing UM on the equipment) and
Opportunity (an hour of labour spent performing any type of
maintenance on the equipment), the team identified the relative
proportion of UM to total maintenance hours as the core metric
for the project. This resulted in a DPMO of 516,066. Using the
appropriate conversion table, the measured DPMO equates to a
sigma value of 1.45. The ‘sigma value’ of a process is a measure of
process variation relative to specification limit(s).

ANALYSING THE DATA

The team used both graphical and statistical tools to analyse the
data. A pareto chart (ranked histogram) of the data stratified by

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Holtz and Campbell

1600
1345
1400
1200
984

Labour Hours
1000
800
600 526

400
200 44 30
0
B A C D E
Building

Figure 3: Total hours of maintenance for environmental chambers by building

40
32.8
35 Unscheduled Maintenance

30 Preventative Maintenance
Labour Hours

25
20
15
10
3.5 3.8
5
0.0
0
A B
Building

Figure 4: Average maintenance labour hours per environmental chamber by maintenance type and by building

building allowed the team to identify which buildings had the most
Analyse the data and total maintenance hours. The team decided to reduce their scope
re-scope the project and focus in on the top two buildings (Buildings B and A), because
they provided the greatest opportunity for improvement (Figure 3).
The data from those two buildings were then analysed to
compare the average UM and PM labour hours per piece of
equipment in the two buildings. While the two buildings had similar
total maintenance labour hours, Building B had significantly more
environmental chambers. The analysis showed that Building B
averaged 3.5 UM hours per environmental chamber while Building
A averaged 32.8 UM hours (Figure 4). Another finding was that no
PM was being performed on the environmental chambers in
Building A, while 3.8 hours of PM were performed annually on the
chambers in Building B.
Using their improved understanding of the problem, the team re-
scoped the project and re-stated the problem statement to: ‘46 per
cent (984 hours) of UM hours were spent on 26 machines located
in Building A’.
The team collected additional information from the equipment
owner, the customer and the maintenance planner responsible for

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 Six Sigma

scheduling maintenance activities. This analysis led the team to four

primary causes of defects.

1. PM plans were insufficient for the 26 pieces of equipment. Some

equipment was not included in the PM plan, and PMs on other
chambers had been skipped at the customer’s request owing to
scheduling conflicts.
2. Maintenance trades were not available at times coinciding with
when the equipment was available for PMs.
Identify causes of 3. Remanufactured replacement parts often used to minimise repair
defects and solutions cost proved not as reliable as expected, and resulted in recurring
to the causes problems.
4. Equipment pushed beyond its design capabilities (owing to
customers’ testing requirements) caused repetitive issues with
compressors.

IMPROVING THE PROCESS

After collecting data on the problem, analysing and using the data
to identify four primary causes of UM for environmental chambers,
the team had a clear understanding of the primary causes of the
process variation. Then they brainstormed again to identify specific
improvements for the issues they had identified.

1. To address the insufficient PM plans, the team sought help to

create specialised PM job plans for each of the 26 chambers. The
issue of skipped PMs was addressed by establishing a more
flexible scheduling methodology, to accommodate the customer’s
needs. The customer gained the control needed, and the PMs
were scheduled far enough in advance to allow for proper
planning.
2. Availability of trades when PMs are due was addressed by
capitalising on a side benefit of Six Sigma. The customer, trades
and trade supervision significantly improved their
communication and understanding of their respective roles,
responsibilities and expectations. When a PM is requested,
maintenance personnel work directly with the customer to
ensure trades are available. No formal process changes were
required, just an enhanced customer relationship.
3. Procurement of remanufactured parts was beyond the scope of
this project, but the team decided to continue tracking the
occurrences and pursue an improvement strategy with the
purchasing organisation if the issues continued.
4. Testing beyond chamber design capabilities would require
equipment-specific and/or test-specific solutions, ranging from
re-engineering or updating equipment to outsourcing specific
tests. The team decided not to redesign the test facility but
instead to communicate the current system capabilities better to
the users of the equipment and continue to track breakdowns. If

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Holtz and Campbell

the issue continued to be a problem, a future Six Sigma Team

would have the necessary data to address the issue.

CONTROLLING THE PROCESS

The UM labour hours on 26 environmental chambers included in
the scope of this project were tracked for six months, and the
occurrence of UM has decreased by about 10 per cent month on
month. The projected improvements indicate: DPMO will fall from
Make sure it doesn’t 516,066 to 154,820 (a 70 per cent improvement), the sigma value
happen again! will increase from 1.45 to 2.5, and Ford Motor Company will save
$60,000 in direct maintenance labour. Additionally, the customer
has experienced increased equipment uptime and been better able to
utilise their chambers. Performance will continue to be tracked
through a maintenance operations report which shows UM
information across all equipment classes.

BRIEF REVIEW
This project is one of several that have been undertaken in Ford
Land’s maintenance organisation. Other maintenance-focused Six
Sigma projects conducted have saved $7,500 annually in the PM of
vehicle lifts and $40,000 annually in the UM of exhaust fans. Along
with total UM labour, projects are being planned for equipment
classes around factors such as total maintenance labour, total PM
labour and average labour per work order. Customer survey data
are also being used to scope projects around work environment
issues such as air quality, temperature and lighting.
Most salaried employees have completed Green Belt Training
and are applying Six Sigma principles to projects and daily work.
To accelerate further the benefits of using the DMAIC
methodology, the company is in the process of training its hourly
paid workforce as Six Sigma Green Belts. This will help to identify
other problems and projects that affect customers. Their
participation in solving those problems issues has proved extremely
valuable.
Six Sigma is a powerful process improvement methodology which
uses data to solve problems. Maintenance activities have
traditionally been ripe with opportunities for improvement, thus the
marriage of Six Sigma and maintenance is accelerating the
company’s rate of improvement. The company is leveraging both
the strategic and tactical benefits of Six Sigma in its pursuit of
facility management excellence. Using data to focus on issues and
apply resources and using statistical tools to optimise process
improvements allows Ford Land to apply its efforts where they
have the greatest impact on customers and the bottom line.

MORE INFORMATION
For more information on Six Sigma, visit www.isixsigma.com, a
source for various Six Sigma-related information, www.asq.org (the

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 Six Sigma

American Society for Quality) or enter the expression ‘Six

Sigma’+‘Facility Management’ into the search field of any good
Internet search engine, such as www.google.com. It is a very
popular topic. There are also numerous consulting firms available
to assist companies with organisational assessments and Six Sigma
implementation. Ford used the Six Sigma Academy located in
Scottsdale, Arizona. Their web address is www.6-sigma.com

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