19 Facts About Six Sigma

Six Sigma is a set of techniques and tools for process improvement.

Six Sigma strategies seek to improve manufacturing quality by identifying and removing the causes of defects and minimizing variability in manufacturing and business processes.

Each Six Sigma project follows a defined methodology and has specific value targets, such as reducing pollution or increasing customer satisfaction.

Motorola pioneered Six Sigma, setting a "six sigma" goal for its manufacturing business.

In 1998 GE announced $350 million in cost savings thanks to Six Sigma, which was an important factor in the spread of Six Sigma.

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Term Six Sigma comes from statistics, specifically from the field of statistical quality control, which evaluates process capability.

In one of the criticisms of Six Sigma, practitioners using this approach spend a lot of time transforming data from non-normal to normal using transformation techniques.

However, lean management primarily focuses on eliminating waste through tools that target organizational efficiencies while integrating a performance improvement system, while Six Sigma focuses on eliminating defects and reducing variation.

Six Sigma projects follow two project methodologies, inspired by W Edwards Deming's Plan–Do–Study–Act Cycle, each with five phases.

Formal Six Sigma programs adopt an elite ranking terminology similar to martial arts systems like judo to define a hierarchy that spans business functions and levels.

Six Sigma claimed that based on his stack, all processes shift 1.

Six Sigma contains a large number of tools and techniques that work well in small to mid-size organizations.

The infrastructure described as necessary to support Six Sigma is a result of the size of the organization rather than a requirement of Six Sigma itself.

Similarly, Six Sigma implementation was studied at one of the largest engineering and construction companies in the world: Bechtel Corporation, where after an initial investment of $30 million in a Six Sigma program that included identifying and preventing rework and defects, over $200 million were saved.

Six Sigma has played an important role by improving the accuracy of allocation of cash to reduce bank charges, automatic payments, improving the accuracy of reporting, reducing documentary credit defects, reducing check collection defects, and reducing variation in collector performance.

Example, Bank of America announced in 2004 that Six Sigma had helped it increase customer satisfaction by 10.

Lean Six Sigma was adopted in 2003 at Stanford hospitals and was introduced at Red Cross hospitals in 2002.

The accepted Six Sigma scoring system thus cannot be equated to actual normal distribution probabilities for the stated number of standard deviations, and this has been a key bone of contention over how Six Sigma measures are defined.

One criticism voiced by Yasar Jarrar and Andy Neely from the Cranfield School of Management's Centre for Business Performance is that while Six Sigma is a powerful approach, it can unduly dominate an organization's culture; and they add that much of the Six Sigma literature – in a remarkable way – lacks academic rigor:.