Six Sigma is a well-recognised quality improvement tool. Over many years the methodology has been developed and refined to approach the most complex of improvement challenges. If you want to raise the consistency of what you do, the Six Sigma will assist you. You don’t want any of your customers to feel as if they have received a poor service, do you?
Whilst it is built around a disciplined process for improved results, Six Sigma is a very flexible concept. Since the mid 1980’s it has been used effectively to reduce defects in what an organisation produces or the services it provides. Six Sigma referred to a performance target of 3.4 defects per million operations or ‘opportunities’ (DPMO). Motorola and General Electric were the first real developers of the system beyond it being a purely statistical metric.
GE in particular showed that it achieved multi-billion dollars of bottom-line improvements from Six Sigma. Six Sigma was accepted as an effective mainstream management methodology.
By using Six Sigma, you can develop your processes to improve your organisation by
- Training your people to focus on key performance areas
- Understanding your strategy and objectives
- Delivering the things that your customers need most
- Developing the best processes to achieve that delivery
- Measuring and improving your processes continually
Top-Down
Six Sigma works best when instigated from the top of your organisation. Leading well can ensure that you will
- Link your critical business improvement efforts to your strategy
- Establish teams to attack high-impact projects.
- Accelerate improved business results.
- Govern the efforts of your teams and people to achieve sustained improvement
DMAIC and DMAICT
These acronyms are an easy way to remember some of the main steps in implementing Six Sigma in your organisation.
- D – Define opportunity
- M – Measure performance
- A – Analyse opportunity
- I – Improve performance
- C – Control performance
- T – Transfer best practice (across your organisation)
At IiE we have specialist associates who are expert in helping organisations improve processes and business results that really contribute to the bottom line. If you want to know more contact us now.