|
|
Six Sigma is a standard in which company’s efforts are aimed to improve business performance and customer satisfaction. It uses facts and data to illuminate waste variation and activities that don’t add value. In short, Six Sigma is mainly quality control. Raytheon is a leading commercial, defense electronics, and aviation company; which has many locations across the United States and 70 locations world wide. In order to improve quality while tracking cost Raytheon decided on January 2000 to implement a Program called “Raytheon Six Sigma”. Before Raytheon Six Sigma, Raytheon had reduced its earnings expectations for 1999 and 2000. Charges amount to $638 million pre-tax that was recorded in 1999, and an additional $30 million in 2000. Daniel P. Burnhan, Raytheon chairman and chief executive officer said, “we are frustrated with this performance, but I can assure you we have dug deeply to understand the issues and are dealing with the problems. We’ve also come to the conclusion that fundamental changes are taking place in our business and in the industry, and as a result we are changing some key assumptions in our business model to arrive at a new baseline for Raytheon that is fact-based and realistic”.******* He also explained, “while Raytheon moved quickly and decisively to consolidate and integrate several new defense electronics business into the company’s portfolio, this put a tremendous strain on people and systems”. He also stated that new key initiatives were underway, the initiative was Raytheon Six Sigma. ******* The purpose of this essay is to provide an overview of Raytheon Six Sigma. It will describe its plans and objectives.
|
