Do you think we can use something from our work at home?

I think I should be listed among world's richest who's who. For that matter all those who lived in 38, Lyme street, Apt. 108 in Feb and Mar should be in that list.

Well, If you know Electricity Bills in United States, you will also know that $50 is actually reasonable Bill for a month. We paid a Bill of whopping $900 for 50 days. Aren't we rich? Girls are you reading? :-)

On Friday evening when everybody is rushing to reach home; we had a discussion with my manager abt Six sigma. I had no clue what it meant. So I asked him abt it. At home, when I was looking at the ppt he had send me I had goose bumps. This what they call six sigma? What! C'mon we did this for reducing our electricity Bill.

Really, Can we use knowledge gained at work at home? I think so. I know, I am bad at giving examples. But let us use this one.

I still remember the rude shock we felt when we got that bill in April. Well, after the general bitching, we started thinking. We first though of getting this Bill reduced. Frankly speaking, I do not think we all felt it was anyway possible but you know money matters.

We looked at the history of the apt. 108. We got a congrats message, this Bill was less than earlier ones. hmm... Next step was looking at history of other apartment in the building. Well that did not helped much either. They always had Bills > $230. Then we started noting down the reading. Then the experiments started, what happens if we do not switch on the Heater. What if we use water heater only for 2 hrs and so on so forth. After a week's readings we came to conclusion that however hard we try our bill will be never less than $200. In Six sigma language we were in define stage. Of course we did the measure step earlier.

Now we started analyzing the readings, try to identify the equipments which were using maximum energy. We discovered that

• Our heater had a faulty switch. Hence, we used to run heater even when no one is at home
• Our closet had a separate heater and it was always ON.
• Our water heater was always ON.

This was based on our analysis of when reading was lowest. We fixed these root causes immediately. In six sigma methodology this is analyze.

When our next Bill came through, to our surprise it was less than $200. We then started thinking over reducing it further and redefine our targets. You can say we redefined our goals. The next bill was even lower than this. This month's bill is $75. Hmm. This is called Improve stage in six sigma.

Now I think we know what had happened in first 2 months and we can better control our bill.
The learning ofcourse is we are changing our apartment when our lease ends on 31 July. The new apartment has central AC & Heat unlike the current one.

Didn't we actually applied six sigma methodology to reduce electricity bill. I am sure there are other things from office we can use at home. Vice versa is also true. I will write later abt them. Till then keep reading.