2010 Sustainability Report - Cummins.com

Six Sigma delivers
for Cummins
Ten years of Six Sigma at Cummins have delivered
$3 billion in savings by helping the Company reduce
waste and variation.
But what is even more important is how Six Sigma
has helped change Cummins culture:
Got a tough problem to solve? Try Six Sigma.
Developing a new technology? Apply Six Sigma.
Trying to figure out what solution might work best for
a customer? Use Six Sigma tools and in the process,
build a closer relationship with the customer.
Six Sigma is a business improvement tool that uses
data to identify defects and variation. It is used in every
part of Cummins everywhere in the world, creating
a common language to solve problems and develop
new products and processes.
Cummins also uses Six Sigma on its sustainability
work – developing the technology to make engines
cleaner and more fuel efficient while creating a greener
work environment everywhere it does business.
That effort is part of Cummins’ Six Sigma Star Point
program, which focuses the talents and energies of its
most skilled and experienced Six Sigma professionals
on issues that cross all business units in all parts of
the global company.
Leading the Star Point program on sustainability are
two Cummins master black belts: Eddie Beal and
Karen Cecil. They are pooling the resources of Six
Sigma belts across Cummins to identify new projects
or best practices from existing projects and programs
to help Cummins meet its sustainability goals.
“This grew out of our ongoing effort to make the
environmental issues visible up front in the product
design process,” Beal said. “And a large part of this
is strategy. What will enable us to be successful in
Students at the capstone training exercise must use Six Sigma
techniques to hit targets with a balsa wood airplane.
reducing our carbon footprint and be profitable
as a company.”
After identifying completed or new projects that focus
on sustainability, the belts will work to identify what
principles or process can be applied to other areas
of Cummins, Beal explained.
One example: Jason Jones, a master black belt with
Cummins Power Generation in Kent, United Kingdom,
did a logistics project in his region to identify how often
trucks were only partially loaded as they made their
deliveries. By coordinating with other plants Jones
and his team were able to combine freight pickups
resulting in fewer trucks on the road, saving fuel and
reducing emissions. It is the kind of project that could
serve as a template for similar projects in other parts
of Cummins’ business, Beal said.
The sustainability work is just one example of how Six
Sigma continues to transform the Cummins culture.
Other Star Point programs are focusing on customers,
manufacturing improvements and the supply chain.
George Strodtbeck, Executive Director of Quality
and the Cummins Operating System, says that before
Six Sigma, profits did not always directly track with
increases in sales and when a recession hit, the
Company usually lost money.
The discipline and the data-driven approach to
decision making that Six Sigma brought has prepared
the Company to respond quickly when the market
Financial
107