3.4: Other Voluntary Quality Mangement Systems

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Jack O'Grady
Austin Community College

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Six Sigma

As products become more complex, so does the manufacturing processes to manufacture them. This high complexity resulted in higher failure rates in manufacturing. In the 1990s, Bill Smith of Motorola Corporation developed Six Sigma as a strategy to deal with these failures and improve profitability by reducing process and product variation. In 2005, Motorola attributed 17 billion dollars in savings from implementing the Six Sigma system!

Six Sigma is a rigorous process improvement methodology encompassing a procedure of Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control (DMAIC). The DMAIC method encourages employees at all levels in the company to accept feedback, utilize clearly defined metrics, collect and analyze data, and create an overall company culture built on trust.

The overall goal of Six Sigma is to reduce variation in the process, and the product, and thereby defects by using a highly focused system of problem-solving. The term Six Sigma stems from manufacturing terminology using statistical process modeling. A sigma rating is the yield or percentage of a defect-free product; Six Sigma is a process in which 99.99966% of the products manufactured are statistically free of defects (3.4 defective parts per million). Several features set Six Sigma apart from other methodologies; there is a clear focus on measurable fiscal returns on a project, and there is an increased commitment to make databased decisions and statistical methods.

The DMAIC Methodology

Define the project and goals of the project
Measure the current process using data
Analyze the data using cause-and-effect method to seek out the root cause of the defect
Improve the process based on the data and analysis; perform pilot runs
Control the process by ensuring deviations are corrected; implement statistical process control, continuously monitor the process