subject: Introduction To Six Sigma Methods [print this page] Introduction To Six Sigma Methods Introduction To Six Sigma Methods
Six Sigma is a method widely used in most industries to assure the steady revenue of a company by reducing its defective products to a bare minimum. Firstly introduced by "Motorola" in 1986 in the USA this method has helped a lot of companies manage their losses and improve their production quality just by setting easy to follow phases that help to understand the problem at hand. With the help of the methods used by Six Sigma the end goal is to reduce the statistical probability to manufacture defective goods just to 3.4 defective items in a million made. To accomplish this Six Sigma program requires the creation of a team within the company with people who are trained specifically to follow and execute correctly each and every step of the phases of the program. Every person is an expert in the field of quality management and statistical methods which make the processes go smoothly. The Six Sigma team follows a certain chain of command within their ranks to assure that every phase of the method has a leader that will make sure of its proper completion and assure the end result is the wanted one by the company. Currently Six Sigma projects consist of two methodologies that have five phases each and are called for short DMAIC and DMADV. The first method DMAIC is an acronym for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control. These are the five phases that this method consists off, by following each one off them you will be able to improve an already built business and manage it accordingly. The second method is DMADV which stands for Define, Measure, Analyze, Design and Verify. This specific method is aimed for building a future business venture with new products. Six Sigma is a methodology best suited for larger organizations with more that 500 employees, the main reason is that bigger companies can easily adapt their staff with the hierarchy that the program needs to run efficiently without any glitches. No matter how effective and reliable a thing is there will be always someone to criticize it. The Six Sigma methods are no different; there are a lot of remarks toward the program many off which are unjustified. The main issue that many professionals have with the program is that it helps to improve an already established process to the point that there are almost no defective products at the end of the assembly line but it does not help at all when it comes to create a new product and puts a blockade between creativity and revenues. The controversial opinions aside, the Six Sigma program has helped dozens of Fortune 500 companies to cut their losses to a point that they manage to save up to a billion dollars each year just by using the methods implemented by the program. This may not be the perfect program to develop your business, but it will make sure that it will grow to its potential.
