The Six Sigma approach to quality
We take a look at Six Sigma, which is used by many of the world's leading companies as an all-encompassing, organisation-wide approach to quality.
26 January 2012
In an ever more competitive world, within a progressively tightening economic environment, organisations seek every advantage they can to be both more efficient and to make more money.
It's easy to forget that 'challenging times' are nothing new - nor are organisations which need to substantially improve their performance. Indeed, it was from this need that Six Sigma was originally conceived - at Motorola.
The need for Six Sigma was born from the need to solve a real problem
During the 1970s, one of Motorola's executives, Art Sundry, was hugely critical of Motorola's quality - despite being rated as one of the world's top manufacturing companies. Motorola's CEO, Bob Galvin, listened to Sundry's lone voice - visiting Motorola's factories in person and talking to end users, rather than relying on reports from executives. What he heard was exactly what Sundry had said - that Motorola's quality was poor.
Worse news was to come: because some of Motorola's competitors had improved, their quality was, when benchmarked, up to 1800 times better than Motorola's.
One of Motorola's engineers, Bill Smith, had been studying the link between defects during manufacturing and subsequent reliability in the market. He proposed that greater standardisation would ensure that Motorola's products would not fail. Smith began to work closely with Mikel Harry (originally a doctoral intern at Motorola) and together their thinking moved towards what would become a whole new way for Motorola to think about quality: Six Sigma.
What is Six Sigma?
Six Sigma is a drive towards a level of quality that is 'nearly perfect' - where there are not more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities for a defect. What is a defect? Simple: something which can be defined and recognised as anything outside of a customer's specifications. Put another way, a Six Sigma process is one where 99.99966% of products made are (statistically at least) free from defects.
That's a tall order and it outlines the nature of Six Sigma: clear, specific, measurable goals which get as close to total quality as is likely.
Of course, Six Sigma isn't (and wasn't when it was created) unique. It's influenced by many other quality improvement methodologies, such as Total Quality Management and Zero Defects. This is a good thing - there's honestly little point in overlooking the efforts of others, especially where these are proven to work.
So, it shares some common ground with these approaches - for example, organisation-wide commitment to improving quality, driven from the top down and continual energy put into making every step in every process predictable; as far as is possible without variation.
However, Six Sigma also has other focuses which are distinct to itself. These include attaining measurable financial returns, making decisions based on data which can be verified and tested, and an organisational structure of 'champions' to lead the way - including 'yellow belts', 'green belts' and 'black belts'.
(More recently, Six Sigma has been combined with lean manufacturing ideas to create Lean Six Sigma - which also helps organisations to reduce waste and streamline processes. IBM is one company using Lean Six Sigma.
What are all these belts, then?
The structure of Six Sigma professionals, who are assigned hierarchical 'belts' is something which is seen as an innovation and strength. People train to a specific level and then become agents of change within the organisation - helping the adoption of Six Sigma across the board and driving with it significant and measurable change.
Six Sigma training
With something as rigorous as Six Sigma, you'd expect the training towards gaining a 'belt' to be intensive. That's true enough, though it's not out of the reach of most business professionals. The training (and subsequent certification) is structured to match the three Six Sigma 'belts' of yellow, green and black.
Six Sigma yellow belt
This one-day course is aimed squarely at business managers - those people who sponsor and drive people in improving the business and organisation through Six Sigma.
Six Sigma green belt
Stepping up a gear, the green belt is designed for people who will be solving challenging problems as part of their daily role - typically managers, team leaders and senior managers. The training involves eight days in the classroom, with one on-site mentoring day to help people use the Six Sigma tools in the workplace. People gain accreditation by demonstrating a significant impact on their organisation - changes which aim to save £25,000 per year.
Six Sigma black belt
As you'd expect with a name like 'black belt', this is the top of the Six Sigma training and accreditation tree. The black belt training is highly intensive and lasts twenty days. This is broken down into either four five-day blocks or five four-day blocks, followed by six days' on-site mentoring. The accreditation bar is significantly higher: it requires the demonstration of a bigger impact on the organisation, with the aim of saving £100,000 or more per year; in addition, there is a thirty-minute examination.
The benefits of Six Sigma
There are many benefits to Six Sigma - all of which follow from its nature as an intensive, inclusive, data-driven approach to quality. Organisations can achieve a better focus on customers, reduced waste, decisions which are based on data and analysis, a logical approach to solving problems, improved safety, better self-awareness as an organisation and better awareness of competitors, better standardisation and repeatability. Importantly, and where we came in, it can lower costs to deliver products and services, which leads to greater profit. Companies which use Six Sigma include 3M, Amazon, Dell, DHL, Heinz, HSBC, PepsiCo, Sears, Hertz, Toshiba and the US Air Force, Army, Marines and Navy.
Find out more
If you're interested in finding out more about Six Sigma training, then please call us on 0845 650 6500 or fill in our enquiry form.
