SIX SIGMA
INTRODUCTION – Bill Smith while working for Motorola in 1986 pioneered Six Sigma, which is a collection of tools, techniques, disciplined, data-driven approach, statistical-based & continuous improvement methodology for abolishing the defects, drawbacks in a product, process or service which is based on quality management fundamentals.
Tons of companies around the globe have adopted Six Sigma as a way of doing business for putting results on financial statements. The word “Sigma” is a statistical term involved in the measurement of how far a given process deviates from perfection.
QUOTES
“Quality cannot be copied; there is no step-by-step cookbook that applies equally to all company situations and cultures” – Ernst & Young
“With Lean Six Sigma, the tools are the easy part, changing organizational culture is the hard part “–John Novak
“Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them” – Albert Einstein
STATISTICS – What Numbers have to Say?
| Sigma level | Defects per million | Yield |
| 6 | 3.4 | 99.99966% |
| 5 | 230 | 99.977% |
| 4 | 6,210 | 99.38% |
| 3 | 66,800 | 93.32% |
| 2 | 308,000 | 69.15% |
| 1 | 690,000 | 30.85% |
- It can be thought of as a measure of process performance, keeping in mind the Six Sigma goal.
- Once a current performance of the process is measured, the goal is to continually improve the process ahead by reaching to a topmost sigma level.
- Lower the defects per million, higher the sigma level, higher the yield, greater is customer satisfaction!
DESCRIPTION – Let’s take a Deep Dive
As the name suggests Six Sigma is backed by Six major concepts let’s understand each of them in detail:-
1) Design for 6 sigma:-We need to design a model that is customer-centric i.e. catering the needs of a customer
2) Variation: – Whatever the customer sees and feels that a product must be integrated in that way, we need to implement that
3) Process Capability: – Meeting the end goal deliverables are of paramount significance for a product maker
4) Defect: – Defect is the percentage of an error wherein the product fails to match its performance from the one which is projected earlier.
5) Critical to Quality: – Quality is the most prominent factor that a customer looks at, for which proper timely inspection of the quality of a product must be ensured
6) Stable operations:- This factor determines how pertinent & stringent the processes are for a product to be streamlined which fits completely in a customer demanded framework
Benefits of Six Sigma
- It plays a great role in accelerating the rate of improvement for a product, as the objective of 6 sigma itself is to lower down the error rate/defect percentage in a product.
- Implementing the six sigma strategy meets all the deliverables for a company which enhances a rich customer experience which is better for both the employee & the client.
- It also acts a proactive methodology that identifies & provides recommendations for potential threats lined up for a company which may incur a huge amount of losses for capital & etc.
Disadvantages of Six Sigma
- Cost of implementation is highly expensive which cannot be incurred by small business.
- Since it inspects business scenarios minute by minute, a tremendous amount of data is generated leading to time-consuming & complicated procedures.
- For small start-ups, they have to find six-sigma certified trainers in order to conduct some in-house workshops without any formal certification which at times again becomes infeasible for the cost aspect for them to afford.
CONCLUSION
Aggregating, we can say that 6 sigma is all about creating a culture that demands perfection & delivers its product makers a complete fully equipped tool to enable them in overcoming the performance gaps by implementing a data-driven problem-solving approach.
It also aims at reducing the variability which is a primary sign of defects, which fulfills the objective of 6 sigma reducing variation & delivering a product’s result as close as possible to the desire of a customer. After all, there’s only one thing that matters, customer satisfaction!
Author – Aman Gupta
Scrutiny – Riya Chandra
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