Six Sigma at Dominion

What is Six Sigma?

Six Sigma is a business process improvement methodology that Dominion adopted in 2001. Originally developed by Motorola in the early 1980s, its main objective is to reduce inefficiencies and variation. Because of its proficiency, Six Sigma has become extremely popular in many corporate and small business environments around the world, including Fortune 500 companies such as Walmart, Bank of America, Exxon Mobile, Best Buy, Target and Microsoft.

In its first decade, Dominion’s Six Sigma program has trained 5,500 employees who have completed more than 9,000 projects.

To learn more about Six Sigma at Dominion, send an e-mail to: Business.excellence@dom.com.

How Does Dominion Use Six Sigma?

Dominion uses Six Sigma as a path to achieving excellence. All four of our business units apply the methodology to reduce safety incidents and minimize safety risk to the public, employees and contractors. In addition, the business units each have utilized Six Sigma to accomplish specific goals. Some examples include:

Dominion Virginia Power -

• Expanding online services to best meet the needs of our customers via Manage Your Account 
• Providing customer self-service options that are helpful, comprehensive and intuitive
• Minimizing wait times to speak with Customer Service
• Improving reliability of specific circuits and other equipment where customers experience higher-than-normal problems
• Finding innovative and cost effective technology to promote energy conservation and environmental responsibility, and improve customer service and utility operations

Energy - 

• Helping customers manage their energy costs with accurate information regarding their monthly usage through automated meter technologies
• Operating natural gas pipelines and other facilities in a manner that minimizes lost and unaccounted for gas

Generation - 

• Designing new environmental processes to support the installation and optimization of new systems
• Developing and optimizing the design of new systems, system upgrades, and new power stations
• Reducing or eliminating forced unit outage time, which improves reliability
• Improving Unit heatrate (i.e., reduce fuel consumption by improving unit efficiency)
• Optimization of environmental systems

Services - 

• Optimizing Mobile Data Communications to prevent overage charges and increase productivity by eliminating unneeded trips back to the office from field work locations
• Designing a new internal stocked forms process to eliminate more than 92% of stocked forms, and creating on-demand printing for internal users

Dominion's Award-Winning Program

Since implementation, Dominion’s Six Sigma program has won numerous awards from the Six Sigma community, most notably Best Improvement Program of the Year two years in a row and Six Sigma CEO of the Year. In addition, several of the company’s projects have received first-place awards from IQPC (International Quality and Productivity Center) and SEE (Southeastern Electric Exchange). The program also recognizes projects internally each year through its "Project of the Year" awards.

Watch Chairman and CEO Tom Farrell’s acceptance video (below) for the Six Sigma CEO of the Year award. In the video, he discusses Six Sigma and business improvement at Dominion — how the program was launched and implemented, his personal commitment to the program, and initiatives going forward.