SIX SIGMA – AN OVERVIEW

Six Sigma is a business management strategy, originally developed by Motorola that today enjoys wide-spread application in many sectors of industry.


Six Sigma seeks to identify and remove the causes of defects and errors in manufacturing and/or service delivery and business processes. It uses a set of management methods, including statistical methods, and creates a dedicated infrastructure
of people within the organization who are experts in these methods. Six Sigma aims to deliver


“Breakthrough Performance Improvement” from current levels in business and customer relevant operational and performance measures.
Business or operational measures are elements like:


• Customer Satisfaction Rating Score
• Time taken to respond to customer queries or
complaints
• % Defect rate in Manufacturing
• Cost of executing a business process transaction
• Yield (Productivity) of service operations or
production
• Inventory turns (or) Days of Inventory carried
• Billing and Cash Collection lead time
• Equipment Efficiency (Downtime, time taken to fix
etc.,)
• Accident / Incident rate
• Time taken to recruit personnel and so on…


Six Sigma initiatives are planned and implemented in organizations on “Project by Project”
basis. Each project aims not only to improve a chosen performance metric but also sustain the improvement achieved.


Each Six Sigma project carried out within an organization follows a defined sequence of steps and has quantified financial targets (revenue increase, cost reduction or profit increase)
Six Sigma

Six Sigma – Historical background

Six Sigma was originally developed as a set of practices designed to improve manufacturing processes and eliminate defects, but its application was subsequently extended to many other types of business processes as well. In Six Sigma, a defect is defined as anything that could lead
to customer dissatisfaction and / or does not meet business set specifications.
The elements of the methodology were first formulated by Bill Smith at Motorola in 1986. Six Sigma was heavily inspired by six preceding decades of quality improvement methodologies such as quality control, TQM, and Zero

Six Sigma asserts that:

• Continuous efforts to achieve stable and predictable process results (i.e. reduce process variation) are of vital importance to business success.


• Manufacturing and business processes have characteristics that can be measured,analyzed, improved and controlled.


• Achieving sustained performance and quality improvement requires commitment from the entire organization, particularly from top-level management.

How is Six Sigma different?

Features that differentiate Six Sigma apart from previous quality
improvement initiatives include –


• A clear focus on achieving measurable and quantifiable financial returns from any Six Sigma project.


• An increased emphasis on strong and passionate management leadership and support


• A special organization infrastructure of "Champions," "Master Black Belts," "Black Belts”, “Green Belts” etc. to lead and implement the Six Sigma approach


• A clear commitment to making decisions on the basis of verifiable data, rather than assumptions and guesswork.


• The term "Six Sigma" is derived from a field of statistics known as process capability study. It refers to the ability of processes to produce a very high proportion of output
within specification. Processes that operate with "Six sigma quality" over the short term are assumed to produce (long-term) defect levels below 3.4 defects per million opportunities (DPMO).Six Sigma's implicit goal is to improve all processes to that level of quality or better.


In recent years, Six Sigma has sometimes been combined with lean manufacturing(management) to yield a methodology named Lean Six Sigma.


Six Sigma Methodology


The two key methodologies are - 


DMAIC and DMADV, both inspired by Deming's Plan-Do-
Check-Act Cycle.


• DMAIC is used to improve an existing business process;


• DMADV is used to create new product or process
designs.


DMAIC


The basic DMAIC methodology consists of the following five
steps:


• Define process improvement goals that are consistent with customer demands and the enterprise strategy.


• Measure key aspects of the current process and collect relevant data.


• Analyze the data to verify cause-and-effect relationships. Determine what the relationships are, and attempt to ensure that all factors have been considered.


• Improve or optimize the process based upon data analysis using techniques like Design of Experiments.


• Control to ensure that any deviations from target are corrected before they result in defects. Set up pilot runs to establish process capability, move on to production, set up
control mechanisms and continuously monitor the process.


DMADV (also known as DFSS – Design for Six Sigma)


The basic methodology consists of the following five
steps:


• Define design goals that are consistent with
customer demands and the enterprise strategy.


• Measure and identify CTQs (characteristics that
are Critical To Quality), product capabilities,
production process capability, and risks.Analyze to develop and design alternatives, create a high-level design and evaluate design capability to select the best design.


• Design details, optimize the design, and plan for design verification. This phase may
require simulations.


• Verify the design, set up pilot runs, implement the
production process and hand it over to the process owners.


Six Sigma Implementation roles
One of the key innovations of Six Sigma is the professionalizing of improvement management functions. Prior to Six Sigma, quality and improvement management in practice was largely relegated to the production floor and to statisticians in a
separate quality department. Six Sigma borrows martial arts ranking terminology to define a hierarchy (and career path) that cuts across all business functions and a promotion path
straight into the executive suite.


Six Sigma identifies several key roles for its successful implementation


• Executive Leadership includes the CEO and other members of top management. They are responsible for setting up a vision for Six Sigma implementation. They also empower the other role holders with the freedom and resources to explore new ideas for
breakthrough improvements.


• Champions are responsible for Six Sigma implementation across the organization in an integrated manner. The Executive Leadership draws them from upper management.Champions also act as mentors to Black Belts.


• Master Black Belts, identified by champions,act as in-house coaches and subject matter experts on Six Sigma. They devote 100% of their time to Six Sigma. They assist champions
and guide Black Belts and Green Belts. Apart from statistical tasks, their time is spent on ensuring consistent application of Six Sigma across various functions and departments.


• Black Belts operate under Champions and Master Black Belts to apply Six Sigma methodology to specific projects. They devote 100% of their time to Six Sigma. They primarily focus on Six Sigma project execution, whereas Champions and Master Black
Belts focus on identifying projects/functions for Six Sigma.


• Green Belts are employees who undertake Six Sigma 
implementation along with their other job responsibilities. They operate under the guidance of Black Belts and
Champions.

Six Sigma Benefits

Leading companies have implemented Six Sigma and realized gainful results. By the late 1990s, about two-thirds of the Fortune 500 organizations had begun Six Sigma
initiatives with the aim of reducing costs and improving quality.


Interested in launching Lean Six Sigma initiatives at your organization?

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