Six Sigma Demystified
There might be a few words that would send shivers down your spine (the name of your terror professor perhaps, your mother-in-law, Income Tax to name a few) but Six Sigma should not be one of them.
While the mention of the phrase conjures images of a secret fraternal society, the one you encounter in Dan Brown's books, Six Sigma is a far cry from it. (Although Six Sigma infrastructure is driven by experts such as Green belts and Black belts)
So what is Six sigma?
Six Sigma is a quality improvement methodolgy that was first implement by Motorola in the early 80's. GE and Allied Signal eventually adopted it which propelled its popularity.
Actually Six Sigma can be described in two ways. First, you could think of "Six Sigma" as a description of a process. A process that operates at "Six Sigma" is almost flawless. It generates only 3.4 defects per million opportunities. In concrete terms, if you are an electric company operating at "Six Sigma" level you would only have one hour of power failure every 34 years.
The other description of "Six Sigma" is the rigorous and data-driven methodology of eliminating defects. There are 2 types of sub-methodologies, the first one is the DMAIC (Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control) for improving an existing process. and the second one is the DFSS or Design for Six Sigma for designing new processes.
So that's it. Six Sigma is 1) a description of a process or 2) a methodology of achieving a near-perfect process.
Nothing complex. Nothing arcane. Nothing intimidating.
So the next time somebody blurts out Six Sigma, no need to scurry off to another direction. You now know what it means.
