The Use of Six Sigma at NASA

Frank Winters has more than 30 years of consulting and Information Technology experience serving as a project/program manager, consultant and IT service industry executive.

  PMO  

It's not surprising that Six Sigma has been used, given that the shuttle is inappropriately an operational system. This is another indication that the conclusion drawn by Diane Vaughn in her book The Challenger Launch Decision, Risky Technology, Culture and Deviance at NASA--that at NASA risk tends to be normalized--is correct.

Six Sigma is designed to be used to develop processes producing quality approaching perfection. Based on the cost and performance of the shuttle, it does not live up to its primary design objectives of being a safe mode of routine, reusable transportation for people. A recent Washington Post article, "Space Shuttles Bound to Technologies of the Past," quotes Bruce Murry, a former director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory:

"The problem that NASA has faced is that they put all their eggs in the shuttle basket. The fundamental problems are conceptual in design. It was promoted and sold as a very safe, cheap way to access space. It was neither safe nor cheap."

The shuttle system is monolithic, rigid and based on obsolete technology and obsolete design approaches. The design was …

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