![]() Incorporating elements from the work of many quality pioneers, Six Sigma aims for virtually error free business performance. Six Sigma is a rigorous, focused and highly effective implementation of proven quality principles and techniques. Figure 1: Cost of Poor Quality versus Sigma Level What is Six Sigma and How Does It Work? General Electric estimates that the gap between three or four sigma and Six Sigma was costing them between $8 billion and $12 billion per year. Companies operating at Six Sigma typically spend less than 5 percent of their revenues fixing problems (Figure 1). This is known as the cost of quality, or more accurately the cost of poor quality. Companies operating at three or four sigma typically spend between 25 and 40 percent of their revenues fixing problems. ![]() For non-Six Sigma companies, these costs are often extremely high and usually unknown. Unlike mindless cost-cutting programs which reduce value and quality as well as costs, Six Sigma identifies and eliminates costs which provide no value to customers, waste costs. Six Sigma focuses on improving customer loyalty, reducing errors, improving cycle times, and reducing costs by eliminating non-value added activities. Six Sigma focuses on improving quality (i.e., reduce waste) by helping organizations produce products and services better, faster and cheaper. The difference between potential and actual quality is waste. Actual quality is the current value added per unit of input. Potential quality is the known maximum possible value added per unit of input. Quality comes in two flavors: potential quality and actual quality. For Six Sigma purposes I define quality as the value added by a productive endeavor. ![]() To link this objective of Six Sigma with quality requires a new definition of quality. Six Sigma is about helping the organization make more money. Quality, defined traditionally as conformance to internal requirements, has little to do with Six Sigma. It would be a mistake to think that Six Sigma is about quality in the traditional sense. After Motorola won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1988 the secret of their success became public knowledge and the Six Sigma revolution was born. Today, Motorola is known worldwide as a quality leader. Motorola’s CEO at the time, Bob Galvin, started the company on the quality path known as Six Sigma and became a business icon largely as a result of what he accomplished in quality at Motorola. ![]() Eventually, even Motorola’s own executives had to admit “our quality stinks.”įinally, in the mid 1980s, Motorola decided to take quality seriously. They did this using the same workforce, technology, and designs, making it clear that the problem was Motorola’s management. Under Japanese management, the factory was soon producing TV sets with 1/20 th the number of defects they had produced under Motorola management. When a Japanese firm took over a Motorola factory that manufactured Quasar television sets in the United States in the 1970s, they promptly set about making drastic changes in the way the factory operated. Motorola came to Six Sigma because it was being consistently beaten in the competitive marketplace by foreign firms that were able to produce higher quality products at a lower cost. For Motorola, the originator of Six Sigma, the answer to the question “Why Six Sigma?” was simple: survival.
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