Six Sigma: Quality With Black Belt Enforcement

  Manufacturing   Portfolio Management  

Six Sigma ain't the name of a fraternity that locks you in the trunk of a car and makes you drink a fifth of bourbon. You wish--on some days. In reality, it is a data-driven technique targeted toward eliminating defects in development or manufacturing processes. The big idea behind Six Sigma is that if you are able to clearly measure how many defects you have in a given process or system, you can figure out how to eliminate these defects. "Sigma" is the letter in the Greek alphabet used by statisticians to measure variability or change in a process. "Upidstay" is the word in pig latin that means stupid--no relation to Six Sigma, but thought you'd like to know. Ahem. Anyway, the objective of Six Sigma quality is to reduce variation so that six standard deviations (a measure of the spread or dispersion of a set of data) lie between the process variation upper and lower limits. A Six Sigma defect is defined as anything that falls outside of customer expectations. 

Dr. Mikel Harry and Richard Schroeder of the Six Sigma Academy in Scottsdale, Arizona, originally developed this methodology. The focus of Six Sigma is to help companies make money, which it why it has been embraced by a plethora of Fortune 500 companies as the de jure (impressed?) way to do business and to save buckets o' cash in the process. Companies ranging from Ford to GE to Dupont to Allied Signal swear by Six …

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