“Six Sigma” is more than just a term related to statistics. It is now the latest buzzword among businesses worldwide as an efficient quality management tool. The technique underscores the importance of customer satisfaction and the growth of a company.
It involves a lot of systematic analysis of the defects, and customer expectations, among other factors that would eventually help in creating the best quality products from a company.
Six Sigma stresses optimizing the company’s structure at all levels, including production, IT, finance, and manufacturing, to achieve the set business goals. The technique, however, is not new.
Six Sigma, as we know it today, was introduced by Bill Smith in 1987. However, it garnered global attention only when Jack Welch from General Electric implemented it which proved to be a pivotal moment in the history of Six Sigma.
Six Sigma has evolved over the past few decades, with companies customizing the techniques to achieve their set goals. This technique comes with benefits such as easy documentation of the process flow chart, reduction in the number of defective products, a better scope for continuous improvement, enhancing employee morale, and productivity of the organization as a whole.
This article delves into the journey of Six Sigma from being a simple idea to being one of the most effective globally accepted quality management techniques.
Before we start the historical journey, let’s discuss the methodologies in brief.
Overview of Six Sigma Methodology
Six Sigma works in more ways than one to gear up an organization to bring out the best customer satisfactory results.
Six Sigma is a wholesome package wherein everything circles around producing high-quality goods and services, which, in turn, helps in building trust among the customers and helps in the overall growth of the organization.
To achieve this, Six Sigma uses either of the two fundamental methodologies which are: DMAIC and DMADV.
The DMAIC is an abbreviation for Define, Measure, Analyse, Implement, and Control, which perfectly describes the 5 phases of this methodology. Here the organization’s existing products are optimized to improve their quality to the highest possible extent.
For this, first, the goal is defined, then the parameters which may affect the whole process are measured and analyzed. Next, changes, if any, are made at the appropriate places, using the results from the analysis. Next, the implementation of various control measures helps to avoid the repetition of mistakes.
DMADV follows steps as described by its name that is Define, Measure, Analyse, Design, and Verify. This methodology purely focuses on building a high-quality product or service from scratch.
This method climbs up the ladder to achieve high quality through 5 steps. It first defines the organizational goals related to that product/service. The next step involves measuring and analyzing the resources and techniques to produce the best design, which is the next step. Once designed, the product goes through a verification process that gives the best possible outcome.
Father of Six Sigma
It was in 1987, when William Bill Smith while working with Motorola, invented a new technique called Six Sigma that turned the tables for the company in terms of the overall quality of products. It was a time when Motorola was struggling to come up with metrics efficient enough to analyze and share the improvements among the authorities.
Through meticulous planning and strategizing, Bill Smith, along with Mikel Harry, came up with sets of rules and named it Six Sigma. The Six Sigma implementation was so successful that Motorola became the first company to bag the Malcolm Baldrige Award.
The brain behind this revolutionary concept was William Bill Smith. Therefore he is crowned as the father of Six Sigma.
“If you want to improve something, involve the people who are doing the job.”- William B Smith.
The Development of Concept and Design
Long before William Bill Smith developed the concept of Six Sigma at Motorola, Walter Shewhart, in the late 1920s, implemented a similar approach to produce quality products. It, however, didn’t gain much popularity.
It was in 1987 when Bill Smith and Mikel Harry leveraged their knowledge of statistics to bring out the used several iterations and came to the conclusion that the point of correction lies in the range of six times the deviation. It helped companies to understand the area of defect and hence produce optimal results.
They used statistical quantities like mean (mathematical average of a processed data set) and deviation (the difference between the mean and the set data limits) to identify products that fall out of the desired range.
The Refinement Period
Once the concept of Six Sigma started to gain traction, few companies took to implement the strategy. The technique, however, lacked proper design. It was in 1993 that Mikel Harry while working with Asea Brown Boevry, noticed that while implementing Six Sigma, the higher officials were only focusing on the quantifiable results. It made him understand that it was not quality, but the business growth was needed to achieve much more efficient results.
It made him rethink the whole objective and refine the technique in a way that organizations can take maximum advantage of. Hence, a new deployment tact was introduced, which used a hierarchical structure like a Champion. Black belt. Green belt and white belt.
During this period, the success stories of Motorola in diminishing errors from their system and products garnered a slow yet steady momentum to popularity.
The Awareness Period
Even though few companies were leveraging the advantages offered by Six Sigma, it was still to reach more people globally.
The historical moment came in when Jack Welsh, of General Electric, used Six Sigma to carve out the best results. The business world remained in awe for the amount of success this company achieved due to the proper implementation.
Once Jack Welsh implemented the Six Sigma technique in the year 1995 in an attempt to focus their time and energy on producing high-quality products. He applied it during the low times of General Electric when Jack found that the company could not produce optimum results.
With the execution of Six Sigma, the results came out to be impressive. It was then when that Six Sigma started getting global attention and received its due importance.
Many Fortune 500 companies followed the lead and focussed on the production of quality goods through an optimum business organization in the form of Six Sigma. The results came out to be good for the growth of the organization.
Future of Six Sigma
Six Sigma focuses on consistent improvement in the various process of a business strategy, irrespective of the department it belongs to.
One of the future aspects of this is the evolution of Lean Six Sigma processes, which are already gaining popularity among businesses. Individuals and enterprise teams are getting trained in widely-recognized Lean Six Sigma training programs, where they gain an in-depth understanding of combining Lean strategy with Six Sigma to produce exceptional results for an organization.
Also, Six Sigma techniques can be used for product design and development processes. Its versatile nature can comfortably accommodate changes in its structure as and when needed to meet the customer requirements of quality.
To Conclude…
The role of Six Sigma in maintaining the customer-business relationship while keeping the whole organization intact and satisfied is undeniable.
William Bill Smith, the father of Six Sigma, introduced this statistical technique along with Mikel Harry to refine the overall organization structure to produce maximum error-free products. Since then, numerous companies have leveraged this productive technique and found an effective way to attain their organizational goals.
