WEG, a leading global manufacturer of motor and drive technology, has been awarded the prestigious Lean Six Sigma Award by the British Quality Foundation (BQF) during the UK Excellence Awards Ceremony, beating finalists including Siemens and Shop Direct. The 2016 Lean Six Sigma Award recognises the work businesses do to improve their performance and achieve sustainable excellence through delivering Lean Six Sigma innovations to customers, shareholders and other key stakeholders.
“We are pleased to win this esteemed award, as it shows that we know how and when to implement the right Lean Six Sigma tools in order to improve performance of our existing products,” says Marek Lukaszczyk, European Marketing Manager at WEG. “WEG is dedicated to delivering technical innovation and an on-going improvement of the development of its existing products, making them increasingly easier for our customers to use, while improving the business efficiency and sustainability.”
WEG was awarded this accolade for the significant improvements made during the manufacture of its flagship W22 motors. In the manufacturing process a rotor and a stator set is assembled in the frame by a high pressure insertion machine, however the average defection rate was 5,000 PPM. The WEG team led by the company’s Six Sigma Black Belt, Robson Olimpio Piucco, used Lean Six Sigma and DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control) methodology to find the root causes of the defection. After implementing new processes, the defective rate has fallen to 500 PPM. It is estimated that WEG will reduce 80 per cent of the waste and rework costs related to displaced plates for small motors.
The award comes just six weeks after WEG has been recognised amongst the world’s top 200 cleanest energy companies in the Clean200 list, as well as winning thermo-environmental awards from SMACNA (Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors’ National Association) for the best thermo-environmental engineering projects that meet environmental requirements and energy efficiency.
