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STRUCTURE AND PURPOSE OF SIX SIGMA

1. TOP MANAGEMENT
2. SIX SIGMA SEPARATE
3. SIX SIGMA INTEGRATED
4. SIX SIGMA FROM THE BOTTOM UP

What is the purpose of Six Sigma?

Six Sigma is a method that provides organizations tools to improve the
capability of their business processes. This increase in performance
and decrease in process variation helps lead to defect reduction and
improvement in profits, employee morale, and quality of products or
services.

The core Six Sigma principles

 Always focus on the customer.
 Understand how work really happens.
 Make your processes flow smoothly.
 Reduce waste and concentrate on value.
 Stop defects through removing variation.
 Get buy-in from the team through collaboration.
 Make your efforts systematic and scientific.

Six Sigma–Project Selection Should be Top-Down, not Bottom-

Up
In the thirteenth chapter of their book Six Sigma:  The Breakthrough Management Strategy
Revolutionizing the World’s Top Corporations, the authors Mikel Harry, Ph.D., and Richard
Schroeder discuss how to select and prioritize Six Sigma projects within a corporation.
There is a top-down approach, where a senior manager called a Senior Champion considers a
company’s major business issues and objectives and proposes a series of strategic
improvement projects.   A Six Sigma Champion then takes this strategic vision and identifies
processes, CTQs (Critical-to-Quality Characteristics), and specific opportunities for
improvement.
The bottom-up approach is where production managers make suggestions for projects on their
needs to achieve budget reductions, resolve specific quality problems, or improve process flow.
Which of these two approaches do the authors favor?   Not surprisingly, given the word
“Strategy” in the title of their book, they recommend the top-down approach.   This is because
the focus should be on Six Sigma projects that offer the greatest financial and customer-
satisfaction leverage.   Although the authors don’t explicitly say so, I believe part of the reason
for that is practical, in that you want to get the best bang for your buck, especially if you are
paying for the salary of the Black Belts and their training.   But I can see where another reason
is political.   Whenever you decide to make a sweeping change in an organization, as is
required with the Six Sigma Breakthrough Strategy, you are going to get some resistance from
the “old guard”.   This is not a reference to chronological age, but psychological flexibility.   For
some, a new way of doing things gets people out of their comfort zone, which by definition is not
a comfortable place to be.   But let’s say you are trying to implement a Six Sigma Breakthrough
Strategy as a Senior Champion, and yet face resistance from senior managers.
When your first projects are those that are designed to create the greatest financial and
customer-satisfaction improvements, those first results will also be political leverage to use in
senior management circles to convince those who are skeptical of the Breakthrough Strategy.  
It gives people who are skeptical a way to save face by saying, “well, I was skeptical, but I can’t
argue with the results.”   It makes it a discussion about progress and principles, and not about
personalities.
And that is yet another reason why a top-down approach is best.   The reason why a bottom-up
approach will not work is that, although production managers may identify possible Six Sigma
projects, it is up to the Six Sigma champion to choose which of those projects most align with
the vision proposed by the Senior Champion.
That’s how you get the entire company working as a team, which is the fastest way for a Six
Sigma Breakthrough Strategy to be implemented.
This is all good in theory, of course, but there must be tangible, objective criteria used to
prioritize Six Sigma projects.  Those key metrics used to compare Six Sigma projects will be
discussed in the next post.
WHAT IS SIX SIGMA?
The Six Sigma methodology is a repository of various proven quality principles
and techniques. Elaborating on the quality circle of William Edwards Deming, Six
Sigma is structured in 5 phases:

 Define,
 Measure,
 Analyse,
 Improve,
 Control.
A Six Sigma professional goes through all stages and optimizes the business
processes step by step.

WHY SIX SIGMA?

Sigma (σ) is the Greek letter which stands for the standard deviation of
a population. The goal of the Six Sigma (6σ) methodology is a defect-free
process. The sigma level indicates the extent to which the organization complies
towards having a defect-free process. Achieving a 6 sigma level literally means:
you make a mistake only 3.4 times out of a million. (i.e. out of a million invoices
you only have to send 3 credit invoices).

Using practical examples our experienced trainers make sure you are
familiarized with the Six Sigma methodology.

SIX SIGMA AS A METHODOLOGY

Traditional organizations accept a 2-3 sigma level, which means that these
organizations are actually accepting  67.000 to 308.000 defects per million
opportunities. The increasing demand for quality from consumers is creating
awareness that organizations have to operate at a higher sigma level. The Six
Sigma methodology provides guidelines for structured business process
improvements to reach the desired sigma level without large investments or
intensive restructuring.

Inter alia the Six Sigma methodology provides for:

 Enhance efficiency, quality and customer satisfaction

 Breakthroughs for “unsolvable” problems
 Short payback times and high ROI
 Powerful roadmap with concrete tools
“Being better is cheaper” – Mikel Harry

Six Sigma is a project-oriented approach for process improvements, which uses

an organizational structure around the Six Sigma methodology to ensure a
successful deployment.

CUSTOMER REQUIREMENTS AS STANDARD FOR

PERFORMANCE
The Voice of the Customer (customer requirements) is the starting point of a Six
Sigma project. Organizations working with the Six Sigma methodology are known
for their high customer satisfaction and world-class performance in terms of
quality. The Six Sigma methodology provides tangible and practical tools to map
customer requirements and use this information as a starting point to improve
processes.

MANUFACTURING VS. SERVICES

Six Sigma is a quality management methodology which originally focussed on
variation reduction in the manufacturing industry. In the past, is was often
believed that quality in the service industry could not be easily be measured.
Over the last decade, friend and foe agree that in the service industry processes
are suitable for measurement thus providing valuable data for variation reduction.