Six Sigma is one of those concepts that will remain a bit of a mystery to most organizations.

To most it simply means defining and measuring quality. It is actually much more than that—in addition to defining and measuring quality, it is also a way to improve it.

This article will attempt to clarify some of the basics of Six Sigma. The origins, the reason for it, and the roles, ranks and phases in a program

Let’s start with some definitions: Sigma is the Greek letter σ, which statisticians use to denote standard deviation. Six Sigma is a measurement denoting near perfection, representing six standard deviations and equating to 3,4 defects per million operations, which should be the ideal against actual performance is measured. This translates into a yield of 99,9997%

The first point on the quest of Six Sigma is the thorough understanding of the work flow in an organization. It is used to identify the steps in the process, but also to pinpoint where possible variances can occur.

It is important to identify the timeline of the process, the documentation used in the process and the points where defects are likely to occur.

In order to identify quality requirements, we need to understand the customer. Now, a customer does not only mean the user of the end product, but all customers, whether internal or external, that is affected by the end result of a process.

We have to understand each and every one of those customers to be able to identify their quality requirements. Flawed assumptions could be the reason for many unsatisfied customers.

A defect is defined as any outcome of a process that does not satisfy the needs of that process’s customer. Defects occur in different forms and for different reasons. The result is also not necessarily financial loss, but could be a loss in goodwill as well.

In a Six Sigma program, there are different roles. Those are:

• Leadership council: defines the goals of the program and provides them to the team
• Sponsor: Problem solver within the program, someone that will steer the team in the right direction
• Implementation leader: Supervision of the team and keeping the program according to the deadline, budget and desired quality.
• Coach: Six Sigma expert that facilitates the program and handles the change management.
• Team leader: Person who manages the schedule
• Team member: An employee that works on a Six Sigma program
• Process owner: Person who will take responsibility for the process after the program is complete.

There are also different “ranks” in the implementation of Six Sigma:

• Black Belt: Experienced Six Sigma practitioner
• Master Black Belt: Person available to the team to resolve technical issues and answer questions
• Green Belt: Person with experience higher than the average team member.

Typically the Six Sigma program has 5 phases:

1. Define

• Put together the team
• Document the stakeholder analysis
• Develop a project charter
• Document the workflow

2. Measure

• Data collection and evaluation, calculate the current defects
• Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA)

3. Analyze

• Root cause analysis
• Process analysis
• Data analysis
• Resource analysis
• Communication analysis

4. Improve

• Improvement to segments of the process where defects are likely to occur
• Experimenting with alternative solutions

5. Control

• Quality control
• Standardization
• Control methods and alternatives
• Responding when defects occur

Although true Six sigma is a virtually impossible to achieve, going through the program methodology can dramatically decrease the occurrence of defects.

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www.sixsigmazone.com/articles

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