The Buzz About Six Sigma

Six Sigma often characterized in terms like standard deviation, process capability, defects per million opportunities, and process stability is a methodology that is changing the face of problem solving as we know it today. Six Sigma was originally developed by a Motorola executive in 1980 as a philosophy to achieve greater operational efficiency. It was further adapted by General Electric, while under the leadership of Jack Welch, for utilization in non-manufacturing companies or transactional environments. Today the Six Sigma Methodology is used in almost every industry...Health care, Financial Services, and Government to name a few. If seeking to improve existing processes Six Sigma Practitioners use the DMAIC - Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control process to achieve the goal of 3.4 defects per million opportunities.

What is a Defect?

Any product, process, or service that does not meet your customer's expectations.

The Concept?

1. Understanding the customer's expectations and translating the same into quantifiable measurements. Simply stated, what are your customer's needs? If you are a credit card company, perhaps your customers want payments posted faster. A Six Sigma Practitioner would seek to define faster in terms of days, hours, or minutes by identifying and contacting the customer base.

2. Using data to understand if the current process performance is capable of meeting the customer's expectations. Once customers are identified and expectations defined, it is time to determine if the current process is capable of meeting the customer's expectations 99.999966% of the time or at Six Sigma. If the process is not capable of performing at Six Sigma, subject matter experts and process participants are assembled in a team to understand "why."

3. Validating the root causes that hinder a process from performing as expected. After root causes have been identified, either current process data or historical data is collected and analyzed to determine true root causes. In the credit card example above, the team may have identified that posting delays occur as a result of payments being sent to the wrong processing center. Data would then be collected to verify if this is correct.

4. Implementing solutions and establish control measurements. Customer don't experience the average, they only feel the variation. Therefore, after validating actual root causes, solutions are identified and implemented that reduce or eliminate process variation. To complete the DMAIC process, controls are then put in place to sustain the improvements.

Why Six Sigma?

Companies today seek to be "best in class." This can only be achieved when customer expectations are met through high quality, competitively priced, and on-time delivery of products and services.