Six Sigma Approach to Quality Assurance in Higher Education. Prof Ashok Pathak. Black Belt Six Sigma Certified. Abstract. There has been growing concern for ...
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Six Sigma Approach to Quality Assurance in Higher Education Prof Ashok Pathak Black Belt Six Sigma Certified Abstract There has been growing concern for poor quality in higher education system in India. A number of regulatory bodies such as AICTE, UGC, NAAC, NBA and recently NIRF were established to generate quality consciousness in higher education. These regulatory bodies have not been able to make any visible difference so far. Apparently the reasons for poor quality in higher education in India are more internal in nature. Institutes of higher education in some of the developed nations had displayed an internal urge to ensure continuous improvement in quality of higher education. These institutes adopted Six Sigma Approach in educational institutes for quality improvement in spite of initial resistance from the entrenched old ‘academicians’ and senior faculty members. However once the Six Sigma approach was adopted the institutes were capable in realizing their strategic intent , cut down waste and develop a sense of pride in their excellent performance and global rankings. Key Words. IQAC, NAAC, Quality Assurance in Higher Education, Six –Sigma The Conventional Approach to Quality in Higher Education in India: Accreditation Centric In bulk of government aided and private institutes of higher learning the concern for quality has been a recent phenomena after sincere nudge and then push by the MHRD for mandatory accreditation. Since the NAAC and NBA ratings are primarily dependent on quality performance in seven and four criterion respectively concerned institutes have scrambled to bring in some quality dimensions at least on paper. Some senior faculty members from the institute are tasked to prepare the SSR or the SAR with bulk of the faculty and staff being passive members in the process. Most of the data given in the SSR /SAR is ‘innovative’. Many a time the response to the question asked in the SSR or the SAR is on a complete tangent compared to what is asked. The primary aim of preparing the report is to impress the peer review team and get a good grade. This approach has following anomalies: • Quality remains on paper and does not permeate in the system. • The faculty and staff remain skeptical of the entire exercise and processes produce sub optimal outcomes. • In bulk of the cases the quality tag so earned does not entail any financial benefits. • The organizational culture remains sluggish even after good accreditation. • The improvements if any are not sustained. With more stringent accreditation process and involving larger base of stake holders in the process it is likely that most of the corrupt practices and window dressing will
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become counter productive. This will bring in more serious efforts to ensure sincere pursuit of quality in higher education. In fact the trigger for quality enhancement in higher education must come from with in and not as an external pressure. Institutes of higher education must pursue quality and excellence as a habit and not for accreditation. Six Sigma Approach to Defects Free Quality The NAAC document on quality assurance refers to the Six Sigma approach as under: “The concept of Six Sigma and its methodology has a lot of significance to educational institutions. Firstly, it believes in teamwork, which is in tandem with the activities in education. The role and responsibilities of team members in Six Sigma projects are also outlined and involve people who are trained in the process. They are referred as “Blackbelt” and Green-belt” holders as in the Karate sport. Thus, in order to implement and achieve a Six Sigma level, an institution needs people who are trained in the methodology of Six Sigma. The curriculum of such training is highly statistical in nature. However, Man (2002) applied the Six Sigma methodology to adult learning and concluded that institutions will benefit a lot even by application of the concept without the statistical part”. In the NAAC document under reference the five phases of Six Sigma are defined as under: Steps
Activities
Define
Select projects, set goals and targets, identify the cost of poor quality, prepare the team, develop process maps
Measure
Develop measurement tools, standards and collect data
Analyze
Cause and effect diagrams, critical thinking, use statistical tools such as scatter plots, hypothesis testing, analysis of variance
Improve
Brainstorm on the cause, and countermeasures, develop solution alternatives, probability of success, cost, time to execute
Control
Implement the new initiative and put appropriate control in place to give signal of negative developments
In general ‘Six Sigma is a fact based, data driven philosophy of improvement that values defect prevention over defect detection. It drives customer satisfaction and bottom line results by reducing variation, waste and cycle time, while promoting the use of work standardization and flow, thereby creating a competitive advantage. It applies everywhere where variation and waste exist, and every employee should be involved. (As given in ‘The certified Six Sigma Black Belt Hand
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Book Second Edition- T M Kubiak, Donald W Benbow) . The six -sigma approach to problem solving or strategy implementation for minimal defects (3.4 defects per million opportunities for six sigma standards) involves following five phases: •
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Define. Identify who are the customers and what are their needs. During this phase we look closely at the existing process if it exists. In case there is no process existing for the desired outcome a new process is designed. For our case we will assume that the process exists. A close look at the process must bring out the defects, waste or dysfunctional aspects. This helps in formulating the problem statement or the business case, goal statement. In this phase we also prepare a high level process diagram identifying major activities in the process as also relate to customers and stakeholders’ expectation. At the end of this phase we need to have reasonably clear project charter which gives out the project name, process owner, Black - Belt who will lead the process improvement, clear business case identifying the financial and quality gains. The charter will also include the project team, principal stake -holders, timelines for the completion of the project and additional support required if any. We need to be very clear about how to measure the process improvements. At the same time it is pertinent to define the scope of the project very clearly so that team does not stray in to areas which have no bearing on the project or areas on which the project team has no control. It is very important to note that the project charter is drawn by the members of the team and is not thrust upon them. Measure. How is the process defined and how are defects and/or variations measured? This phase is more analytical than the define phase. During this phase the team determines how the current process has been performing (based on available accurate data). In a way the team confirms( using hard facts and data) that the stated problem actually exists. The team looks for the causes that are causing the problems and then identify the root causes. Tools like Fishbone/Ishikawa diagrams, Failure Mode Effect Analysis, Pareto Charts for identifying the vital few can be used in this phase. At the end of the measure phase the team is much more clearer about the process deficiencies and have new processes in mind. They also have an idea of the likely improved outcome if the new process is implemented. Analyze. What are the most important causes of defects and variations? The analyze phase is the beginning of the statistical analysis of the problem. This analysis is done with the development of a theory (null hypothesis). There after relevant data is collected from the new process and statistical tools are applied that will either ‘fail to reject’ or reject the null hypothesis. Improve. How can the causes of the defects be eliminated or variations reduced? This is solution and action phase. The project must arrive at this phase after going through the earlier phases. There is a general tendency to hasten to
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this phase with deliberating on the earlier phases. Here the team brainstorms to create a solution that will address the main problem, they will test the solution and then assess the outcome of the executed solution. Some of the major activities in this phase is to eliminate waste, adopt Five S’s approach (sorting, stabilizing ,sweeping, standardizing and sustaining) Control. What actions are needed to sustain improvement? This is the final phase with the primary aim of sustaining the gains made as also for enhancing the gains as part of continuous improvement. Relevant control charts are made and teams executing the process are trained to use the control charts. The entire team as also the executive team must be very honest and objective in interpreting the control charts. The first step to solve the problem is in accepting that there is a problem. If we brush the problem under the carpet then there is no chance of solving it. Also if we fudge the facts and data to fool the external agencies we eventually end up fooling our selves and the students.
When we look at the criterion for SSR in case of NAAC and SAR for NBA there are a very large number of areas where Six Sigma techniques can be used to ensure higher quality, financial benefits and enhanced customer satisfaction. In general there are nine dimensions of quality for the purpose of continuous improvement. Each of these dimensions will have specific focus areas in case of higher education. A suggestive list is given below:
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Performance o Teaching learning o Research o Consultancy o Management development o Infrastructure o Student support
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Features o Demonstrated performance and capabilities in the given domain o Relevant soft skills possessed by the passing out students o Learnability and adaptability Conformance o Faculty/Student Ratio o Financial support o Infrastructure o Transparent HR practices o Ethics o Societal outreach Reliability – Consistency of performance
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Durability – Withstand environmental changes Service - Student, faculty support, society Response – To changing societal requirement Aesthetic –Behavioral transformation development Reputation – Corporate, alumni, parents, society
If we wish to pick a particular focus area for application in an average institute aspiring to scale higher levels of quality then teaching learning process would be quite appropriate. The defects that we are concerned in this focus area are: • High failure rates • Drop outs • Poor performance in placement interviews • Low self esteem amongst the students and teachers • Poor perception of the institute by the stake holders and the regulatory bodies As a business case or project description we can state that “ It is seen that in the three year under graduate course of Bachelor of Business Administration there is 30% drop outs after the first year and 10% drop out after the second year and in the final year the failure rate is 15%. Thus for every 100 students taking admission in the program only 53 or 54 students pass out. This leads to approximately Rs 18 lacs of revenue after the year and Rs 25 and Rs 28 lacs revenue loss for the next two years for every 100 students that take admission. Besides the performance of students in placement interviews is poor. On an average a students sits for six interviews before getting selected. The median compensation of the students in the program is Rs 2 lacs which is very low. We need to improve the teaching learning process during the next two years so that for every 100 students that take admission a minimum of 95 students pass after completing all the evaluation conditions with out any dilution of standards. The revenue loss per 100 students must not be more than Rs 5 lacs in a cycle of three years. Students must get selected with in two placement interviews on an average and the median salary of the students in the program must not be less than Rs 4 Lacs per annum. As one of the first step the team can draw cause and effect diagram for producing say good students who do well in examination and placement interviews. This is given below:
Cause-Effect / Ishikawa Diagram/ Fishbone Diagram (Teaching Learning Process)
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Quality Measures for a good student can be taken as : • Performance in Exam • Placement • Industry Report • Perception in the Society The causes for producing low quality students (as identified by the team) can be: F1 : Less number of faculty F2: Poor quality faculty F3: Disgruntled/ Demotivated faculty members S1 : Low academic caliber students S2 : Lack of commitment among the students S3 : Rampant in- discipline among the students AS1 : No mentoring by faculty AS2 : Poor mentoring by faculty AS3 : Lack of remedial classes in the institute PP1 : Bulk of students not interested PP2 : Students do not understand the language in which the subject is taught PP3 : Noisy environment in the institute hence difficult to concentrate. L1 : Inadequate staff L2: Ill trained staff L3: Lack of software CA1 : Lighting and environment CA2 : Seating CA3 : Wi-Fi, projector, acoustic LB1 : Inadequate space and timings in the library
7 LB2: Inadequate number of books in the library LB3: Lack of digital resource IL1 : Lack of industry network IL2: Poor response of students IL3: Faculty not oriented
Please note that the above are possible causes identified by the team. There after for each cause the team goes to the root cause by ‘five whys technique’. For example let us take lack of industry network as the cause. The five why technique to get to the root of this cause can be: • Why there is lack of industry network? • Because most industry representatives find the institute very un attractive. • Why the industry representatives find the institute un attractive? • Because students have very casual attitude towards placement interviews. • Why the students have casual attitude? • Because they have no industry orientation, they lack self awareness and are shy of facing interviews. • Why do students have these deficiencies? • Because they have no industry exposure in the program and most of the teaching is based on lectures and theory. • Why there is no appropriate industry exposure? • Because the faculty is not industry oriented and lack the skills to impart skill based training. It can be seen that the fifth iteration brings out the action plan for the new process. Please note that the root cause analysis is to be done by the team. Besides this is based on opinions of the team members. The root cause needs to be validated by design of experiment or relevant data. A number of causes will be thus identified. The Pareto analysis will identify the major causes, which cause the maximum damage. The team must focus on those ‘vital few’ causes first. Once these causes are removed the ‘trivial many’ causes should be taken up as part of continuous improvement. As an example let us pick up some causes of poor outcomes, say acts of indiscipline, poor mentoring by faculty members, lack of industry orientation among the faculty, poor attendance, language barriers. The team can tabulate the occurrence of these defective outcomes and their overall impact on the goal. A hypothetical data is given in the table below: Cause
Quantum/frequency or Impact on the overall goal likelihood of Occurrence 70 10 by 30 30
Acts of indiscipline Poor mentoring faculty members Lack of industry 50
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orientation among the faculty Poor attendance 70 Language barriers 40
30 10
As per the above chart it may be prudent to focus on removing the causes which are highlighted in the table. Thus if we improve mentoring activity by the faculty 30% defects in outcome will be removed. Again improving attendance of students will ensure 30% improvement. Industry orientation of faculty members will bring us close to the goal with just 20% likely slippages. Such sequencing of activities may be necessary due to resource or time constraints. The root cause analysis and the Pareto diagram are part of the measure phase of Six Sigma. In the Analyze phase the process is once again studied with the help of the data to validate the root cause and align the process to the requirement. In the improve phase the process is implemented and improved to bring the outcome with in the limits set in the project goals in the beginning. There are after the control charts are prepared for all those who have to implement the process check that the process output is with in the specifications set in the project charter. Control charts also help to identify areas where the processes can be further improved. This becomes part of Kaizen philosophy. Thus the team will spend around two to three months to formulate the high level process diagram, identify initial root causes and corrective measures and run the process for one to two years and monitor weather the expected goals are being achieved or not. The entire operation is dynamic in nature and needs to be undertaken with complete sincerity and honesty. Since the process execution as also the outcomes are continuously monitored the institute can administer the Quality Circle technique. Quality Circle for Continuous Improvement The agenda for the weekly meetings of quality Circles reviews the above mentioned dimensions of quality besides following routine issues are analyzed:
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Students’ Attendance. Efficacy of learning ambience School discipline Industry interface, project work, industry visits. Academic Activities- availability of faculty members, course delivery plan. Cultural activities Weak students training Counseling of students on career and on personal issues. Course delivery evaluation in each department Analysis of students feedback Analysis of faculty assessment Analysis of mentoring report Analysis of curriculum delivery and students’ response Feedback from the students’ Consultative Committee
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It is pertinent to note that the Six Sigma activities must be appropriately documented, publicized and in case of positive results the teams must be rewarded. Conclusion: The Importance and Implications of Leadership in Six Sigma Approach We need to understand very clearly that the top leadership in the organization must be completely committed to quality for Six Sigma Approach to succeed. Back in 1980 Bob Galvin of Motorola had admitted, “ Our quality stinks”. Having said this he set a goal of enhancing the quality ten folds in five years. In 1996 Welch of GE announced adopting Six Sigma approach. As a result of Six sigma approach Motorola reduced the manufacturing time for a product from 40 days to less than an hour! An automotive company added $52 million to the bottom line after introducing Six Sigma, $ 300 million in the second year and $350 millions in the third year. As regards leadership the top leadership must be fully on board and allocate resources for the Six Sigma Project. A Six Sigma Project should have a chief executive who removes road-blocks in resource allocation and monitors the progress, a Six Sigma Black Belt who provides the technical expertise and executes the project, number of green belts to work on the project a process champion and process owner. Keeping in view the fact that quality aspects in higher education have so far been neglected resulting in dismal performance and tremendous waste it is time that we apply Six Sigma approach to ensure quality in higher education. References and Notes 1. http://www.asee.org/public /conferences/32//papers/8594. 121st ASEE Annual Conference & Education Indianapolis.IN June 15-18, 2014. Applying Six Sigma in Higher education Quality Improvement Dr Quamrul H 2. http://doi.org/10.1108/IJQSS-04-2015-0043. M Vijaya Sundert (2016) ‘ Lean Six Sigma in Higher Education Institutions 3. cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/399848/. How Lean Six Sigma Can Change Higher Education./ 4. K Shridhara Bhat Total Quality Management Himalayan Publishing House . Second Revised Edition 2016. ISBN 978-93-5262-239-9 5. www.naac.gov.in/docs/Quality%20Assurance%20in%20Higher%2
0Education%20A. Quality Assurance in Higher Education an Introduction.
6. www.naac.gov.in/docs/IQAC-2017 revised document 2017. Internal Quality Assurance cell(IQAC)-NAAC 7. http://file.scrip.org/pdf/AJIBM. Lean Six Sigma in Higher Education – Scientific 8. http://www.scrip.org/journal/ajibm. Lean Six Sigma in higher Education : A Review of Experiences Around the World ( Sylvie Nadeu) American Journal of Industrial and Business Management 2017
10 9. www.performance-innovation:com/ Lean Six Sigma for Higher Education – The Jpurney 10. T M Kubiak, Donald W Benbow The Certified Six Sigma Black Belt Hand Book Second Edition – Pearson Twelfth Edition 2016 ISBN 978-81-317-2869-7
About the Author Army veteran, dealt with telecommunication, IT, Cyber warfare in insurgency and other operational areas. Served in UN Mission as international observer in Angola. Awarded Chief of Army Staff Commendation card for consistent excellence in operations. Retired in 2006 as Brigadier Deputy Director General Army Signals Intelligence. Held academic leadership role in educational institutes of repute as Director, Dean (Director at Maharishi Institute of Management, Aravali College of Engineering, Army Institute of Management, officiating Dean School of Business Studies Sharda University Greater Noida) Adept in leadership, total quality management, national and global accreditation and mentoring of students and faculty. Six Sigma Black Belt Certified
Note: I am in the process of refining the Six Sigma Approach in Higher Education. Hence your critical review and suggestions are most welcome
