The Six Sigma Story

Six Sigma - What is it? How does it work? Is it a technique or a culture change programme? The answer to these questions and further information regarding Six Sigma is provided below.
Six Sigma is the name given to a management concept originated by Motorola in the late 1980’s with stunning results. It enabled them to become one of the first winners of the prestigious ‘Baldrige Award for Quality’ and is claimed to be responsible for very impressive improvements in all aspects of business performance. Other star performers such as GE, Allied Signal, Navistar, Polaroid, Bombardier, etc., also developed Six Sigma programmes.
During 1998, a number of British subsidiaries and suppliers to these large companies found themselves being introduced to the concept by their American customers with the result that now Six Sigma has become an important new approach to business performance improvement.
Sigma is the mathematical symbol for standard deviation and Six Sigma can simply mean predicting a particular level of quality achieved by a "process". For example ±6 sigma or six standard deviations would mean the process would be unlikely to produce more than 4 defects in a million. Mostly this would be considered an impressive performance. The "process" being referred to is often thought to be a manufacturing process, possibly mass producing cars, but this would be extremely short sighted. In fact, it is a popular misconception that Six Sigma is only applicable to the volume manufacturing processes - it is not.