Six Sigma is a business management strategy that was originally developed by Motorola back in 1981.
Simply put, the core objective of Six Sigma is to enhance the process output quality by accurately recognizing and eliminating the cause/s of errors along with reducing the variability in business and manufacturing processes. It’s suite of quality management processes, including the statistical methods help you establish a specialized infrastructure of people in your company that are experts in all these methods. Every Six Sigma project that is executed within a company needs to follow specific steps and has certain attainable targets, such as:
- Bringing down pollution
- Increasing profits
- Maximizing consumer satisfaction
- Reducing operational costs
- Minimizing the process cycle times
The Six Sigma Approach
Understanding the Six Sigma approach is to know that:
- End-to-end initiatives to attain guaranteed and consistent process results are crucial for your business success
- Business and manufacturing procedures have characteristics that can be assessed, evaluated, managed and enhanced from time to time
- To obtain sustainable quality enhancement needs complete focus and commitment of the entire company, especially from the top-management
Business Benefits of Six Sigma
Today Six Sigma is applied extensively by most industry verticals that results in multiple benefits. The key business benefits include:
- Boosts customer loyalty: It helps in generating better products that ultimately lead to satisfied consumers, thereby increasing the chances of customer retention and loyalty.
- Maximized shareholder value: Increased consumer loyalty and high service revenues automatically result in an increase in the stock process, which in turn increases the value for the shareholders.
- An increased bottom line: Receiving the Six Sigma certification indicates an adherence to effective procedures across the board. The resources allocated to correction are lesser and production is more, this indicates that there are more products for sale and less product deficiencies.
- Maximized employee satisfaction: Every organization frets over employee turnover costs. Six Sigma certification has resulted in maximized employee satisfaction. A favorable return to high quality work is motivational, thereby reducing the burnout.
- Consumer satisfaction: Six Sigma executions ensure that the customers always get what they pay for. Furthermore, they are going to receive it at a lower cost or higher value.
- Benefits the supply chain: Both customers and suppliers benefits from better product creation by following the principles of Six Sigma certification.
Understanding the Six Sigma Stages
Six Sigma brings with it certain stages. The Define stage for certain projects calls for benchmarking and base lining the process to be enhanced, structure the process into controllable sub-processes, specifying the objectives and the sub-objectives and setting up an infrastructure to attain the objectives. Analyze stage comes post the data collection process and involves careful evaluation to correctly recognize the main causes that creates a problem. The Improve stage is all about a selecting a feasible solution post the team brainstorming session. The final stage is known as the Control stage, where the executions of solutions occur with an effective monitoring of the processes. All the stages mark the use of some Six Sigma tools that include:
- Define Stage: Baseline, Contract, Quality function deployment, Kano Model
- Measure Stage: Data collection, Sampling techniques, analysis and feedback collection
- Analysis Stage: Statistical inference, Root cause analysis and Cause & Effect diagrams
- Improve Stage: Robust design and experiment design
- Control Stage: Statistical and non-statistical controls
What makes Six Sigma stand out?
Six Sigma tools stands distinguished from earlier quality improvement practices by offering:
- Complete focus and clarity for attaining measureable financial returns
- A strong emphasis on effective assistance and management leadership
- The capability to arrive at fact-based decisions depending on statistical processes and verifiable data instead of wayward assumptions
Is your company going to benefit from Six Sigma?
Six Sigma has been effective in almost every situation until something hinders the process. Inadequate know-how of Six Sigma tools or process is a major drawback. The key factor that determines the success of Six Sigma certification in a company is commitment. Individuals are required to be focused on all levels. Furthermore, the top management needs to make sure that 100% of the resources and time are focused on ongoing efforts to realize the success of Six Sigma goals.
Author: Shweta
source: greycampus.com
