Six Sigma Organizational Architecture

Sigma is a quality methodology that can produce significant benefit to businesses and organizations. Not much text, however, has been written about the structure needed to successfully implement Six Sigma quality within your business or organization. This article will focus on roles and responsibilities, as well as required rewards and recognition for a successful Six Sigma quality program.

DMAIC Steps

DEFINE		Determines the scope and purpose of the project and includes a project charter, a process map of the problem to be investigated and analysis to determine the voice of the customer (VOC), resulting I critical to quality variables,or CTQ’s (sometimes CTC, critical to customers)
MEASURE		The collection of information on the current situation. Base line data on defects and possible causes are collected and plotted, and sigma capability levels are calculated
ANALYZE		Determines the root causes of defects and explore and organize potential causes.
IMPROVE		The development of solution that are implemented to remove the root causes and then measured and evaluated for desired result.
CONTROL		Standardizes the improvement process to maintain the gains. The new standard practices are documented, and performance is monitored

Sigma Capabilities

Б Capability	Defects per Million Opportunities (DPMO)	Yield (no defects)
2	308,537	69.1%
3	66,807	93.3%
4	6,210	99.4%
5	233	99.97%
6	3.4	99.9996%

To ensure that the process works, a series of steps is undertaken in every Six Sigma project: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control, commonly referred to as DMAIC. (See Table 2.) Six Sigma requires training of key personnel involved in the projects and oversight management of the program. Training activities have evolved to a set of generally accepted levels known as Yellow Belts, Green Belts, Black Belts, Master Black Belts and Champions, defined later, who all contribute increasingly complex levels of capability in Six Sigma process and management

Six Sigma Defined

Six Sigma is a data-driven, methodical program of continuous and breakthrough improvement focused on customers and their critical requirements. Sigma refers to the Greek symbol (s) that represents the amount of variation in a process. The lower the variation in a process, the fewer defective parts or service transactions are produced, and the higher the Sigma number. The ultimate goal is to eliminate defects and errors and the costs associated with poor quality. After defining which performance measures represent Critical to Customer (CTC) requirements, data are collected on the number of defects and then translated into a sigma number. A sigma of 6 translates to 3.4 defects per million opportunities. (See Table 1.) It is common to find 3 to 4 sigma levels in many manufacturing processes, and 2 or 3 sigma in transactional businesses. Moving from 3 to 4 sigma could be classified as continuous improvement. The breakthroughs occur when a process is improved to the 6 sigma level, almost perfect quality. For example, U.S. daily mail delivery at the 4 sigma level would result in the loss of 20,000 pieces of mail each hour. If mail delivery were at the 6 sigma level, the result would be the loss of seven pieces of mail each hour. 

Introducing Six Sigma.

Six Sigma is a business improvement concept that focuses on meeting the needs of customers and bottom line benefit to your organisation. The goal is to provide defect-free business processes with customer satisfaction and improvement being the driving forces.

Six Sigma was established in 1987 through the Motorola Six Sigma quality program. The program gained publicity when Motorola won the Malcolm Baldrige quality prize in the USA and further development of the concept took place in the early 1990’s with companies like General Electric, ABB, Honeywell and Allied Signal. Each of these organisations has boasted significant reductions in costs.

Sigma is a character of the Greek alphabet that is used in mathematical statistics to define standard deviation. The concept of standard deviation relates to how tightly all the various outputs of a process are clustered around the mean in a set of data.

In statistical terms, Six Sigma means that if there were 1 million opportunities for a defect to occur, there would only be 3.4 defects. Therefore, defects or problems in the processes have been removed to the point where the quality of the output is near perfect. Six Sigma is seen as the ultimate goal in achieving near perfect processes through continual improvement.

Six Sigma is undertaken through the development and management of projects, led by improvement specialists (Green Belts and Black Belts). Each person is given key responsibilities for analysing information that will have an impact on improving processes and customer satisfaction.

The most common tool used for Six Sigma improvement is the Define-Measure-Analyse-Improve-Control (D-M-A-I-C) cycle. This approach focuses on ensuring that the improvement is clearly defined and measured, through a data-driven and disciplined approach. Data is analysed to identify problems and the improvement is consolidated through process controls. 

Six Sigma

Six Sigma (6) is a business-driven, multi-faceted approach to process improvement, reduced costs, and increased profits. With a fundamental principle to improve customer satisfaction by reducing defects, its ultimate performance target is virtually defect-free processes and products (3.4 or fewer defective parts per million (ppm)). The Six Sigma methodology, consisting of the steps "Define - Measure - Analyze - Improve - Control," is the roadmap to achieving this goal. Within this improvement framework, it is the responsibility of the improvement team to identify the process, the definition of defect, and the corresponding measurements. This degree of flexibility enables the Six Sigma method, along with its toolkit, to easily integrate with existing models of software process implementation.

                         Six Sigma originated at Motorola in the early 1980s in response to a CEO-driven challenge to achieve tenfold reduction in product-failure levels in five years. Meeting this challenge required swift and accurate root-cause analysis and correction. In the mid-1990s, Motorola divulged the details of their quality improvement framework, which has since been adopted by several large manufacturing companies. 

Evolution of Quality

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* There is evidence  that  the quality of products have been monitored for a long time back in history.
* Even in the stone age, man used to stone tool for survival by hunting. survival depended on the quality of his tool.
* Today also quality is very essential for survival. The only difference between th e past and present is that the method of attaining and sustaining quality has improved / changed over the years and has attained to  the level seen today (TQM).