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What Is Six Sigma
What Is Six Sigma
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WHAT IS SIX SIGMA?
Daniel L. Quinn
At the end of the day, Six Sigma is much less of a technical program,
although it has a lot of technical tools, than it is a leadership and cultural change program.1
Interview with Dave Cote, President and CEO, Honeywell International
million opportunities, or a Six Sigma level. Our people coined the term
and it stuck. It was shorthand for people to understand that if you can
control the variation, you can achieve remarkable results.3
Interview with Robert W. Galvin, Chairman Emeritus of Motorola, Inc.
Welchs previous prediction. Interest in Six Sigma really took off after that
article appeared, an interest that was fed by GEs continued success with Six
Sigma and Jack Welchs speeches and books.
I think it was both. You could lean either way in terms of the
natural intelligence that finally emerged. Was it a great discovery or just
remarkably good mathematics and common sense? You can interpret it
either way.9
MIKEL HARRY: I think Six Sigma is now squarely focused on quality of
business, where TQM is concerned with the business of quality. That is,
when you adopt TQM, you become involved in the business of doing quality, and when you adopt Six Sigma, youre concerned about the quality of
business. In a nutshell, TQM is a defect-focused quality improvement initiative, whereas Six Sigma is an economics-based strategic business management system. Didnt start off that way, but it has evolved that way.
So I see Six Sigma as a vector change. As I look across the history of
quality from the era of craftsmanship, its fairly continuous; each step is a
logical continuance of the preceding step, built off the same fundamental
core beliefs and principles, whereas Six Sigma represents a radical departure from that continuum. Its actually a reassessment of quality from a
whole new perspective and frame of reference. Its a reinvention of the history, if you will, but its a birth of a new history, and thats the way to say
it. Its been the evolution of a business management revolution.10
TQM, JIT, Lean, and BPR see work as a set of interrelated processes, reintegrating what was decomposed by Taylorism into isolated tasks. Process
performance improvement is the focus.
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create processes with maximum efficiency and effectiveness. And by integrating process improvement (DMAIC), process, product and service design
(i.e., Design for Six Sigma, or DFSS), and process management into a comprehensive approach to implementing business strategy, Six Sigma finally
evolved into a program that could be used to drive the business instead of narrowly focusing on quality.
In the May 2002 issue of Six Sigma Forum, Matt Barney of Motorola tells
how the second generation of Six Sigma differs from the first generation at
the place of Six Sigmas birth:
While Six Sigma was originally created as a continuous quality improvement
technique, today it is significantly different than the Total Quality Management
(TQM) approach of the 1980s. [Here are] the key differences between Six
Sigma and TQM:
Six Sigma
Executive ownership
Business strategy execution system
Truly cross-functional
Focused training with verifiable
return
Business results oriented
Total Quality
Self-directed work teams
Quality initiative
Largely within a single function
No mass training in statistics and
quality
Return on investment
Quality oriented
. . . The next generation Six Sigma is an overall high performance system that
executes business strategy.13
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Here are some ways in which leaders reinforce the kind of culture and
organization they wish to create:
When asked what role leaders need to play when driving change in their
companies, Kenneth W. Freeman, chairman and CEO of Quest Diagnostics
Incorporated, gave the following advice:
If you want to drive change in a company, you have got to do it with
more than words. Yes, communication is vitally important. But you have
to mesh that communication in terms of where you want the company to
go with actually providing some participation on your own end in terms
of modeling the behavior you want to have happen. This may sound
kind of old-fashioned, but I really believe that in corporate America
today, there are not a lot of companies where senior leaders are really
willing to roll up their sleeves and do the work. Many people say that a
CEOs role is to delegatejust set the pronouncement and then come
back next week or next month to make sure they did it. Thats fine for
some companies, but I think if you really want to drive permanent
change, you need to put your feet, not just your mouth, into the game.
That is the single biggest thing a leader can do. My job is to set the
example in driving accelerated commitment and strong performance.17
James Champy, in Reengineering Management: The Mandate for New
Leadership, says that managements agenda needs to be redefined: If you
havent gotten it by now, let me say it plainly: Purpose, culture, process, and
people replace strategy, structure, and systems as our superordinate questions.18 Commitment to Six Sigma puts purpose, culture, process, and peopleincluding the customersquarely on the leaders agenda.
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rewarded, the careers of the future, the role managers will play, and how strategy will be executed.
Results are achieved through people. With Six Sigma, work and the people who do it are refocused from tasks to processes. Six Sigma gives everyone in the organization a common language and set of tools for achieving
what is valuable to the customer. Scientific management applied to employees doing tasks is replaced with the scientific method being practiced by
every employee working in a process. Bill Quinn of Johnson & Johnson,
where Six Sigma is part of its Process Excellence initiative, eloquently
expressed the vision of what it means to be a Six Sigma company in our interview with him, and we dont think we could say it any better:
I would love to see it continue to grow and expand to every outpost
within Johnson & Johnson. I would like to see it become the language
of improvement within Johnson & Johnson, and I think thats something
that time and emphasis will help us get to. I would like to see it help us
meet our business targets and surpass them for both top-line and
bottom-line growth. Id like to see it help us meet our responsibilities to
our customers and to regulatory bodies around the world, so that the
products and services that we make are flawless or virtually flawless . . . that we use it as a way to complement our efforts from the
regulatory standpoint and we live up to our regulatory responsibilities
around the world . . . that it helps us live up to our environmental
responsibilities, both regulatory and just doing whats right around the
world, as a corporation and as a global citizen. Id like to see Process
Excellence help our leaders become extremely focused on results. Id
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like to see them use facts and measurements very wisely to help them
provide direction in the organizations and to help them ensure that we
get these fantastic business results. Id like to see it help employees
throughout Johnson & Johnson find ways that they can be successful, so
that there isnt a problem that they feel that they cant solve, where they
can use the input, not only the methodologies, but the leadership system, to be able to benefit not only the company, but also themselves
through the thrill and the exhilaration of achievement, of having solved
things that people before them havent been able to solve. Thats a wonderful thing. When you do that, then our customers end up with products
that are far better than theyve ever had. Employees have far more
opportunity and satisfaction. The local community is better off because
were leading, were going well beyond our compliance to local regulations, and were pleasing our shareowners, too. Thats what I would
like to see, and I think Process Excellence can play a substantial role in
helping us do that.20
CONCLUSION
Six Sigma is becoming a cornerstone philosophy among the worlds leading
corporations because it has proven itself by generating substantial business
returns. Six Sigma is also seen as a great training ground for twenty-firstcentury leadership. It is now fairly commonplace for people who are welltrained in Six Sigma to achieve top leadership positions.
It is only fitting to end this chapter with words from Six Sigmas
staunchest champion, Jack Welch: We believed then and we are convinced
today . . . that there is an infinite capacity to improve everythingbut
there was no methodology or disciple attached to that belief. There is now.
Its Six Sigma quality, along with a culture of learning, sharing, and unending excitement.21