An eight-member team from Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) has received the Yellow Belt certification in the Six Sigma Programme. 

The certification was part of a series of initiatives that Alba has undertaken since 2009 to bring about improved competitiveness, increased operational efficiency and greater savings.  The goal of these initiatives has been to prepare Alba to be better able to face future challenges of profitable growth, and to continue to remain a global force in the aluminium industry, said a statement.  

In 2009, Alba outlined well defined top-down objectives to generate annual savings of $250 million by 2012. Additionally, the management structure was right-sized to streamline decision making process across the organisation.

The Alba SmartWay was launched in 2010 as a bottom-up approach to ensure necessary actions like the setting up of numerous working groups and the adoption of Lean Manufacturing Best Practices were put in place to achieve improvements. During the year, this approach proved very successful as Alba was able to train 61 change agents and 4 change leaders through 26 working groups, the statement said.

The efforts of the Alba SmartWay working groups enabled Alba to achieve the savings targeted for 2010, and in the future, it is expected to remain a cornerstone of the company’s continuous improvement dynamics in achieving the $250 million savings, it said.

2011 marks the next step in Alba’s continuous improvement initiative as the company begins the implementation of Six Sigma. This industrial best practise tool has been designed to minimise or eliminate the variables in the manufacturing and business processes, improving output and quality by identifying and removing the causes of variables, process defects, and speed up initiatives that strengthen efficient operations.

In his recent keynote address at the Bahrain Management Society seminar, Alba chief executive Laurent Schmitt highlighted the salient features of the Alba SmartWay approach, and emphasised that the company would be utilising all appropriate improvement tools to enhance its standing in the aluminium industry. 

Commenting during the Yellow Belt certification award ceremony for the eight-member team who were given an overall insight into the techniques of Six Sigma, its metrics and basic improvement methodologies as well as an introduction into process management, he added: “Six-Sigma has been recognised worldwide as a valuable tool to boost quality output, eliminate variability and achieve significant and measurable returns. Its implementation in Alba will be supported by a core team of internal experts who will be trained in 2011. Our decision to incorporate Six-Sigma tool was aimed at equipping the organisation to remain operationally efficient and achieve its goal of being recognised as globally competitive while continuing the continuous improvement initiative begun in 2009. " - TradeArabia News Service