ISO 9001 Compliance

Sigma – six is a registered service mark and trademark of Motorola and the company has reported an impressive $17,000,000,000 in savings from Sigma – six as of 2006. AlliedSignal and General Electric were among the first to adopt the management strategy, by the turn of the century, about two-thirds of the Fortune 500 organizations had begun Sigma – six initiatives with the aim of reducing costs and improving quality.

Sigma – six is simply a disciplined, data-driven approach and methodology for eliminating defects (driving towards six standard deviations between the mean and the nearest specification limit) in any process, from manufacturing to transactional and from product to service. Sigma – six is a smart management strategy that has given positive results for all that have used it.

Sigma six may be defined as a form of business management strategy that aims to guarantee quality of products and services. It was initially invented and applied by Motorola. Sigma six is today used mostly in the manufacture and industrial sectors. Sigma – six works as a tqm tool since it aims to improve the general quality of most process outputs by discovering and removing both minor and major causes of errors in business and manufacturing processes. Sigma – six helps ensure total quality management by utilizing a set of methods such as statistical methods.

What do you get when you combine two of the best methodologies in the business world or specifically the manufacturing industry? Lean Six Sigma; that’s what you get. While Lean is related to focussing on removing things that can be isolated from the organization or specific processes without causing any kind of setbacks to the running of the systems, Six Sigma emphasizes on quality and how practices within a company can be worked around and modified to give the best in terms of quality and satisfaction to the customer. As can be understood then, lean six sigma works on the joint principles of quality and speed.

We have heard how working with the Six Sigma strategy can help organizations go places and increase their profit margins and customer satisfaction by drastic amounts. So, if Six Sigma is capable of doing such amazing things, there must definitely be a process or people who would be trained to help fulfill the goals that it lays down. Yes, there are. Generically they are known as Six Sigma certified professionals although as we delve deeper into the realms of Six Sigma, we will see that they have specific names and a hierarchy for themselves based on which they can be differentiated.

This classification is done in categories or layers. In this lies the different ‘belts’ of Six Sigma. You must have heard of Black belt, Green Belt etc. in Six Sigma, that’s what this is:

A strategy in business management that was initiated by Motorola, Six Sigma is a set of practices that today enjoys acceptance and more importantly respect world over. For initials, six sigma is a process that aims to reduce the defects and errors occurring in an organization along with the variations that occur in the different processes that go about in the company. This is done by a set of procedures and methods, most of which are management methods intended on improving quality. There are also some statistical methods that work on the numbers picture of the story.

The background of Six Sigma as already said lies with Motorola wherein Bill Smith formulated the set of practices for the strategy in 1986. Initially aimed at the manufacturing processes, it is today eventually being used in other industries and fields as well as they realize its importance. The formulation and initial layout of Six Sigma was heavily inspired by various different processes that had become standard quality improvement methods over the last half century or so. These processes were the ones that had been tried and tested over a period of decades and had returned solid results and six sigma in turn was developed on their strong holds.