Six Sigma is the most powerful breakthrough management tool ever developed. It delivers high customer satisfaction, increased market share, cost reduction and dramatic improvement in the bottom line profitability for a company of any size.

What is Six Sigma?
Sigma is a statistical unit of measure, which reflects process capability. The term “sigma” is used to designate the distribution or spread about the mean (average) of any process or procedure. The sigma scale of measure is perfectly correlated to such characteristics as defects-per-unit, parts per million defective (PPM), and a probability of a failure/error.

For a business or manufacturing process, the sigma capability is a metric that indicates how well that process is performing. The higher the sigma values, the better. Sigma measures the capability of the process to perform defect-free work. A defect is anything that results in customer dissatisfaction. The sigma value indicates how often defects are likely to occur.

The higher the sigma value, the less likely a process will produce defects. As sigma increases, costs go down, cycle time goes down, and customer satisfaction goes up. A level of six sigma (about 3.4 defects per million) represents the world-class quality. That means all products and business processes are defect free. But average companies today function at 3 to 4 sigma (about 66,807 and 6,210 defects per million) and this translate to lose 15 to 40% of their revenue due to poor quality.

Six Sigma means….
Simply defined, Six Sigma is a process to identify and eliminate waste. Six Sigma is:

• A measurement and management philosophy
• Metrics for world class organization
• Customer focused
• Eliminate variation
• A tool set to make that change practical
• Empowered people
• A common language for discussing, measuring and comparing process performance
• Exponential improvement
• A powerful competitive advantage

The Six Sigma approach has been used successfully in leading companies such as AlliedSignal, GE, Lockheed Martin, JP Morgan & Chase, American Express, Seagate Technology, ABB, etc. It was first begun at Motorola, but received international acclaim when Jack Welch CEO at GE claimed billions of dollar in savings.

“The Six Sigma Quality initiatives has lowered GE’s costs by dramatically reducing rework, simplifying processes, and reducing direct material costs. Design for six sigma has been a key to the introduction of numerous high-quality new products with significantly enhanced features.”

John F. Welch jr.
General Electric Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
GE Annual Report 2000.