Six Sigma
Six Sigma 6σ is a set of techniques and tools for process improvement. It was introduced by American engineer Bill Smith while working at Motorola in 1980. Jack Welch made it central to his business strategy at General Electric in 1995. A six sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of all opportunities to produce some feature of a part are statistically expected to be free of defects.
Six Sigma strategies seek to improve the quality of the output of a process by identifying and removing the causes of defects and minimizing impact variability in manufacturing and business processes. It uses a set of quality management methods, mainly empirical, statistical methods, and creates a special infrastructure of people within the organization who are experts in these methods. Each Six Sigma project carried out within an organization follows a defined sequence of steps and has specific value targets, for example: reduce process cycle time, reduce pollution, reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction, and increase profits.
The term Six Sigma capitalized because it was written that way when registered as a Motorola trademark on December 28, 1993 originated from terminology associated with statistical modeling of manufacturing processes. The maturity of a manufacturing process can be described by a sigma rating indicating its yield or the percentage of defect-free products it creates—specifically, to within how many standard deviations of a normal distribution the fraction of defect-free outcomes corresponds. Motorola set a goal of "six sigma" for all of its manufacturing.
Doctrine
Six Sigma doctrine asserts:
Features that set Six Sigma apart from previous quality-improvement initiatives include:
The term "six sigma" comes from statistics and is used in statistical quality control, which evaluates process capability. Originally, it referred to the ability of manufacturing processes to produce a very high proportion of output within specification. Processes that operate with "six sigma quality" over the short term are assumed to produce long-term defect levels below 3.4 defects per million opportunities DPMO. The 3.4 dpmo is based on a "shift" of ± 1.5 sigma explained by Dr. Mikel J. Harry. This figure is based on the tolerance in the height of a stack of discs. Six Sigma's implicit goal is to improve all processes, but not to the 3.4 DPMO level necessarily. Organizations need to determine an appropriate sigma level for each of their most important processes and strive to achieve these. As a result of this goal, it is incumbent on management of the organization to prioritize areas of improvement.
"Six Sigma" was registered June 11, 1991 as . In 2005 Motorola attributed over US$17 billion in savings to Six Sigma.
Other early adopters of Six Sigma include Honeywell and General Electric, where Jack Welch introduced the method. By the late 1990s, about two-thirds of the Fortune 500 organizations had begun Six Sigma initiatives with the aim of reducing costs and improving quality.
In recent years[update], some practitioners have combined Six Sigma ideas with lean manufacturing to create a methodology named Lean Six Sigma. The Lean Six Sigma methodology views lean manufacturing, which addresses process flow and waste issues, and Six Sigma, with its focus on variation and design, as complementary disciplines aimed at promoting "business and operational excellence".
In 2011, the International Organization for Standardization ISO has published the first standard "ISO 13053:2011" defining a Six Sigma process. Other standards have been created mostly by universities or companies that have first-party certification programs for Six Sigma.
Difference from lean management
Lean management and Six Sigma are two concepts which share similar methodologies and tools. Both programs are Japanese-influenced, but they are two different programs. Lean management is focused on eliminating waste using a set of proven standardized tools and methodologies that target organizational efficiencies while integrating a performance improvement system utilized by everyone, while Six Sigma's focus is on eliminating defects and reducing variation. Both systems are driven by data, though Six Sigma is much more dependent on accurate data.
Methodologies
Six Sigma projects follow two project methodologies inspired by Deming's Plan–Do–Study–Act Cycle. These methodologies, composed of five phases each, bear the acronyms DMAIC and DMADV.
The DMAIC project methodology has five phases:
Some organizations add a Recognize step at the beginning, which is to recognize the right problem to work on, thus yielding an RDMAIC methodology.
The DMADV project methodology, known as DFSS "Design For Six Sigma", features five phases:
Within the individual phases of a DMAIC or DMADV project, Six Sigma utilizes many established quality-management tools that are also used outside Six Sigma. The following table shows an overview of the main methods used.
Implementation roles
One key innovation of Six Sigma involves the absolute "professionalizing" of quality management functions. Prior to Six Sigma, quality management in practice was largely relegated to the production floor and to statisticians in a separate quality department. Formal Six Sigma programs adopt a kind of elite ranking terminology similar to some martial arts systems, like judo to define a hierarchy and special career path that includes all business functions and levels.
Six Sigma identifies several key roles for its successful implementation.
According to proponents of the system, special training is needed for all of these practitioners to ensure that they follow the methodology and use the data-driven approach correctly.
Some organizations use additional belt colours, such as Yellow Belts, for employees that have basic training in Six Sigma tools and generally participate in projects and "White belts" for those locally trained in the concepts but do not participate in the project team. "Orange belts" are also mentioned to be used for special cases.
General Electric and Motorola developed certification programs as part of their Six Sigma implementation, verifying individuals' command of the Six Sigma methods at the relevant skill level Green Belt, Black Belt etc.. Following this approach, many organizations in the 1990s started offering Six Sigma certifications to their employees. In 2008 Motorola University later co-developed with Vative and the Lean Six Sigma Society of Professionals a set of comparable certification standards for Lean Certification. Criteria for Green Belt and Black Belt certification vary; some companies simply require participation in a course and a Six Sigma project. There is no standard certification body, and different certification services are offered by various quality associations and other providers against a fee.[] The American Society for Quality for example requires Black Belt applicants to pass a written exam and to provide a signed affidavit stating that they have completed two projects or one project combined with three years' practical experience in the body of knowledge.
Etymology of "six sigma process"
The term "six sigma process" comes from the notion that if one has six ] items will fail to meet specifications. This is based on the calculation method employed in process capability studies.
Capability studies measure the number of standard deviations between the process mean and the nearest specification limit in sigma units, represented by the Greek letter σ sigma. As process standard deviation goes up, or the mean of the process moves away from the center of the tolerance, fewer standard deviations will fit between the mean and the nearest specification limit, decreasing the sigma number and increasing the likelihood of items outside specification. One should also note that calculation of Sigma levels for a process data is independent of the data being normally distributed. In one of the criticisms to Six Sigma, practitioners using this approach spend a lot of time transforming data from non-normal to normal using transformation techniques. It must be said that Sigma levels can be determined for process data that has evidence of non-normality.
Role of the 1.5 sigma shift
Experience has shown that processes usually do not perform as well in the long term as they do in the short term. As a result, the number of sigmas that will fit between the process mean and the nearest specification limit may well drop over time, compared to an initial short-term study. To account for this real-life increase in process variation over time, an empirically based 1.5 sigma shift is introduced into the calculation. According to this idea, a process that fits 6 sigma between the process mean and the nearest specification limit in a short-term study will in the long term fit only 4.5 sigma – either because the process mean will move over time, or because the long-term standard deviation of the process will be greater than that observed in the short term, or both.
Hence the widely accepted definition of a six sigma process is a process that produces 3.4 defective parts per million opportunities DPMO. This is based on the fact that a process that is normally distributed will have 3.4 parts per million outside the limits, when the limits are six sigma from the "original" mean of zero and the process mean is then shifted by 1.5 sigma and therefore, the six sigma limits are no longer symmetrical about the mean. The former six sigma distribution, when under the effect of the 1.5 sigma shift, is commonly referred to as a 4.5 sigma process. The failure rate of a six sigma distribution with the mean shifted 1.5 sigma is not equivalent to the failure rate of a 4.5 sigma process with the mean centered on zero. This allows for the fact that special causes may result in a deterioration in process performance over time and is designed to prevent underestimation of the defect levels likely to be encountered in real-life operation.
The role of the sigma shift is mainly academic. The purpose of six sigma is to generate organizational performance improvement. It is up to the organization to determine, based on customer expectations, what the appropriate sigma level of a process is. The purpose of the sigma value is as a comparative figure to determine whether a process is improving, deteriorating, stagnant or non-competitive with others in the same business. Six sigma 3.4 DPMO is not the goal of all processes.
The table below gives long-term DPMO values corresponding to various short-term sigma levels.
These figures assume that the process mean will shift by 1.5 sigma toward the side with the critical specification limit. In other words, they assume that after the initial study determining the short-term sigma level, the long-term value will turn out to be 0.5 less than the short-term Cpk value. So, now for example, the DPMO figure given for 1 sigma assumes that the long-term process mean will be 0.5 sigma beyond the specification limit Cpk = –0.17, rather than 1 sigma within it, as it was in the short-term study Cpk = 0.33. Note that the defect percentages indicate only defects exceeding the specification limit to which the process mean is nearest. Defects beyond the far specification limit are not included in the percentages.
The formula used here to calculate the DPMO is thus