Partnerships with industry have always been important to the College of Textiles. We pride ourselves in working side by side with the textile industry in research, placing students and continued education of their employees. The College of Textiles brings industry to the college through many of our short courses offered here at the college. One such class is the Six Sigma Quality class that is taught by Dr. Blanton Godfrey, Dean of the College of Textiles and Dr. Tim Clapp, a professor in the TECS department. Chip Cockerham and Jim Gallion of Bespak Drug Delivery Technologies began taking the Six Sigma class last fall. Mr. Gallion discussed with Dr. Clapp how Bespak “needed resources” to help in analysis of their product. And from there they decided to put a team of eight textile engineers in Dean Godfrey and Dr. Clapp’s Textile Engineering 404, Six Sigma Quality, class to the test. Chip Cockerham says, “Our company has made the commitment to use Six Sigma Quality and the seniors in this class are going through the same Six Sigma training, so the pairing was a good one.”

So what is Six Sigma? Six Sigma is a process that helps companies develop as near a perfect product as possible, therefore creating zero defects in their products. Sigma is a statistical measure of variability. In a service or manufacturing environment, a Six Sigma process would mean that the process is virtually defect free. In a million operations of a process, Six Sigma would allow only 3.4 defects. Most companies operate at 4 Sigma which allows 6,000 defects per million operations of a process. Motorola set out to reduce the number of defects in its own products in the 1980s and called the process Six Sigma.

And does Bespak not come to mind when you are thinking of a textile company? Bespak, Inc. is a leading supplier of Drug Delivery Technologies to the global pharmaceutical industry. Bespak produces innovative devices and services for the oral inhalation and nasal drug delivery markets. They have plants in Apex, Cary, Connecticut, and two plants in the UK. So why would a company not affiliated with textiles call upon textile engineers to help with a problem that they are having? They realized that these students were taking the courses that they found valuable, along with Six Sigma. Therefore, they would definitely be a good asset to their company.

The problem was, Bespak in the past has not used a tool as efficiently as they should have says Chip Cockerham, so they called upon these seniors to help them in their efficiency. So that was a real world problem with seniors that volunteered to make this their senior project. They felt like they were contributing to an important project and that their ideas would be valuable to the company. The tool they were analyzing was an eight cavity injection molding tool. Each group was analyzing a different cavity in the tool. There were many learning moments in the class and even in their presentation at the end of the semester. But the results that each group discovered will be helpful to Bespak and their Six Sigma Quality initiative.

Bespak is planning on having another group of seniors next year to tackle another problem for them. “We will become more efficient in this process of working with students in the future and we look forward to next year,” stated Mr. Cockerham. “This has been a great experience, connecting Six Sigma, industry and students,” stated Dr. Tim Clapp. To have the opportunity to connect students with industry and to show a pharmaceutical company that they can find value in our textile engineering majors.

As our graduates become more known not only for the fine textile education they receive but the fact that they are all around high quality students, we find that industries other than textile seek to have our students be a part of their team. The education that our students are receiving will be of value to them in the textile industry and beyond. For more information about our short courses please visit www.tx.ncsu.edu/extension/service/index.htm and for additional information about the Textile Engineering Program please visit www.tx.ncsu.edu/tecs.

TE 404 Seniors and Bespak executives pose after their
final presentations in May 2002.