Biography and Professional Vita - Dr. Mikel Harry

Now we have for you the Biography and Professional Vita of Dr. Mikel Harry who is regarded as the Father of Six Sigma, Please go through the Biography of this Great Man.

Mikel J. Harry

Ph.D., Arizona State University, 1984
M.A., Ball State University, 1981
B.S., Ball State University, 1973

Dr. Harry has been widely recognized and cited in many publications as the principle architect of Six Sigma and the world's leading authority within this field. His most recent book entitled Six Sigma: The Management Strategy Revolutionizing the World's Top Corporations has been on the "best seller list" of the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Amazon.com. He has consulted to many of the world's top CEOs and has been a featured guest on such television programs as the NBC show "Power Lunch." In addition, he has been distinguished by Arizona State University with the 2002 Engineering Excellence Award for superb achievements in the engineering profession and notable contributions to society. At the present time, Dr. Harry is President and COB of the Six Sigma Management Institute.

As founder of the Six Sigma Academy in 1994, he served as a board member and chief executive officer. In addition, he has served on the Board-of-Directors for the International Statistics Application Institute and the International Design Institute, Singapore. Dr. Harry was employed by Asea Brown Boveri and served as Corporate Vice President, Quality Systems Deployment. As such, he was directly responsible for the global leadership, implementation, and deployment of Six Sigma at ABB. His activity was focused on the creation of world-class levels of improvement in product quality, performance, producibility, and cost.

Before this, Dr. Harry founded Motorola's Six Sigma Research Institute and served as Corporate Director and Senior Member of Technical Staff. In this position, he was responsible for the development of Six Sigma implementation strategy, deployment guidelines, and advanced application tools. For his technical leadership, Dr. Harry was appointed as an associate member of Motorola's prestigious Science Advisory Board (SABA). In recognition of his technical contributions, he was inducted into the Scientific and Technical Society at Motorola's Government Electronics Group.

As one of the original architects and pioneers of Six Sigma at Motorola, he was responsible for the research and development of advanced Six Sigma engineering models and methods. While serving the Motorola Government Electronics Group, Dr. Harry also held the positions of Member of Technical Staff, Group Operations. Before this, he held the position of Manager and Principal Staff Engineer, Advanced Quantitative Research Laboratory. He also served as a Quality and Reliability Engineer when he first joined Motorola.

Before joining Motorola, Dr. Harry was a consultant to several Fortune 500 corporations in the areas of statistical engineering, experiment design, statistical process control, and quality management. His industrial experiences also include manufacturing management at General Motors Corporation and industrial engineering with Dayton Walther Corporation. Dr. Harry has also served as an instructor within the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Division of Technology, Arizona State University. In addition, he was a member of the ASU/IBM Joint Engineering Study.

Prior to beginning his professional career, he was commissioned into the U.S. Marine Corps as a Second Lieutenant. His tour of duty included serving as an infantry platoon leader and later as an executive officer and company commander. He was also certified as a nuclear-biological-chemical warfare officer and was honorably discharged with the rank of Captain.

Significant professional contributions include creation of the Six Sigma Breakthrough Strategy and the Six Sigma Black Belt concept. In addition, Dr. Harry authored the first substantive publication on Six Sigma. This book was designed to articulate the philosophy, theory, and application of Motorola's Six Sigma Program and was published under the title "The Nature of Six Sigma Quality." In addition, Dr. Harry was responsible for the research and development of an advanced mechanical design engineering tolerancing system, for which he received a major engineering award from Motorola. The design algorithms have since been translated to functional engineering software. This work was published by Motorola, Inc. under the title "Six Sigma Mechanical Design Tolerancing.".

Another major contribution was the research and development of an RF/Microwave design analysis and optimization procedure. This work was published by Motorola University Press and used by Motorola, Texas Instruments and other noted corporations. Dr. Harry was directly responsible for the research and development of a process characterization methodology, as well as the supporting mathematical statistics. This work was published by Addison-Wesley under the title "Six Sigma Producibility Analysis and Process Characterization." .

Dr. Harry has over 50 major publications to his credit. His work has appeared in such journals as Quality Progress, IEEE Micro and Circuit World, Journal of Circuit Technology. In addition, he has authored a substantial reference book on the application of experiment design, inferential statistics, and statistical process control. The book is entitled "Achieving Quality Excellence: The Strategy, Tactics and Tools". Most recently, Dr. Harry has published an eight volume set of books entitled The Six Sigma Series. This extensive work presents the implementation guidelines, deployment strategy and application tools related to Six Sigma. Supporting this series and furthering the power of quality, he published a unified set of articles in Quality Progress entitled New Frontiers.

His work is actively used and promoted by such noted institutions as General Electric, Ford Motor Company, Sony, Allied Signal, Stanford University, Motorola, Texas Instruments, Unisys, IBM, Rockwell, Kodak, and the Department of Defense, as well as many others. He is a contributing author to a textbook on the application of SPC methods and experiment design in automated manufacturing, Marcel Decker. In addition, he is a contributing author to a textbook used by the Mathematics Department, U.S. Air Force Academy. He has served as chairman of the Product Design Sub-committee for Producibility Metrics, United States Navy. In addition, he was technical co-chairman of the SPC standards committee for the Interconnecting and Packaging Electronics Circuits Institute (IPC). He received the President's Award from IPC at the 1990 Annual Conference for outstanding technical contribution to the industry.

Dr. Harry has personally trained and worked with such Chief Executive Officers as Jack Welch (General Electric), Jac Nassar (Ford Motor Company) and Larry Bossidy (Allied Signal), as well as their senior executive teams and technical/scientific communities. In addition, Dr. Harry has worked with several distinguished professional societies around the world. He has personally trained thousands of leaders and practitioners around the globe. He is frequently retained as a keynote speaker and presenter for industry symposiums and prestigious functions such as the Young President's Organization (YPO). Dr. Harry has also been featured in several documentaries and was the subject of a feature article in "Personal Success" magazine, Quality Progress magazine and the international magazine: The Globe and Mail Report on Business.

Trend Chart - Run Chart

Trend charts are also known as Run charts, and are used to show trends in data over time. All processes vary, so single point measurements can be misleading. Displaying data over time increases understanding of the real performance of a process, particularly with regard to an established target or goal. Following is an example of a trend chart of order fill rate performance:

Major Elements:

A good trend chart has the following characteristics:

A clear Title to describe the subject of the chart. Labels on the vertical Y-axis and horizontal X-axis to describe the measurement and the time period. A Legend to differentiate the plotted lines - in this case, the actual vs. the goal. Appropriate Scales that are narrow enough to show variation. Limited Characteristics on each chart to avoid confusion from too many lines. An appropriate Time Frame. Notations on any major spikes. Targets or Goals should be noted on the chart for reference. Note Who Prepared the chart in case there are questions about the chart or the data.

Two common errors in chart construction are shown below:

The first chart has a scale that is so wide that little variation can be seen. The data are correct (and are the same as in Figure 1 shown above), but the chart is not very useful because the scale is so wide (0-100%).

The second chart has a scale that includes impossible numbers based on the definition of the metric being charted. In this case, fill rate can not be higher than 100%, so a scale that goes to 120% is misleading. Again, this chart uses the same data as Figure 1 and 2, but conveys a different message.

A third problem arises from using long time scales and inappropriate trend line plots. The MoreSteam editors know a Quality Manager at a major automobile manufacturer who was renowned for choosing time scales long enough to pick up an unfavorable baseline, and therefore indicate improvement in subsequent periods. Sometimes this practice is helpful for a long term perspective, but it can be confusing if it diverts attention from more recent events - especially when a trend line is plotted through the data. Consider the following chart of quality complaints, or "Things Gone Wrong" (TGW's):

It is a fact that the TGW level in 1999 (1,320) is 44.5% lower than it was in 1989 (2,378). The trend line appears to indicate continuous improvement over time. However, the process is relatively stable since 1990, with little sustained improvement since that time, and an increase in TGW's over the last two years. The presentation of the chart can tell two different stories, and the trend line is not appropriate in this instance. See the discussion below and Figure 6 on the use of reference bars. Many times a chart will exhibit an apparently abnormal fluctuation, or "spike", as seen in June of the chart below. Since such spikes always raise questions, a good rule of thumb is to pro-actively answer the question by putting a note on the chart as shown below. This practice also provides documentation of the history of a process and helps to connect cause with effect.

A further improvement to aid understanding of a trend chart is to add Reference Bars. The chart below is the same as that represented by Figure 5, but has reference bars added to show the performance in prior years. The addition broadens the reader's perspective by showing the extent of improvement over a longer time horizon.