Rationale for Six Sigma


The establishment of a Six Sigma work ethic within your company will indeed become a strong driving force. It will significantly increase customer satisfaction and act as an enabler for an organization to reach world-class status among competitors. Furthermore, it will also

  • Promote a common language and understanding of teamwork in the quality arena within the organization

  • Tie directly into existing TQM, ISO-9000, or Lean Manufacturing activities

  • Assist in cost and cycle time reduction, defect rework and waste elimination

  • Attack variation at the supplier, process, product, and service levels

  • Support the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria

An essential organizational benefit realized from the establishment and ongoing implementation challenges of Six Sigma quality is the strategic alignment and the much-improved level of communications and teamwork among organizational units and the customer. Other more direct results are:

  • Expanded market share

  • Higher returns on resource expenditures

  • Greatly enhanced engineering and manufacturing capability

  • On-time delivery through cycle time reductions

  • Cost reductions and improved financial results

An important requirement is that all financial performance indicators must be validated by the organization's accounting unit. Six Sigma performance and consequent results are typically related to cost savings, time-to-market, customer satisfaction, and employee job satisfaction.

Neuscheier-Fritsch and Norris (2001, May) have the following comment:

In conducting postmortems for clients, we have learned that one of the root causes for teams being perceived as less than successful is that the CFO [Chief Financial Officer] and his or her staff were not engaged in blessing the projects results. Without the organization's financial blessing, the improvements were discounted by the senior executives. "These improvements will not play on Wall Street" and "What do operating personnel know about translating results to the bottom line?" are a few comments senior executive made during debriefing (p.39).

Large corporations have reported some outstanding Six Sigma successes. Motorola, the originator of Six Sigma, reported $11 billion in savings over the last decade. The interesting story behind this success is that the company's drive to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award was actually responsible for developing the Six Sigma approach to quality. Motorola went on to win the award in 1988. Jack Welch, the former [Chief Executive Officer] CEO of General Electric (GE), claims that the Six Sigma initiative introduced and supported by his management team has resulted in more than $2 billion in cost savings. Allied Signal reduced their operations cost more than $2 billion. Allied Signal's management team (headed by Lawrence Bossidy) introduced Six Sigma to General Electric's CEO Jack Welch, who then immediately started his own push for Six Sigma at GE.

Regardless of organizational structure or function, deploying Six Sigma in an organization will assist in:

  • New business development (timely proposals)

  • Improved supplier base (quality materials)

  • Engineering (fewer design changes, document errors)

  • Software programs/systems (reliability and compatibility

  • Manufacturing (reduced rework, scrap costs)

  • All processes (less cycle time)

  • Finance (open accounts and collections)

  • Customer service (complaint handling)

  • Human resources (staffing and turnover)

  • Employees (improved job satisfaction and morale)

Six Sigma requires a great deal more attention to roles and responsibilities throughout the organization, including upper levels of management, Six Sigma chainpions, change agents, and a trained team of Master Black Belts, Black Belts, and Green Belts. In addition, Harry and Schroeder (2000) point out that Six Sigma stands for "a disciplined method of using extremely rigorous data-gathering and statistical analysis to pinpoint sources of errors and ways to eliminate them."

However, some concerns and precautionary measures must be taken to ensure that Six Sigma produces the success that corporate managers expect. Six Sigma is not a short-term program, but an ongoing and challenging approach to perfect quality based on a long-term performance plan. It must be interlocked with the organization's strategy and improvement goals at every level. It will require a significant amount of time and funding. A decision-making process must be in place to determine data collection and database administration costs, assess training needs from the "Introduction" to the DFSS phase, and to define the priority criteria for important process selection. One important point to note — a small, incremental improvement from Six Sigma may not justify the costs involved in bring about process changes!

George Eckes, in his book The Six Sigma Revolution (2001), compiled a listing of Six Sigma concerns that included such issues as "failure to apply the concept of customer internally, recognizing management involvement, not just commitment, overemphasis on costs, and ignoring team dynamics as a root cause of project failures." Another major concern is overcoming Six Sigma resistance. Again, George Eckes discusses "four major types of resistance to Six Sigma" in his book Making Six Sigma last (2001). This is truly the first time that the author found someone who's description of the types of resistance not only makes sense, but also reflects the author's experience gained from consulting work within organizations. The four major types of resistance are:

  1. Technical resistance occurs when Six Sigma produces feelings of inadequacy or perceptions of stupidity in the stakeholder.

  2. Political resistance occurs where the stakeholder sees Six Sigma as a loss to him or her. This loss could be real or perceived.

  3. Organizational resistance occurs when the stakeholder experiences issues of control, pride, and a sense of loss of ownership because of Six Sigma.

  4. Finally, individualized resistance occurs when the stakeholder experiences fear and emotional paralysis, because of high stress (pp. 61-62).

The literature reflects other concerns often expressed by people who resist and are still not convinced. It may be appropriate to mention these concerns here:

  • Six Sigma implementation costs are too high for organizations that have fewer than 500 Employees

  • Six Sigma is not for organizations with a tight budget or those that have difficulty providing the necessary resources

  • Six Sigma is not for managers who expect dramatic results within weeks or who set short term goals

  • Six Sigma is seen as just another quality program to try out

  • The perception of "Sick Sigma" in the organization by people in the organization (Employees voiced their resistance to change to implementing Six Sigma)

  • Too much effort is required to convince the resisters of the value of Six Sigma

  • Six Sigma is attentive only to defects in manufacturing, a quantitative measurement, and isdifficult to apply to servic, since service often calls for a qualitative measurement Six Sigma dismisses other proven quality tools

  • Six Sigma is simply a repackaging of old methods and tools

  • Six Sigma is primarily an evaluation toolkit, not a prevention of poor quality

  • Data collected from inside or outside the organization may not be reliable or valid




Six Sigma Tool Navigator(c) The Master Guide for Teams
Six Sigma Tool Navigator: The Master Guide for Teams
ISBN: 1563272954
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 326

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