A Case Study of Defects Reduction in a Rubber Gloves Manufacturing Process by Applying Six Sigma Principles and DMAIC Problem Solving Methodology

Abstract

The Six Sigma’s problem solving methodology DMAIC has been one of several techniques used to improve quality. This paper demonstrates the empirical application of Six Sigma and DMAIC to reduce product defects within a rubber gloves manufacturing organisation. The paper follows the DMAIC methodology to investigate defects, root causes and provide a solution to reduce/eliminate these defects. The analysis from employing Six Sigma and DMAIC indicated that the oven’s temperature and conveyor’s speed influenced the amount of defective gloves produced. In particular, the design of experiments (DOE) and two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) techniques were combined to statistically determine the correlation of the oven’s temperature and conveyor’s speed with defects as well as to define their optimum values needed to reduce/eliminate the defects. As a result, a reduction of about 50% in the “leaking” gloves defect was achieved, which helped the organisation studied to reduce its defects per million opportunities (DPMO) from 195,095 to 83,750 and thus improve its Sigma level from 2.4 to 2.9.

Keywords
Defects reduction, DMAIC, rubber gloves, Six Sigma

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