Bally Ribbon Mills: Reduce 30% of waste by applying 6 Sigma

Bally Ribbon Mills (BRM), a designer and manufacturer of specialized engineering woven fabrics based in Bally, Pennsylvania, recently announced that after two years of company-wide implementation of Six Sigma, they’ve seen a 30% drop in operational waste.

One of the remarkable aspects of Six Sigma implementation at Bally Ribbon Mills is that the company considers people to be the most important factor in the quality improvement process. They focused on training 6 Sigma of blue belt and black belt for a number of key employees first, which is the foundation for creating a culture of continuous improvement for the entire organization.

Immediately after the innovation culture was formed, BRM began to popularize 6 Sigma. They also began having process improvement teams work side-by-side with design and manufacturing teams to create efficient processes from the outset.

Company leaders were sold on Six Sigma after sending one employee through training. The employee used Six Sigma skills on a project that involved just one item and reduced costs by 77%. That got everyone’s attention. Part of the “significant impact” of Six Sigma at Bally involved the cost savings to both the company and their customers. It also has led to higher quality products.

In addition, BRM also focuses on continuous improvement and prevention, as evidenced by the adoption of MIL-Q-9858 standards for their products. MIL-Q-9858 is now recognized as the source of quality management system standards and regulations worldwide, in accordance with US quality standards. In addition, BRM is more interested in high error-prone areas, because of the high costs associated with wastage and those areas that are the highest.

The company also found that Six Sigma trained employees had many analytical strengths. These employees are able to use the same data that most manufacturing facilities have collected and still achieve better reliability, use less materials, waste less, save production time and reduce unplanned downtime compared to other performance management methods.

Providing high quality products is vital for any business. However, to achieve the goal of reducing production costs while ensuring quality, not all businesses are successful. Therefore, a 30% reduction in waste is a commendable achievement of BRM, not only for the economic benefits but also for the improvement efforts of the whole company.

Productivity and Quality Office