Six Sigma

Six Sigma is a business management strategy originally developed by Motorola, USA in 1986. It is widely used in many sectors of industry.

Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects (errors) and minimizing variability in manufacturing and business processes, It uses a set of quality management methods, including statistical methods, and creates a special infrastructure of people within the organization ("Black Belts", "Green Belts", etc.) who are experts in these methods, Each Six Sigma project carried out within an organization follows a defined sequence of steps and has quantified financial targets (cost reduction or profit increase). The term Six Sigma originated from terminology associated with manufacturing, specifically terms associated with statistical modeling of manufacturing processes. The maturity of a manufacturing process can be described by a sigma rating indicating its yield, or the percentage of defect-free products it creates. A six sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of the products manufactured are statistically expected to be free of defects (3.4 defects per million). Motorola set a goal of "six sigma" for all of its manufacturing operations, and this goal became a byword for the management and engineering practices used to achieve it. Six Sigma originated as a set of practices designed to improve manufacturing processes and eliminate defects, but its application was subsequently extended to other types of business processes as well. In Six Sigma, a defect is defined as any process output that does not meet customer specifications, or that could lead to creating an output that does not meet customer specifications. The idea of Six Sigma was actually “born” at Motorola in the 1970s, when a senior executive criticized Motorola’s bad quality. Through this criticism, the company discovered the connection between increasing quality and decreasing costs in the production process. Before, everybody thought that quality would cost extra money. In fact, it was reducing costs, as costs for repair or control sank. In 1986, Motorola invented the Six Sigma quality improvement process. This became a global standard. Six Sigma was heavily inspired by six preceding decades of quality improvement methodologies such as quality control, TQM[1], and Zero Defects[2], based on the work of pioneers such as Shewhart, Deming, Juran, Ishikawa, Taguchi[3] and others. [1] TQM is an integrative philosophy of management for continuously improving the quality of products and processes. It is used around the world. TQM functions on the premise that the quality of products and processes is the responsibility of everyone who is involved with the creation or consumption of the products or services offered by an organization. In other words, TQM capitalizes on the involvement of management, workforce, suppliers, and even customers, in order to meet or exceed customer expectations. The nine common TQM practices are 1. cross-functional product design 2. process management 3. supplier quality management 4. customer involvement 5. information and feedback 6. committed leadership 7. strategic planning 8. cross-functional training 9. employee involvement The main difference between TQM and Six Sigma is the approach. [2] "Zero Defects" is Step 7 of "Philip Crosby's 14 Step Quality Improvement Process”. Although applicable to any type of enterprise, it has been primarily adopted within industry supply chains wherever large volumes of components are being purchased (common items such as nuts and bolts are good examples). Zero Defects was a quality control program originated by the Denver Division of the Martin Marietta Corporation (now Lockheed Martin) on the Titan Missile program, which carried the first astronauts into space in the late 1960s. It was then incorporated into the Orlando Division, which built the mobile Pershing Missile System, deployed in Europe; the Sprint antiballistic missile, never deployed; and a number of air to ground missiles for the Vietnam War. [3] http://pvrguymale.blogspot.com/2011/05/masters-of-innovation-pioneers-of.html  

  There is a better way folks! Japan invested early and became a major player in international player thanks to Deming and others. North America has sacrificed scope and time in favor of costs. 

 

 

Whatever Happened to Six Sigma?