Adoption of the Six Sigma Methodology at Wipro

Wipro Technologies global service provider that delivers technology-driven business solution to meet the strategic objectives of their clients. Wipro is the World’s first CMMi Level 5 certified software services company and the first company outside of the United States to receive IEEE Software Process Award. Wipro aspires to become the World’s leading IT service provider while up keeping the highest standards of quality and excellence. Wipro today has the Most Mature Six Sigma program in the industry ensuring that 91% of projects are completed in time as compared to the industry average of 55%.

As a pioneer of Six Sigma in India, Wipro has dedicated 10 years into process improvement through Six Sigma process. The organization did not face any resistance to the adoption of Six Sigma methodology. The Six Sigma program spread across verticals and had an impact on different service area such as market development, project management and resource utilization.

Need for Six Sigma:

• Improve Customer Satisfaction
  
• Become a forerunner in the industry
• Adopt best quality practices
• Win global outsourcing contracts

What does Six Sigma mean at Wipro:

• Products and Services should meet the global standards
• Robust Process should be ensured within the organization
• Customer expectations should be met and exceeded
• Develop a culture that focuses on Quality

Phased Implementation:

The head of each department and the top managerial level were involved in adopting Six Sigma Program at Wipro.

         i.        Challenges faced during implementation of Six Sigma Program:

• Changing the culture: Restructuring the organization culture, infrastructure, training and confidence building took time.
• Project Selection: Choosing a suitable project in the first year was a challenge. Wipro decided to select those projects which had a higher chances of success and targeted to complete this project in a short time span.
• Training: Finding the right people and training those people presented a tough job at Wipro. Training was rolled out in 5 phases: Defining, measuring, analyzing, improving and controlling the process and lastly increasing customer satisfaction.

Wipro implemented the Six Sigma Program for different service lines:

• Developing new Processes
• Improving Existing Processes
• Reengineering
  

Benefits of Six Sigma Program:

• Reduction in product defects: For example software defects at Wipro reduced by 50%
• Reduction in cycle time: For example rework in software now took 5% instead of 12%
• Waste elimination
• Increased Productivity by 35%
• Tangible Productivity due to lower cost uncured in developing application
• Cost of failure avoidance: For example installation failure dropped to 1% from 4.5%
• Increased customer satisfaction

Analysts strongly believe that Six Sigma has been an indisputable success at Wipro and the results were rapid and overwhelming.

This poses a question for the other IT companies who wish to incorporate Six sigma program within their organization, should each company adopt the Six Sigma implementation strategy used by Wipro or should they revise the conventional approach to align with their organizational culture?

References:

http://verma_arvind.tripod.com/QA_at_wipro.pdf

http://www.wipro.com/blog/Managing-change-the-Six-Sigma-way

Sharma,Pandla,Gupta, Six Sigma at Wipro Technologies: Thrust on Quality (1-14)

Retrieved from: http://www.iitk.ac.in/infocell/announce/convention/papers/Changing%20Playfield-04-Manisha%20Sharma,%20Kapil%20Pandla,%20Prasanth%20Gupta.pdf