Six Sigma Case Study

Six Sigma is an approach started by Motorola in the year 1987, concentrate on decreasing variation and continuously improving processes in the organization. Six Sigma is a method of quality strategy which is used for decreasing out variability from processes through better use of statistical concepts and techniques. It is a well structured and straight methodology which uses facts based on the available data and perform statistical analysis on the data to measure and hence improve organizations performance by reducing the defects in the manufacturing system. Six Sigma process is based upon the data driven procedure of improvement methods that gives weightage to prevent defect rather than to detect defect. Six Sigma reduces

Six Sigma is a new quality improvement approach that will help companies to increase both the satisfaction of customer and monetary benefits. This quality improvement approach seeks to find and delete causes of defects in business processes by aiming on outputs that are important to customers. Six Sigma is defined as organized and straight method for strategic process improvement in organization and new product and service development that based upon statistical control methods and the other scientifically methods to make large reductions in defect rates. General Electric company benefitted by implementing the Six Sigma in their organization. Many others also like Allied Signal implemented Six Sigma and gets the benefits of the method. Six Sigma program implementation demands several things like support of management, operator training, cultural changes

Improvement from 3 sigma to 6 sigma level is not just as twice but it is 20,493 times as specified in table 3.3. Common sense of human being cannot make such improvements. Six Sigma structured DMAIC methodology which supports strong statistical quality control tools will only gave way for such improvements. Efforts required to improve from one level to other level.

Table 3.3 Improvement Times

From Sigma

Level To Sigma Level 3 4 5 6

2 5 55 1485 1,02,465

3 -- 11 297 20,493

4 -- -- 27 1863

5 -- -- -- 69

Snee [10] says that there is a strong connection between which sigma level a company is operating at and the cost of poor quality as exhibit in Table 3.4. Furthermore Snee [10] says that a company operating at a level between 3 and 4 sigma spends about 15-30 % of their annual turnover for correcting the