ETD 515 Six Sigma and Applied Statistics: A New Course in Electronic Systems Engineering Technology Wei Zhan Electronic Systems Engineering Technology Department of Engineering Technology & Industrial Distribution Texas A&M University Abstract Six Sigma has been widely deployed in industry, service, government agencies, and other sectors. Feedback from the industrial advisory board over the past few years indicated that the curriculum needed to be enhanced through the use of statistics in engineering design and analysis in the Electronic Systems Engineering Technology (ESET) program. ESET started to develop a new course, Six Sigma and Applied Statistics, in 2012. The course materials and laboratories went through several rounds of revisions. This paper discusses the detailed contents for the lectures, laboratories, and course projects. A continuous education workshop was offered based on the materials from this course. Six Sigma Greenbelts were offered to the students in the course and the workshop participants. This course also opened doors for collaborations with industry. Several guests from industry were invited to give guest lectures for the class. Students also had a chance to work on real-world projects sponsored by industry. Proceedings of the 2016 Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration Copyright ©2016, American Society for Engineering Education ETD 515 1. Introduction Six Sigma is a structured, data-driven, quality control methodology that uses statistical tools for process improvement16. It has been widely deployed in industry, government agencies, health care, and other sectors as an engineering and management tool for process improvement10. Extensive reviews on Six Sigma can be found in literature15, 23. Statistics is a critical component in Six Sigma. As a part of the Six Sigma process, the use of statistics in engineering design, testing, and troubleshooting is becoming increasingly critical for companies to stay competitive in the global market. The enhancement of the education on statistics has been discussed by many educators over the last 30 years1, 2, 5, 8, 12, 13, 14, 20, 24. How to effectively teach engineering students statistics so that they can make the connection between statistics and their engineering subject has been a major research topic22. Lean manufacturing is another important concept that is widely used in industry25. Since the combination of Lean and Six Sigma proposed by M. George7 in 2003, there have been increasing needs in many sectors to train the workforce with knowledge in Lean Six Sigma. The demand for Lean Six Sigma training is so high that many high educational institutions started to consider offering courses or introducing the subject in some quality related courses3, 6, 11, 19, 21, 29. These curricular modifications are typically deployed to industrial engineering, manufacturing engineering, or engineering technology departments6, 21. The demands from industry are also driving other engineering technology (ET) programs to educate their students in Lean Six Sigma. Incorporating statistics and Lean Six Sigma into ET education has been a challenge for the ET community. There have been many attempts by educators from different universities6, 9, 21. Many educators are interested in this educational research topic, as indicated by the increase in number of publications in the ASEE annual conferences in the relevant areas from 22 in 1998 to 174 in 200721. It is also reflected in the readers’ interest in statistics: A paper published in the American Journal of Engineering Education on teaching statistics to ET students has remained in the top of most frequently downloaded papers list over the past six years28. Since the start of the effort to incorporate applied statistics and Lean Six Sigma in to the curriculum, the feedback from the ESET industrial advisory board on the enhancement of the ESET curriculum has been overwhelmingly positive. There are several successful implementations of Lean Six Sigma courses in curriculum of ET6, 9, 21 . For programs such as industrial engineering technology and manufacturing engineering technology, the program has more flexibility to accommodate Lean Six Sigma in the curriculum. Scachitti et al 21 presented their curriculum change effort to add Lean Six Sigma to industrial engineering technology program at Purdue University Calumet, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, and Purdue University West Lafayette. They modified several courses Proceedings of the 2016 Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration Copyright ©2016, American Society for Engineering Education ETD 515 and added new courses to incorporate the Lean Six Sigma contents into the curriculum. This required significant amount of effort from faculty. Through a $1.2M training grant with, faculty worked with a local health care system and brought the real life project experience into the class room to benefit their students. These success stories motived ESET faculty to move forward with the curricular enhancement in the area of statistics and Lean Six Sigma. However, it was found that there were many constraints to implement similar curriculum changes in ESET. Quality control was not the focus of ESET, therefore, adding a new course to the curriculum was a major change. In recent years, the state of Texas has asked public universities to reduce the total credit hours required by B.S. degrees. ESET had 134 total semester credit hours and needed to reduce to 128 semester credit hours. Adding a new course was against this trend. Starting in 2007, the ESET program at TAMU experimented with several different ways of teaching statistics and Six Sigma to ET students. First, Six Sigma was used in course projects in an instrumentation course29, 30. More efforts followed to incorporate similar contents into other courses within the ESET program28. These were done within existing courses and the modifications to the curriculum were limited to two courses. There were no significant revisions in the learning objectives in these courses. Therefore, no official course change requests were needed. The individual faculty members implemented these modifications to their courses. However, these efforts are far from sufficient, considering the importance of statistics and Lean Six Sigma to ET students. ESET students used to take a statistics course offered by Statistics Department. However, the course was taught to all engineering students, therefore, it couldn’t address the unique needs of ESET students. Engineering technology students have a unique learning style, they learn better when the knowledge is applied in practical design and analysis. Therefore, laboratory and course projects are critically important. In the summer of 2012, ESET faculty had a retreat to discuss the program curriculum. There were two major objectives, one was to reduce the total semester credit hours to 128, and the other is to realign the courses to better reflect the need in today’s industry. It was decided at the retreat that ESET should shift its focus to product development17. The need for teaching Lean Six Sigma was brought up because it was a key component in product development. Base on the findings in Zhan et al28, it was decided that the statistics course would be eliminated from the list of ESET required courses and a new course, “Six Sigma and Applied Statistics,” would be offered by ESET. 2. The course contents and structure In 2002, ESET started to develop a new course ENTC 329, Six Sigma and Applied Statistics. It was designed to be a required course of three semester credit hours for ESET students. The course includes two lectures of 50 minutes each and a three hour laboratory sessions each week. Proceedings of the 2016 Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration Copyright ©2016, American Society for Engineering Education ETD 515 In order to decrease the total semester credit hours for the ESET program to 128, the course was designed to cover the basics of statistics to eliminate the need for STAT 211. The syllabus of STAT 211 was studied carefully before ENTC 329 was designed. The materials that were determined to be relevant for ESET students were kept in the syllabus and other materials were eliminated. More advanced topics that are needed for Six Sigma, but were not covered in STAT 211, were added to ENTC 329. It was found that some of these concepts were covered in a follow-up course STAT212, which most ESET students would not take. The introduction of the fundamental knowledge in statistics takes about half of a semester. The other half of the course was designed for learning and applying Six Sigma. After the creation of the syllabus, it was submitted to the Statistics Department for review. Based on the syllabus and presentation made by ESET, the Statistics Department quickly approved the replacement of the STAT 211 by ENTC 329 for ESET students. Before the official creation of ENTC 329, a temporary course ENTC 489 was created for testing the new course. After the successful delivery of the course for two semesters, ENTC 329 was officially created as a required course for ESET program in 2013. Other students from other programs, departments, or even colleges can take this course as a technical elective course. The prerequisite courses are: ENTC 210 (Circuit Analysis) and MATH 152 (Engineering Mathematics II). The rationale for the prerequisites is: students need to have basic knowledge about engineering math; the course was designed with laboratories that make connection between the technical courses in ESET and applied statistics and Six Sigma. Due to the hands-on learning style for engineering technology students, the course was designed with intensive laboratories related to circuit analysis. This could cause problems for students from other departments. Some students might not be familiar with laboratory equipment and others might not have the lab kits that were required for all ESET students. It was not a big issue for students from other engineering departments; however, it could potentially be a problem for students from other schools such as business school. Fortunately, the number of students from outside ESET enrolled in the course has been mostly limited. The laboratory issues have been mitigated by pairing ESET students and non-ESET students. The course Objectives are: To learn the basic concepts of probability and statistics; To be able to apply these basic concepts to design and analyze electronic circuits; To be able to use statistical tools in troubleshooting electronic circuits; To be able to use Six Sigma DMAIC process and tools in design and analysis of electronic circuits; To be able to use software to conduct statistical calculations. The Main Topics covered in the course are: Samples, set theory, random variables, probability space, probability, mean, variance, Proceedings of the 2016 Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration Copyright ©2016, American Society for Engineering Education ETD 515 error, accuracy, precision. Gaussian, uniform, Student, Weibull distributions, confidence level, Central Limit Theorem, estimation of mean, sample size, hypothesis testing. Six Sigma process (DMAIC) and tools including Gauge R&R, test of hypotheses, analysis of variance, linear regression, response surface method, Monte Carlo analysis, control charts, design of experiments (DOE), and robustness analysis and design. The course schedule is as follows: Week 1 2 Chapter Lecture notes 1 3 2 4 3,4 Random variables, distributions 5 10 Exam 1, ANOVA 6 7 Confidence intervals 7 8 Tests of hypotheses 8 9 12 16 Linear regression, Gauge R&R Control charts 10 Topic Six Sigma: the DMAIC process Overview of probability, statistics, and their application in electronics engineering technology Basic concepts in probability Exam 2 Lab Software: Excel, MATLAB, Minitab Resistance measurement Six Sigma Project: Define Motor characteristicsback emf gain Motor resistance/inductance measurement Motor torque gain and friction measurement Statistical analysis of motor Gauge R&R Six Sigma Project: Measure Linear regression: temperature sensor Six Sigma Project: Analyze 11 Lecture notes Six Sigma tools 12 Lecture notes Six Sigma tools Six Sigma Project: Improve 13 Lecture notes Six Sigma tools Six Sigma Project: Improve 14 Lecture notes DOE, Monte Carlo, RSM Six Sigma Project: Control 15 Review for final exam, Six Sigma Project (presentation) Proceedings of the 2016 Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration Copyright ©2016, American Society for Engineering Education ETD 515 One of the problems faced in the development of this course was finding an appropriate textbook. While many references were available, as pointed out by Gore9, not a single textbook would fit the needs of this course. It was also not financially practical for students to buy several reference books. For the first two years, a textbook by Devore “Probability & Statistics for Engineering and the Sciences”4 was adopted as the official required textbook. It was used for about half a semester. The rest of the materials related to Six Sigma were provided to the students in the form of lecture notes. The author is currently working on a textbook together with an expert in Six Sigma from industry27. Laboratory design Laboratory is the focal point of this course. Students spend more time working in the laboratory than attending the lectures. The experiential learning style works best for ET students. There were seven laboratories to allow students to learn to apply statistics in engineering tasks. The rest of the laboratory time was devoted to a course project, which will be discussed later in the next section. Lab 1: MATLAB and Excel Tutorial – Statistical Tools In this lab, students learn to use MATLAB and Excel to conduct basic statistical analysis, such as calculating the mean, standard deviation, generating random numbers, and plotting histograms and stem-and-leaf graphs. Histogram 10 Frequency 8 6 4 2 0 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Bin Width Figure 1 Histogram generated in Excel Lab 2: Measurements In this lab, students learn to take multiple measurements of resistance values. They use what they learned in Lab 1 to conduct some basic statistical analysis. The data they collected will be used in a later lab (Lab 6) for Gag R&R analysis. Proceedings of the 2016 Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration Copyright ©2016, American Society for Engineering Education ETD 515 Lab 3: Motor Characteristics – Back EMF Gain This lab allows students to combine what they learned in circuit analysis and statistics to measure the back emf gain for a DC permanent magnetic motor. Test data are collected using LabVIEW software. Collected data will be used to do regression in MATLAB to estimate values for multiple parameters. Figure 2 LabVIEW data collection Lab 4: Motor Characteristics Measurements This lab allows students to combine what they learned in circuit analysis and statistics to measure the inductance, the inertia, and friction torque for a DC permanent magnetic motor. motor 3 R1 1 R2 2 L1 V1 4 Figure 3 Circuit setting for inductance measurement Proceedings of the 2016 Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration Copyright ©2016, American Society for Engineering Education ETD 515 Lab 5: Statistical analysis of Motor: MATLAB Simulation In this lab, students use the motor parameters they measured in labs 1-4 to build a motor model in MATLAB. Motor parameters were randomly generated according to the test data from Lab 14. They then conduct basic statistical analysis on the motor using simulation tools. Figure 4 MATLAB simulation Lab 6: GR&R This lab introduces concepts of and relating to ANOVA Gauge R&R. Students will understand the following concepts: Reproducibility, Part-to-Part Variation, and Repeatability. Using the resistor values measured earlier, students will get to see the variance associated with their measurement system. Figure 5 Gage R&R analysis Lab 7: Regression for temperature sensor In this lab, students learn to use the regression method to characterize a temperature sensor. Proceedings of the 2016 Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration Copyright ©2016, American Society for Engineering Education ETD 515 10000 8000 6000 y = 7164.6e-0.048x R² = 0.9993 4000 2000 0 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 Figure 6 Temperature sensor characterization using regression The course materials and laboratories went through several rounds of revisions and are being revised and enhanced constantly. 3. Course projects Students spend 7-8 weeks to work on their greenbelt projects. Upon completing the projects and successfully passing the course, a Six Sigma greenbelt certificate is awarded to each student. Teams consist of 4-6 students with the students making their own decision on team formation. Different types of projects were used: projects from industry projects found by students projects assigned to students by the instructor. Each type has its advantage and disadvantage. Projects from industry are preferred by most students; however, they are not always easy to find. Project scope and timing for these projects could cause problems. Students may not have the required knowledge to work on these realworld projects. Students can look for projects that they would like to work on; however, they may not be able to find appropriate projects. Projects assigned by the instructor save students time looking for projects, but the instructor may run out of projects to give to students. Repeating old projects did not work well because students talked to others who took the course before and found the results ahead of time. Finding appropriate projects has been one of the biggest challenges faced in this course. Another challenge was the before-and-after analysis. Often, there was not enough time to do this within one semester. Students worked on their project during the lab time and sometimes outside of the lab time. They follow the DMAIC process to complete their projects. At the end of the semester, a presentation was given by each team. A final report was required. The presentations were graded by students and each member of the winning team receives an ESET mug with the Lean Six Sigma web address printed on it. Proceedings of the 2016 Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration Copyright ©2016, American Society for Engineering Education ETD 515 Sample projects include: ESET course and lab scheduling This project was assigned to the students by the instructor. The ESET program coordinator complained about the time-consuming task of course and lab scheduling every semester and lack of suitable low-cost software. Several student teams worked on this project. One team identified Google Calendar as the free software that has most of the needed features for scheduling. Another team wrote their own software using C#. Cycle time reduction for a PCB heating process This project was based on a research project sponsored by industry. It required some knowledge in thermal dynamics, which most ESET students did not have. It was a good opportunity for students to work on a multi-disciplinary project. However, students were lost in the beginning. Krisys Robot Kit: An outreach effort This was one of the first Six Sigma projects in ENTC 329. Student teams tried to reduce the cost and cycle time for making Krisys Robot Kits, which was a product that ESET was trying to develop as an effort for both outreach to recruit high school students and for student workers to gain experience in product development. Two teams worked on this project and the results were extraordinary. This project has become a case study in the lecture notes. The feedback from students learning Six Sigma was very positive. Burger Service Improvement This project was identified by a student team. They studied the service at a popular local fast food restaurant and used Lean Six Sigma principle to come up with improvement ideas. The implementation was a problem, because the restaurant owner was not ready to implement the recommended changed made by the team in time for them to do a beforeand-after comparison. Currently, discussions are being held with several industrial sponsors to secure Six Sigma student projects. This can provide the sponsor with ideas of solving some of their problems. In addition, it can be used as a recruiting method to attract students to work for the sponsor either as summer interns or as permanent employees upon graduation. 4. Positive feedback and continuing education workshop Several students from other departments and colleges took this course (including graduate students). Most of them were interested in the Greenbelt in Six Sigma. Some wanted to apply Six Sigma to their research. After an article introducing ENTC 329 was published in Texas A&M Engineering Weekly Newsletter, many people enquired about the possibility of taking the course to get a Six Sigma Greenbelt certificate. Positive feedback also came from the Career Center at Texas A&M University. One of the hiring managers complained about lack of Six Sigma courses offered in the College of Engineering. A Proceedings of the 2016 Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration Copyright ©2016, American Society for Engineering Education ETD 515 quick search by the Career Center director found ENTC 329 and directed the hiring manager to ESET. The manager was later invited to give a guest lecture in ENTC 329. Two students said they were asked during job interviews about the Six Sigma course and greenbelt certificate. One student was hired as a quality engineer. Based on the success of ENC 329, the positive feedback received from students and industry, and success by other universities9, ESET made the decision to expand the effort to offer a continuing education workshop. Upon successful completion of the workshop, Six Sigma Greenbelts were given to the participants18. The first Lean Six Sigma Workshop was offered in the summer of 2014. 5. Conclusions and Future Work The new course ENTC 329, Six Sigma and Applied Statistics, offered by ESET has gone through several round of revision and is creating educational opportunities for ESET students and other students at Texas A&M University. A continuing education workshop was created based on the course material. A new textbook is being written specifically for this course. The initial feedback from industry and students were overwhelmingly positive. Future work includes offering of workshops for Six Sigma Yellowbelt and Blackbelt trainings18, 26. Different types of Six Sigma projects will be explored, with the focus on developing closer relationships with industry by having companies sponsor real-world course projects. Data will be collected for continuous improvement of these efforts for analysis and further improvement. These results will be presented in ASEE conferences or in a journal paper for dissemination. References 1. 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A., and Zhan, W., “Product and System Development: Creating a New Focus for an Electronics Engineering Technology Program,” Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, 2012. 18. Pyzdek, T. 2003. The Six Sigma Handbook: The Complete Guide for Greenbelts, Blackbelts, and Managers at All Levels, New York: McGraw-Hill. 19. Rao, K.P. and Rao, K. G. 2007. Higher management education – should Six Sigma be added to the curriculum? International Journal of Six Sigma and Competitive Advantage, Vol. 3, No.2, pp. 156 - 170. 20. Romeu, J. L. 1986. Teaching Engineering Statistics with Simulation: A Classroom Experience, The Statistician (RSS Series D) 35, pp. 441-448. 21. Scachitti, S., Workman-Germann, J., Stephens, M., Ammu, A. S., and Szromba, R., Adding Lean and Six Sigma to Industrial Engineering Technology Programs: Does This Constitute a Change in Curriculum? Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Conference and Exposition, 2008. 22. Snee, R. D. 1993. What’s Missing in Statistical Education?, The American Statistician, 47, pp. 149-154. 23. Snee, R.D., 2004. Six Sigma: the evolution of 100 years of business improvement methodology, International Journal of Six Sigma and Competitive Advantage, Vol. 1, No.1, pp. 4 – 20. 24. Standridge, C. R. and Marvel, J. M. 2002. Engineering Statistics as a Laboratory Course, ASEE Annual Conference. 25. Womack, James P, Jones, Daniel T, and Roos, Daniel, The Machine that Changed the World, First Harper Perennial, 1990. Proceedings of the 2016 Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration Copyright ©2016, American Society for Engineering Education ETD 515 26. Wortman, B., Richdson, W. R., Gee, G., Williams, M., Pearson, T., Bensley, F., Patel, J., DeSimone, J., and Carlson, D. R. 2001. The Certified Six Sigma Black Belt Primer, West Terre Haute, IN: Quality Council of Indiana. 27. Zhan, W. and Ding, X., Lean Six Sigma and Statistical Tools for Engineers and Engineering Managers, Momentum Press, in preparation. 28. Zhan, W., Fink, R., and Fang, A., “Application of Statistics in Engineering Technology Programs”, American Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2010, pp. 65-78. 29. Zhan W. and Porter, J. R. 2010. Using Project-Based Learning to Teach Six Sigma Principles, Int. Journal of Engineering Education. Vol., 26, No. 3, pp. 655-666. 30. Zhan, W., Zoghi, B., and Fink, R. 2009. The Benefit of Early and Frequent Exposure to Product Design Process, Journal of Engineering Technology, pp. 34-43. AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY Wei Zhan is an Associate Professor of the Electronic Systems Engineering Technology program at Texas A&M University. He earned his D.Sc. in Systems Science from Washington University in St. Louis in 1991. From 1991 to 1995, he worked at University of California, San Diego and Wayne State University. From 1995 to 2006, he worked in the automotive industry as a system engineer. In 2006, he joined the Electronic Systems Engineering Technology faculty at Texas A&M University. His research activities include control system theory and applications to industry, systems engineering, robust design, Six Sigma, modeling, simulation, and optimization. Proceedings of the 2016 Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration Copyright ©2016, American Society for Engineering Education