Six Sigma Defined

From a business perspective, six sigma creates value for customers and shareholders by reducing defects and errors, increasing capacity, improving capability, reducing cost, avoiding cost, improving cycle times and growing revenue.

From a quality perspective, achieving six sigma is to produce no more than 3.4 defects or errors per million opportunities. This requires a degree of commitment, rigor and accountability not common in most companies and organization.

From a human perspective, six sigma is a pathway for developing people into business and process leaders, and for enhancing their knowledge, skills and value to the business.

In essence, by reducing harmful variation, six sigma eliminates wasteful steps and operational inefficiencies throughout the entire value chain of an enterprise.

The aim of six sigma is based on the conviction that every process can and should be repeatedly evaluated and significantly improved in terms of time required, resources used, quality, performance, cost and other aspects relevant to the process.

In its simplest form, six sigma is a structure for solving business problems related to both products and services. The structure includes a powerful methodology, specialized software, analytical methods and tools, improvement techniques and trained, capable people - all of which are coordinated and aligned through an overall management system.

Many know six sigma in terms of its systematic, phased problem solving and process improvement methodology, called DMAIC: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control. Various tools are applied in each phase to accomplish that phase's objectives.

• Define - In this phase, poorly performing areas of the business are identified and prioritized for improvement. Projects are defined and launched with well-articulated problem and objective statements that have a beneficial impact, either financially or strategically, to the business.
• Measure - The true process contributing to the observed undesirable performance is identified, and the most likely contributors are determined. The process is thoroughly characterized in terms of the inputs to and the outputs of the process, the accuracy and repeatability of data used to manage the process and the identification of value- and non-value-added activities.
• Analyze - This phase applies appropriate analytical tools to determine with statistical certainty what is actually causing the observed undesirable performance. Knowing what the true causes of the problem are, and their sensitivities/effects, allows for accurate improvement solutions.
• Improve - Causal factors in the process are systematically reviewed to focus on the modifications and adjustments needed achieve the desired level of performance output, and to optimize specific process characteristics.
• Control - This phase incorporates the basic tools of process control and mistake-proofing to assure that the improved performance will be maintained and sustained. This phase is also the handoff from the six sigma improvement specialist to the owners and workers within the process.

Six sigma is about people. It's about people who acquire a new knowledge, a new way of viewing the business and a new way of thinking.

Six sigma is not about establishing a separate quality silo within a company or an organization. Six sigma is an improvement strategy by which employees apply increased knowledge and capability to better solve problems, improve decision-making and subsequently improve the overall performance of the enterprise.

The success of six sigma management

1. Training employees how to properly characterize and optimize product or service characteristics through a systematic sequence of problem definition, measurement, analysis, improvement and control.
2. Establishing a management and infrastructure system to support this effort.