Six Sigma

Introduction

Six Sigma is a business management strategy in which defects reduce to 3.4 parts millions. Six Sigma stands for Six Standard deviations from the arithmetic mean. It tells us how often defects are likely to occur.
A defect may be thought of as anything that results in customer dissatisfaction. The higher the value of sigma, the lower the probability of a defect occurring. Six Sigma statically ensures that 99.99966% of all produced products in a process are of acceptable quality.
According to above percentage of acceptable quality, if we are in 0.0 Sigma we have 933,133 defects in one million opportunities, in 1 Sigma we have 691,462 defects, and if we get 6 Sigma we have only 3.4 defects.

Concept Of Six Sigma:

Sigma	Defects Per Million
0.0 Sigma	933,193
0.5 Sigma	841,345
1.0 Sigma	691,462
1.5 Sigma	500,000
2.0 Sigma	308,538
2.5 Sigma	158,655
3.0 Sigma	66,807
3.5 Sigma	22,750
4.0 Sigma	6,210
4.5 Sigma	1,350
5.0 Sigma	233
5.5 Sigma	32
6.0 Sigma	3.4

If any process fails to meet the criteria of given table, it is reanalyzed, altered and implemented. If no any improvement found than the process is reanalyzed, altered and again implemented. This cycle is continued until any improvement is seen. Once an improvement is found, it is documented and the knowledge is spread across other units in the company so they can implement this new process and reduce their defects.
Pioneered at Motorola in the mid-1980s, Six Sigma was initially targeted to quantify the defects occurred during manufacturing processes, and to reduce those defects to a very small level. Motorola claimed to have saved several million dollars.
Another very popular success was at GE. Six Sigma contributed over US $ 300 million to GE's 1997 operating income. Today Six Sigma is delivering business excellence, higher customer satisfaction, and superior profits by dramatically improving every process in an enterprise from financial to operational to production. Six Sigma has become a darling of a wide spectrum of industries, from health care to insurance to telecommunications to software.

How does Six Sigma work

The driving force behind any Six Sigma project comes from its primary focus - "bringing breakthrough improvements in a systematic manner by managing variation and reducing defects". This requires us to ask tougher questions, raise the bar significantly, and force people to think out of the box and to be innovative. The objective is to stretch, stretch mentally and not physically.
To make this journey successful there is a methodology(s) to support Six Sigma implementations. There are 2 potential scenarios - (a) there is already an existing process(s) that is working "reasonably" well and (b) there is no process at all. A bad process is as good as no process.

Scenario (a) focuses on significant process improvements and requires use of DMAIC:

Define process goals in terms of key critical parameters (i.e. critical to quality or critical to production) on the basis of customer requirements or Voice Of Customer (VOC)
Measure the current process performance in context of goals
Analyze the current scenario in terms of causes of variations and defects
Improve the process by systematically reducing variation and eliminating defects
Control future performance of the process

Scenario (a) focuses on significant process improvements and requires use of DMAIC:

Identify process goals in terms of critical parameters, industry & competitor benchmarks, VOC
Design involves enumeration of potential solutions and selection of the best
Optimize performance by using advanced statistical modeling and simulation techniques and design refinements
Validate that design works in accordance to the process goals
Note, sometimes a DMAIC project may turn into a DFSS project because the process in question requires complete re-design to bring about the desired degree of improvement. Such a discovery usually occurs during improvement phase of DMAIC.
In addition to the methodology, what counts in this journey is being smart and innovative.

We can help

As an experienced Quality Management Consultants, we are able to assist you in Six Sigma implementation. Our method will help you save time and resources in technical issues.
Please feel free to Contact us, if you require more information about our services in helping your organization in Six Sigma Implementation.