Six Sigma

Six Sigma is a management technique that aims to develop and deliver near perfect products and services. It has been claimed that Six Sigma is only useful for problems that are "hard to find, but easy to fix" as contrasted with the radical re-engineering approach, whose advocates focus on problems that are "easy to find, but hard to fix."

The term "Six Sigma" refers to statistical constructs that measure how far a given process deviates from perfection. Six Sigma is of course a process, as well as a discipline that measures how many defects exist in a business process and then systematically determines how to remove them. Its focus on process quality evolved out of the quality movement that began in the 1980s. It is, however, now used for a much wider range of process improvement activities. It could in fact be applied to many different types of processes, since measured attributes can vary greatly. Companies such as General Electric have completely internalized Six Sigma as a way of doing business.

The principles of quality applied in implementing Six Sigma are almost always defined in terms of the company vision and its strategy. Processes are designed from the perspective of the customer and are enabled by a commitment to thinking in terms of processes across the organization. Metrics such as performance, reliability, price, on-time delivery, service and accuracy provide the targets. The customer focus creates market knowledge that can illuminate the need for process change in areas where the company can add value or implement improvements that customers themselves value most. Advocates of Six Sigma believe customers are interested in comparing, not the average performance of companies, but the relative merits of all process touch-points used to deliver goods or services to them.

Rigorous Six Sigma requires that a process produce no more than 3.4 defects per million occurrences of the process, but its main goal is continuous improvement. In fact there are very few organization that can claim that they have achieved the Six Sigma goal of 3.4 defects per million. The object is to ensure the organization has an on-going program to improve its processes using Six Sigma principles with the ultimate goal of reaching the 3.4 defect per million objective. Six Sigma principles apply not only to manufacturing but also to the delivery of services. It can be used just as easily by the travel industry as it can be by the automobile industry. In General Electric's implementation, Six Sigma revolves around just a few core concepts:

Critical to quality: Attributes the customer values most.
Defect: Failure to deliver what the customer expects.
Process capability: What a process can deliver.
Variation: What the customer sees and feels.
Stable operations: Ensuring consistent, predictable processes to improve what the customer sees and feels.

Steven Bonacorsi is a Senior Master Black Belt instructor and coach. Steven Bonacorsi has trained hundreds of Master Black Belts, Black Belts, Green Belts, and Project Sponsors and Excutive Leaders in Lean Six Sigma DMAIC and Design for Lean Six Sigma process improvement methodologies.

Bonacorsi Consulting, LLC.
Steven Bonacorsi, President
Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt
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