The Telefónica team of Buenos Aires, Argentina, took top honors, winning the Gold Award in the 25th International Team Excellence Award Process at the 2010 American Society for Quality's World Conference on Quality and Improvement, held May 24–26, in St. Louis, Mo. A dynamic finalist competition included 28 teams from eight countries (http://wcqi.asq.org/team-competition/2010-teams/index.html), who vied for international recognition and the ASQ Gold, Silver and Bronze awards.
"Thank you to my team and to my country, and thank you, Telefónica," said an emotional team captain Luciana Mattioli Rodrigues de Barrera. Telefónica’s project team used Six Sigma to achieve $4 million savings.
The award winners were recognized in a spirited ceremony at this year’s conference in St. Louis:
2010 International Team Excellence Awards
Gold Winner
Company: Telefónica, Capital Federal, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Team: Cutting Cuts
Project: The project, which was developed by Telefónica and Movistar, works to meet the needs of telecommunications companies by solving transmission problems on the mobile networks. The project encircled more than 2,300 base stations distributed all over the Argentine territory. In order to reach the goals, Six Sigma methodology and the DMAIC discipline were implemented. During the project, two critical objectives were defined: effectiveness, which meant a reduction of the number of services breakdowns that took place at the base stations, and efficiency, which meant the reduction of interventions at each site. The project team achieved a saving of $4 million USD per year by reducing the number of breakdowns by 70 percent and reducing the intervention at the sites by 50 percent.
Silver Winner
Company: Allegheny Energy Inc., Greensburg, Pa.
Team: Supply Chain Order Fulfillment Team
Project: This project presentation demonstrated a success of a support services function delivering goods to its internal customers. The team’s objective was to improve on-time and in-full (OTIF) measurement from the 65-percent baseline to the 95-percent target. This OTIF measurement is an important leading measure giving indication to getting all the material to the field workers so they can serve their end-user customers with higher efficiency. To accomplish this goal, the team leveraged a general problem-solving approach (Six Sigma) and utilized several tools including Allegheny Energy’s balanced scorecard, Hoshin planning, voice of the customer, value stream mapping, solution matrix, and statistical control charts. The solutions and control plan that the project team implemented delivered OTIF results greater than 93 percent for the last 15 months.
Bronze Winner
Company: Continental Guadalajara Services Mexico S.A. De C.V, Tlajomulco de Zuñiga, Jalisco, Mexico
Team: Conti-Guad Pactan Conquest Pack
Project: The team’s objective was the reduction of chemical materials consumption used for manufacturing of electronic assemblies in the Guadalajara plant. The purpose was to reduce waste, achieve savings in material expenses, and positively impact the environment by reducing the amount of waste of chemical products. The team used several Six Sigma techniques, including project selection matrix, project charter, Pareto, SPC, DOE, hypothesis tests, and TRIZ. The projects resulted in a savings of more than $300,000 USD and a reduction of almost one ton in chemical waste to the environment. This had helped launch several other projects that have more than quadrupled the results obtained before. The culture of the company has also been changed; chemical waste is no longer an acceptable result.
Since 1985, more than 900 teams from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Colombia, India, Japan, Mexico, Philippines, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, United Arab Emirates and the United States have participated in this outstanding process. Well-known companies such as 3M, Alcoa, Baxter Healthcare, Bayer, Boeing, CSX, Fidelity, and Genentech have showcased proven results with long-term implications, resulting in cost-savings of millions of dollars.
Next year’s International Team Excellence Award Process Final Round will be held at ASQ’s World Conference on Quality and Improvement in Pittsburgh. For information on how to participate in the 2011 International Team Excellence Award Process, visit http://wcqi.asq.org or e-mail gbalagopal@asq.org.
About ASQ
The American Society for Quality has been the world’s leading authority on quality for more than 60 years. With more than 85,000 individual and members, the professional association advances learning, quality improvement and knowledge exchange to improve business results and to create better workplaces and communities worldwide. As a champion of the quality movement, ASQ offers technologies, concepts, tools and training to quality professionals, quality practitioners and everyday consumers. ASQ has been the sole administrator of the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award since 1991. Headquartered in Milwaukee, ASQ is a founding sponsor of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), a prominent quarterly economic indicator, and also produces the Quarterly Quality Report.
