Six Sigma System

• Financial Representatives have an independent role and are responsible for reporting project benefits.
• Financial Representatives are team members responsible for managing and analyzing the financial aspects of Six Sigma projects.
• The Six Sigma system is a comprehensive and flexible system for achieving, sustaining and maximizing business success.
• The Six Sigma process strives to achieve business success by careful understanding of customer needs, use of facts through data collection and analysis, and improving, and re-engineering processes to increase customer satisfaction and business excellence.
• Six Sigma is a set of strategies, techniques, and tools for process improvement whose origin can be traced to Bill Smith, an engineer who worked for Motorola in 1986.
• The Six Sigma methodology was born in 1987 in Motorola’s communication sector as an approach to track and compare performance against customer requirements, and to achieve an ambitious target of near-perfect, 6σ (or 6-sigma) quality, in the products produced.
• Yellow Belts are team members with basic training in Six Sigma principles who support improvement initiatives within their departments.
• The Two Improvement Process, PDCA Cycle, is a five-step approach to problem-solving, similar to Dr. Juran's “breakthrough” series of phases or Dr. Deming’s plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle.
• Black Belts are team members who are highly trained in the DMAIC methodology and lead larger and more complex Six Sigma projects.
• Meaningful measures of process performance are defined and compared with the measures of customer needs in real time.
• Master Black Belts are the experts in Six Sigma methodologies who are known for being highly skilled and experienced.
• Green Belts are team members who are trained in the DMAIC methodology and play a crucial role in implementing Six Sigma projects within an organization.
• DMAIC, Define, measure, analyze, improve, and control, is an acronym for a methodology used in process improvement.
• The Five-Step Road Map is a structured setup within a company that defines roles, responsibilities, and collaborative practices to implement and maintain Six Sigma principles.
• In a strategy, processes are documented, and customer needs are defined and updated on a regular basis.
• Executive Leaders are the high-level decision makers in an organization who are responsible for setting the strategic direction and goals for Six Sigma implementation.
• DMEDI, Define, measure, explore, develop, and implement, is an acronym for a methodology used in process design/redesign.
• White Belts are team members with basic awareness and understanding of Six Sigma principles.
• Project Sponsors (Champions) are high-ranking individuals who advocate for and support a specific Six Sigma project.
• The Six Sigma process, or the systematic approach to process improvement to attain 6σ quality, later spread throughout the company with strong backing from the then-chairman Robert Galvin.
• In the 1980s, this process helped the company to achieve enormous improvements in quality, or a 100-fold improvement in four years.
• Two years after they set out on the Six Sigma journey, Motorola received the prestigious national award: Baldrige Award.
• In the 10 years, between 1987 and 1997, the company increased its sales fivefold, saved $14 billion from Six Sigma projects, and saw its stock prices increase at an annual rate of 21.3%.
• Six Sigma helped Motorola to achieve success when it was facing tough competition from Japanese competitors.
• Several other organizations followed the Six Sigma process model and reported enormous success in reducing waste and winning customer satisfaction.
• Two important examples were Allied Signal (Honeywell) and General Electric Co.
• “6σ” refers to the quality of a process.
• Process Design/ Redesign involves a whole rethinking on the process, based on inputs from customers, similar to the concepts of re-engineering used by some to denote redoing an entire process when it has become ineffective due to changes in technology or customer expectations.
• Process Management is the strategy equivalent to what Dr. Juran called “holding the gains,” maintaining an additional watch as to whether the process is responding to changes in the needs of the customer.
• Process Focus in the Six Sigma framework emphasizes the understanding, analysis, improvement, and management of processes, highlighting that every product or service involves a mapped sequence of steps enabling control and continual enhancement.
• The Six Sigma process relentlessly pursues near-perfection with a target of no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities, driving continuous improvement and customer satisfaction through diligent process analysis and iteration.
• The 6σ Measure is a systematic approach to evaluating the performance and capability of a process in delivering consistent and high-quality outputs, rooted in statistical analysis, particularly in assessing the variation of a process.
• The goal of the process improvement is limited to seeking solutions to a specific problem of concern while letting the overall structure of associated processes remain the same.
• Process Improvement is a strategy that will be appropriate when a problem results in customer discontent, which calls for an analysis to find the root causes and the implementation of solutions to eliminate them.
• Proactive Management in Six Sigma involves establishing ambitious goals, clear priorities, and frequent reviews, advocating for preemptive system changes to avert errors and defects, emphasizing the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of prevention over reactive 'firefighting' measures.
• The Six Sigma approach fosters an environment of cross-functional teamwork, prioritizing effective communication and collaboration to streamline processes, minimize delays, and reduce wasteful resources, ultimately enhancing customer satisfaction through concurrent engineering and process improvement.
• The sigma (σ) in 6σ represents standard deviations from the mean of a normal distribution curve.
• Six Sigma refers to the systematic approach used to achieve the 6σ quality.
• Six Sigma aims to reduce time, defects, and variability.
• In a Six Sigma organization, customer satisfaction takes center stage as the process begins with dynamic measurement, ensuring continual improvement aligns with customer requirements and prioritizes their needs at every stage.