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SIX SIGMA

In 50 Words
Or Less
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The Where and Y:

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s your Six Sigma initiative taking longer than
anticipated to establish itself and produce tan-
gible results? It could well be that key players
are not paying enough attention to the seemingly
simple task of effectively defining problems and
goals for improvement projects—the small process
y-variables.
The ability to provide project leaders—Green
Belts (GBs) and Black Belts (BBs)—with appropri-
ate project definitions in an ongoing project pipe-
line is an underestimated challenge in managing
Six Sigma initiatives. In particular, the initially
divergent understandings of what constitutes a
suitable project starting point within the multiple

• A three-step model explains Six Sigma roles,

responsibilities and the project pipeline.

• Top management must decide to launch an initiative,

middle management must be on board as process
owners and project sponsors, and Green or Black
Belts must launch the projects.
• The focus must be on process outcomes.
layers of organizational issues have put a brake on
many Six Sigma rollouts.
Many project leaders get distracted by the
demands of other stakeholders, including unin-
formed middle management, and forget their y’s.
Put simply, the purpose of a Six Sigma improve-
ment project should be to solve a specific problem
in a specific process.
Yet, as any Six Sigma trainer or coach will attest,
project scopes are typically too broad or too high
level, with weak or unclear problem and goal state-
ments. This can cause newly trained project leaders
to use their precious time trying to boil the ocean.
A key success factor for Six Sigma programs
therefore lies in establishing good project starting
points through appropriate problem definitions.
How is this done?
We learn in Six Sigma to focus on outcomes—the
results that directly affect those at the receiving end
of a process. The process outcome, y, is a function
of an influencing factor or several factors, x. The
goal in a project is to improve a specific problemat-
ic y-variable by discovering the significant x-vari-
ables at the root of the problem. The clearer your
process y-variable and improvement goal, the
clearer the project definition.
Definition Responsibility
Who is responsible for project definitions? Let’s
first examine a key point: Individual projects gener-
ally do not solve business problems. They focus on

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A 1-2-3 Model
For Project Success
process problems, and each project, in turn, makes
one contribution to solving a larger business issue.
To simplify the discussion about Six Sigma
deployment, I propose a simple 1-2-3 model in
Figure 1, which I developed to explain roles,
responsibilities and the project pipeline.
Initiatives and change need to start at the top. It
was that guru of process improvement, W. Edwards
2
Deming, who said, “Quality is made in the board-
room.”1
Top-down deployment is also a well-known fea-
ture of Six Sigma theory. As Mikel Harry and
Richard Schroeder clearly point out, “Six
Sigma is not a grass-roots initiative. It will
not simply bubble up to the surface.”2
A natural downward flow is required
in which everyone understands his or
2
her role, process accountability is estab-
lished and a continual flow of sound
project definitions furthers the necessary
long-term commitment to the program.
The 1-2-3 model reflects this emphasis.
Process Ownership
Top management at level one makes a
decision to launch Six Sigma to confront
serious business challenges (let’s call
them the “big Y’s”).
The next step is to establish people, usu-
ally in middle management, as process
owners and project sponsors (often called
Champions) at level two. In particular, the process
owner is a role required in any company really serious
about process management. Process owners have been
called one of the pillars of Six Sigma3 and are responsi-
ble for the performance of their assigned processes.
Project sponsors may even be recruited from senior
management people if their clout and influence will
better help the team overcome roadblocks.
Level two players are asked to look for improve-
ment potential within the corporate process land-
scape. They do this by translating the business goals
into process goals and identifying those processes
FIGURE 1 1-2-3 Model
• Decide to launch Six Sigma.
Level one
strategic business level
• Define strategic business goals and metrics
(business level dashboard).
(top management)
• Communicate Six Sigma efforts to outside world.
• Create overview of process landscape.
• Translate strategic business goals into process
Level two
goals and metrics (process level dashboard).
operational process level
• Identify process problems and project potential.
(process owners and project sponsors)
• Identify initial y variable for improvement.
• Start first draft of project charter.
• Complete initial project charter.
Level three • Update project charter regularly.
project level • Conduct high level data analysis and voice of the
(Black Belts and Green Belts) customer to confirm or redefine the y variable.
• Analyze root causes of problems in y variable.
QUALITY PROGRESS I APRIL 2004 I 47

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whose outcomes (the “little y’s”) are currently not
meeting targets and that, when improved, will
help achieve the higher level business goals.
The resulting improvement ideas at level two are
then distributed to project leaders (GBs and BBs) at
level three as first draft project definitions. The GBs
and BBs take it from there by fine-tuning their
assigned project definitions, gathering data and
investigating the root causes of variation in the
particular y-variable.
The pattern of 1-3-2
instead of 1-2-3 has some
arguable advantages,
which may explain why
it is so often applied.
This sounds simple enough and is standard Six
Sigma logic. However, experience shows time and
again that, in practice, many organizations initially
fail to grasp or choose to overlook the importance
of following the ordered top-down deployment
flow. In terms of the 1-2-3 model, they follow a pat-
tern of 1-3-2 instead of 1-2-3.
For example, an organization may jump from level
one directly to the launching of projects at level three
to get fast process improvement and financial results.
Or perhaps middle management is too busy or hesi-
tant to participate in yet another quality program, so
its formal involvement is postponed until later.
This pattern of 1-3-2 instead of 1-2-3 has some
arguable advantages, which may explain why it is
so often applied. We’ve all heard, “Get project
results fast to prove the value of the initiative and
show the world we are serious about this. The
managers will get on board eventually.” However,
this approach creates some serious problems that
can drag down a Six Sigma program and threaten
its long-term success.
The roles and responsibilities of level two players
are critical. If their deployment is late, only half-heart-
ed or missing altogether, there is no one in the early
stages to build and maintain the process overview
needed to correctly identify the specific process level
problems hindering the achievement of the business
goals. In other words, no one is translating big Y’s
48 I APRIL 2004 I www.asq.org
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into little y’s. Consequently, the GBs and BBs at level
three of deployment often wind up struggling with a
lack of direction, making projects painfully slow or
failing to produce any meaningful results.
An Example
Let’s look at a scenario of the 1-3-2 model pat-
tern of deployment to illustrate the typical difficul-
ties it can cause:
Faced with disappointing business results and
mounting customer dissatisfaction, top manage-
ment at one company studies the possibility of
introducing Six Sigma with the support of an out-
side consultancy and launches a program with
much fanfare. So far, so good.
Leadership wants to see significant project results
within the year. This will convince the skeptics and
get stakeholders on board quickly. To this end, a large-
scale BB training program is immediately launched to
train people as improvement project and business
unit leaders. Department heads may be asked to iden-
tify candidates and supply them with suitable project
definitions to bring to the first day of training.
Sounds about right. But look closely. This is
where practice has started to deviate from theory
and things begin to get messy.
So far, level one (top management) and level
three (project leaders) have been formally mobi-
lized. Middle management, however, has merely
been asked to cooperate. We have arrived at a major
stumbling block: Since level two of deployment has
not formally taken place, middle managers are not
well informed about Six Sigma goals and the roles
they are expected to play as process owners and
project sponsors. They also have not been told what
constitutes suitable BB project definitions.
The result: BB candidates in our example start
receiving project charters with broad titles such as
“reduce excessive costs at plant A” or “increase
falling sales for product B” from inexperienced
process owners.
Although the managers recognize critical issues
that need immediate attention, they have not yet
learned to distinguish between big Y’s and little
y’s. High costs and falling sales, like poor competi-
tiveness and slow growth, are business issues.
These are not the type of process specific problems
that are the starting points and focus of Six Sigma
improvement projects.
The BBs in training now need to spend weeks or
1 3
even months trying to comprehend the cost struc-
tures of plant A or customer complaints and sales
patterns for product B. This is not their job and
sends them down the wrong path and into conflict
with the lessons of the training course.
As BB training (four weeks spread over several
months) is nearing its end, many trainees are still
struggling with project definitions. Some still cannot
distinguish between big Y’s and little y’s and don’t
know where to start. Others have finally learned to
break a large business issue into several process
level problems and then choose one as a project.
Unfortunately, this has led to some conflicts with
disappointed managers who thought all their busi-
ness headaches would be solved in a single project.
The Six Sigma program is stalling, and frustration
is mounting on all fronts.
All this confusion and loss of momentum could
have been avoided if the standard top-down Six
Sigma deployment had been followed. Since Six
Sigma was designed to help organizations solve
problems, let’s go through another deployment
example in the proper top-down order using the 1-
2-3 model in Figure 2 as a guideline.
Problem Solving Within the Model
Although product quality and customer satisfac-
tion are currently meeting targets, top management
at a company determines costs must be reduced and
customer satisfaction increased to stay competitive.
To address these urgent issues and to prepare for
future challenges, a Six Sigma program is initiated.
Middle managers are invited to a briefing where
they learn the first major business targets
(and big Y’s) are to reduce costs and cus-
tomer complaints at plant A. Local man-
FIGURE 2
agement at plant A is asked to undertake
measures within given budgets to meet
new improvement targets.
After receiving Six Sigma awareness
training and participating in workshops
to learn basic tools and better understand
their jobs within the overall program, the
local managers now know that after
accepting their business assignments,
they must cross the border from the busi-
ness level into the process level and
become improvement seeking process Statistical problem: using normal theory
owners. to ask questions about the process
Rather than launch single improvement
1
projects with the broadly stated goals of “reducing
costs in plant A” and “increasing customer satis-
faction,“ the new process owners work together to
drill down from the business problems to discover
the wealth of contributing process problems in a
2
form of preanalysis. They use their dashboard
process performance results and other high level
data as well as familiar BB tools such as VOC or
voice of the customer (information gathering about
the customer’s needs based on interviews, ques-
tionnaires and other methods) and SIPOC (a high
level process definition tool for identifying suppli-
ers, inputs, key process steps, outputs and cus-
tomers) to accomplish this.
In the area of high costs, the preanalysis identifies
a series of little y issues such as high absentee rates,
slow throughput times, high product defect rates
and machine downtimes, which are in turn causing
plant A’s high costs at the big Y level. After prioritiz-
ing these problems and identifying the correspond-
ing processes that require immediate improvement,
the process owners draft individual project charters
to address issues. These are then distributed to BB
candidates, who are about to begin their training.
For example, one BB is assigned a project charter
titled “reduce machine downtimes at plant A.” She
knows exactly where to begin. After forming a team
and launching a project to determine the root causes
(x-variables) for the y-variable machine downtimes,
she begins formulating questions such as, “What
does today’s process look like?” “When does the
problem most occur?” “Which machine types are
the most affected?” or “Are there real differences in
Problem Solving Within the 1-2-3 Model
Contribution to a reduction of the business
Level one
problem: Improving the little process y leads
Business problem
to improvement of the big business Y.
Level two Process solution: Developing ways to improve
Process problem the y variable based on the analysis.
Level three Statistical solution: Evaluating the results
of the statistical analysis (such as p-values).
QUALITY PROGRESS I APRIL 2004 I 49
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SIX SIGMA
downtimes between the various production lines?”
Certain questions can be answered using simple
process analysis tools, such as flowcharts. Others
are better answered using statistical analysis tools
based on normal theory. Normal theory helps the
BB use information about the distribution and vari-
ation of sample process data to draw conclusions
about the probability of certain events, situations
and relationships in that process to validate the sig-
nificant root causes of the problem.
During the project, an initial analysis leads to a
refocusing of the investigation onto production
line B, where downtimes are most frequent and
lengthy. Project definitions are adjusted according-
ly and communicated. After the real root causes
are validated, solutions are developed to reduce
machine downtime, which leads to a certain,
although limited, reduction in costs at plant A.
This project takes five months to complete with a
full-time BB. The process owners know several pro-
jects will be required (in parallel or consecutively) to
master all the problems of costs in both the manufac-
turing and nonmanufacturing areas of their plant.
Depending on the number of BBs available, find-
ing all the potential for achieving the full business
goal of reduced costs at plant A could take one or
two years. But the project pipeline is now flowing,
and the gears have been set to extend Six Sigma
further down in the organization.
An Alternative to Model 1-2-3
As an alternative but less than optimal approach,
levels two and three can feasibly be mobilized in par-
allel. When this is done, level two is deployed, and
process owners are brought on board early. But the
first round of projects may still suffer from poor defi-
nitions and confusion of roles and responsibilities.
If process owners are not yet in the position, for
whatever reason, to properly define projects, GBs
and BBs may be required to conduct level two pre-
analyses themselves in the early phases of a Six
Sigma program as a prelude to their work at level
three. In smaller organizations where the process
owner and project leader may be the same person,
such a clear role distinction will, of course, not be
necessary.
There are four major requirements for Six Sigma
project success:
1. Define projects in the processes themselves, not
50 I APRIL 2004 I www.asq.org
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in the balance sheet or boardroom, to provide
project leaders with suitable starting points.
2. In the long run, the process owner should do
the preanalysis work as the main link, or trans-
lator, between business imperatives and
process issues.
3. Improvement projects should work on very
specific problems within limited scopes. If
they don’t do this, resources may be over-
whelmed and the project will take longer than
the four to six months typically required for
full-time project management.
4. Engaging middle management as the program
is being deployed is critical for ongoing success.4
As long as an awareness of the difference be-
tween levels of Six Sigma deployment and problem
definitions exists, the pipeline of improvement
ideas will flow continually, and individual projects
will focus immediately on the “y” rather than on
the “where”—the suitable starting points for
process improvement projects.
REFERENCES
1. Rafaelo Aguayo, Dr. Deming: The American Who Taught
the Japanese About Quality, First Fireside Edition, Simon &
Schuster, 1991, p. 17.
2. Mikel Harry and Richard Schroeder, Six Sigma: The
Breakthrough Management Strategy Revolutionizing the World’s
Top Corporations, Doubleday, 2000, p. 165.
3. Aon Rath & Strong Management Consulting, Rath &
Strong’s Six Sigma Leadership Handbook, John Wiley & Sons,
2003, p. 73.
4. Ibid, p. 337.
JAMES TOROK is an independent, multilingual American
business consultant and trainer living in Europe. He holds
a master’s degree in computer information systems from
Boston University. Torok is a member of ASQ and has a
Six Sigma Master Black Belt qualification.
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