Quality Engineering, 22:299305, 2010 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0898-2112 print=1532-4222 online DOI:

10.1080/08982112.2010.495102

Six Triumphs and Six Tragedies of Six Sigma

T. N. Goh Industrial and Systems Engineering Department, National University of Singapore, Singapore

ABSTRACT Six Sigma as a quality improvement framework has enjoyed an unprecedented long period of popularity. This article brings out factors that contribute to the uniqueness of Six Sigma, with its extensions and derivatives such as Design for Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma. Those features that have brought about an impetus for quality improvement are regarded as triumphs of Six Sigma, whereas some worrying trends in the practice of Six Sigma are labeled as tragedies. Clearly, industry should leverage on the strengths of Six Sigma and be careful not to become unwitting victims of the weaknesses. A realistic and balanced view is certainly called for at this juncture, and the advantages and pitfalls associated with Six Sigma should be fully recognized if Six Sigma is to continue its winning streak of the past quarter of a century.
KEYWORDS Design for Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma, quality engineering, quality management, Six Sigma, statistical thinking

INTRODUCTION
Some 20 years ago, at the height of popularity and controversy of the so-called Taguchi methodsexemplied by Taguchi (1986)an article by Pignatellio and Ramberg (1991) appeared in Quality Engineering pointing out the positive and negative aspects of the Taguchi version of quality engineering and experimental design, with the euphoria in industry at that time as a backdrop. Today, Taguchi is no longer on the lips of quality engineers and managersat least, it is not deemed fashionable anymore to talk about it. In fact, consultants can no longer make easy money by repeating the NBC mantra If Japan can, why cant you? With the recent great Toyota automobile recalls, from now on even the Toyota Method of production probably will have to be put on the back burner at least for some time. This article addresses a subject that is all American, something that has replaced Taguchi method as the most talked-about quality improvement approach for almost two decades. This is, of course, Six Sigma, on which there has been such an abundance of literature that elaboration on its contents would be unnecessarysee, for example, Harry and Schroder (1999), Hahn et al. (2000), Goh (2002), and Brady and Allen (2006).
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Address correspondence to T. N. Goh, Industrial and Systems Engineering Department, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore, 119260. E-mail: isegohtn@nus.edu.sg

Six Sigma, in the course of its development, has generated a number of derivatives and extensions, such as Design for Six Sigmae.g., Tennant (2002)and Lean Six Sigmae.g., George (2002). In this article, the term Six Sigma covers all these variants collectively because they share basically the same analytical foundations, with similar modes of application. Regardless of the variant, Six Sigma has commanded wide attention in industry and, much like the Taguchi phenomenon in the 1980s, success stories abound in many publications; detractors inevitably also have their say from time to time; for example, Lee (2001), Schrage (2001), Morris (2006), and Mika (2006). However, arguments against Six Sigma such as these are not usually made on rigorous grounds; likewise, promoters of Six Sigma tend to offer casual promises such as Savings can hit $300 K per project, so a single Black Belt can potentially bring a company $1.2 million to the good annually (Harry and Crawford 2005). Thus, some realistic assessment of all things Six Sigma at this juncture would not be out of place, in view of the surge of interests in Six Sigma in industry on one hand and the considerable investments made by companies in manpower development and external expertise on the other. Only with better understanding of the subject could an organization leverage on Six Sigmas strengths and overcome its weaknesses and be able to answer this question with condence: To Six Sigma, or not to Six Sigma?

with results that are of practical value; that is, not just a theoretically elegant scenario. What, on the other hand, qualies as a tragedy? The answer is any feature that, if unchecked, could negate a triumph, create misguided or misled actions, or even destroy what originally has been useful. The selection of six items in each category is by no means denitive or unique and has been made largely based on the authors personal experience in training, consulting, and research in Six Sigma over many years. Because the relative signicance of each item is a matter of personal opinion, there is no particular order in which the items are presented in the following sections.

SIX SIGMA TRIUMPHS Triumph No. 1

Use of a common, realistic metric for quality assessment and improvement: The use of critical-toquality (CTQ) and defects per million opportunities (dpmo) as performance indices is a trademark of Six Sigma. Deliberations on the choice and denition of CTQ would help focus on the meaningful and avoid the inconsequential. As a yardstick for measure of performance, dpmo allows ready comparisons of performance such as one process versus another, before versus after, as well as cross-process comparative studies. This is also associated with an equivalent yardstick, namely, sigma level that can be used for purposes such as benchmarking and project target setting. It may be noted, though, that not all outcomes are binary (defective or nondefective), and in some cases even a binary classication can be arbitrary (e.g., the time it takes to respond to a certain category of customer request). The important point is that, for the rst time, zero defect is no longer an often-spoken-of but elusive goal (or worse, a lip service); instead, one is supposed to face the realistic challenges of non-zero defect situations squarely. This is an important paradigm shift, with which the nebulous promise of zero defect is abandoned, though serious efforts are made (with effective infrastructure and tools, as detailed in the descriptions of other triumphs later on) to inch toward that goal. Furthermore, with Six Sigma, there are now generic metrics for marking progress; the defect measurements in the hands of the quality
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WHAT QUALIFIES TO BE MENTIONED

Just as Pignatellio and Ramberg (1991) effectively used the triumphs and tragedies categorization to highlight the notable aspects of Taguchi methods, a similar approach is taken here with respect to Six Sigma. Discussions of features of Six Sigma abound in the literature, such as Hahn (2005), but presented here will be the most important facts that an individual or company ought to know about Six Sigma. For this reason, only six of each category are brought up, though the lists could be readily extended. Some explanation of these categories is in order. What constitutes a triumph? Basically, a triumph exists when in the eld of quality engineering there has not been a similarly meritorious approach or methodology before; the item in question must be able to lead to a signicant impact or paradigm shift,
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practitioner transcend processes and industries of different nature. Generally, concepts expressed in terms of dpmo and sigma levels can be more readily explained and accepted by management than more formal mathematical jargons.

Triumph No. 2
Clear assignment of roles and responsibilities in performance improvement efforts: Another important paradigm shift that comes with Six Sigma is ditching of the refrain Quality is Everybodys Business. The intent of this statement may be good and valid, but in the real world this could be taken to imply diffused responsibilities, especially whenever there are problems, with the assumption that everybody is equally capable of handling quality issues. It is well known that in many situations, Everybodys Business in the end could degenerate into Nobodys Business. Not so in Six Sigma; personnel with various degrees of training and experience are designated clearly, and there are now individuals recognized to know more tools than others when it comes to performance improvement or problem solving. Thus, there is a commonly acknowledged hierarchy of people: ChampionsMaster Black BeltsBlack BeltsGreen BeltsYellow Belts that have different professional responsibilities in an organization. In addition, the success of Six Sigma depends largely on top management leadership rather than the previous bottom-up concepts: quality control circles, for example, may still have their place in handling specic local problems, but they cannot be the staple diet for fundamental organizational performance enhancement and customer satisfaction.

repeatability and reproducibility study is an established procedure, design of experiments is not a fresh concept, control charts have been applied for decades . . . and indeed there are already plenty of well-established college courses or on-the-job training programs on these subjects. So, whats new? What is new, as offered by Six Sigma, is the alignment and integration of statistical toolsheretofore taught and learned in a disjointed mannerinto a logical, purposeful sequence for CTQ improvement and business competitiveness. Specically, the tools are built into a DeneMeasureAnalyze ImprovementControl (or DMAIC) framework that suggests, for example, that a process be optimized via statistical design of experiments in the Improve phrase before being sustained by control chart applications in the Control phraseinstead of drawing up a control chart for something that is not even known to be optimal or otherwise. In fact, in pre-Six Sigma days, the more effective the control chart, the longer the continuation of some nonoptimized process. In other words, Six Sigma makes statistics work harder (by seeking the optimal) and smarter (by focusing on the best) in the hands of nonstatisticians.

Triumph No. 4
Recognition of the time effects on processes: Talking about the use of statistics by nonstatisticians in the past, for understandable reasons, practically only time-invariant models are used by the rank-andle. Six Sigma does not provide the full answer to the consequences of time-dependent natural changes, but it does bring up the concept of short-term versus long-term variation; that is, the 1.5 sigma shift in the assessment of dpmo and sigma levels. Although the rationale for such a shift is an unresolved issue (see, for example, ASQ Discussion Boards [2005]), the fact remains that Six Sigma is the only quality improvement approach that prominently recognizes and fully takes into account what any experienced quality practitioner must have faced: the relentless realization of the second law of thermodynamics, meaning Things left to themselves will deteriorate. No procedures, formulated by textbooks or otherwise, prior to the advent of Six Sigma required practitioners to express this real and important phenomenon explicitly up front. Regardless of the exact nature of a process one
Six Triumphs and Six Tragedies of Six Sigma

Triumph No. 3
Logical alignment of statistical tools: The concept that the whole is larger than the sum of the parts cannot be truer when it comes to the deployment of statistical tools in Six Sigma. Many an academic has pronounced that there is nothing new in Six Sigma. This is true when Six Sigma methodologies are taken apart; for example, distribution functions describing variability have been described in detail in many books before, process capability analysis is a known and used concept, analysis of variance is recognized by every student of statistics, gage
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is handling, this is an insightful defensive and preemptive move.

Triumph No. 5
Unprecedented synergy with modern information technology: Six Sigma attained its popularity among practitioners because it arrived at the right time. Should Six Sigma have appeared on the scene, say, 20 years earlier than the mid-1980s, it would not take off because it is statistics basedthe shear amount of data crunching would mean that only dedicated personnel hired to crank big and noisy mechanical calculators would want to have anything to do with it. Many have lamented the nonuse of statistics in industry, for example, Penzias (1989), but few have admitted the real and perceived obstacles, namely, the efforts it would take to gather, store, transform, and analyze data in industrial settings. By the 1990s, with the appearance and swift prevalence of both hardware and software brought about by the age of information technology, that is, personal computers, notebook computers, with user-friendly versions of the likes of MINITAB and JMP, application of Six Sigma no longer demands deep knowledge of statistical theory or superior data processing capabilities. The credit may not entirely lie in the contents of DMAIC, but winning over hesitant onlookers and converting industry people into acionados of statistical tools is an undeniable triumph of Six Sigma.

that Prevention is better than cure, and the latter recognizes that waste elimination should go hand in hand with variation reduction. There is no apparent limit to what Six Sigma might be morphed into in the years to come: mass customization, for example (Piller and Tseng 2010), is one possible direction for development. In recent years, serious attempts to introduce Six Sigma into service sectorsgovernment, education, health care, transportation, tourism, etc.actually reect the vitality of Six Sigma and constitute a veritable triumph over any narrowly dened and applied procedures for quality.

SIX SIGMA TRAGEDIES

Not all things associated with Six Sigma are awless, however. Some of the unsatisfactory aspects of Six Sigma are not inherent in Six Sigma itself but in the way in which Six Sigma is learned or deployed. Left unchecked, such weaknesses could lead to the undoing of Six Sigma in the long run. Opinions could differ, but the accounts given below are based on what has been observed in industry.

Tragedy No. 1
The belief that Six Sigma (as typical Black Belts know it) is universally applicable: This is related to the growing extension of Six Sigma applications, especially to nonmanufacturing systems. Unfortunately, this is where the Achilles heel of the common Six Sigma body of knowledge exhibits itselfeven though the training of Six Sigma workers has been a frequent subject of discussion; see Hoerl (2001), for example. Many run-of-the-mill Black Belts are ignorant of, for example, queuing theory, methods for discrete observations, as well as the nature of ordinal scales or correlated observations commonly found in service systems. Many of them would take on service quality projects with the idea that they have already been well prepared by the standard Black Belt training program. In principle, it is commendable for a quality professional to try to push the boundaries of Six Sigma applications. However, Black Belts using conventional Six Sigma procedures on service systems could end up with results that could not stand up to serious scrutiny of a good statistician. The problem could be compounded in some situations where
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Triumph No. 6
Capabilities to grow for larger roles for business competitiveness: Unlike many other quality tools or certication systems that remain essentially the same throughout their useful life, Six Sigma is organic. Six Sigma as applied in industry today can be a far cry from the Six Sigma of the 1980s. Through the years, Six Sigma has been augmented, extended, and transformed into even more comprehensive frameworks that are applicable all the way from design to manufacture (of products) or implementation (of service systems). Design for Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma, in a variety of roadmaps in different organizations, are major examples of the upshot of the classic Six Sigma formula from Motorola. The former reects the belief
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recommendations cannot be tested or demonstrated because the system in question has already changed in characteristics or boundaries over the project duration. The tragedy is doubled if the Black Belts are not even aware of their own inadequacy or limitations and, instead, brandish to management or customers the outcomes of half-baked studies.

Tragedy No. 2
Obsession with personal attainments: As in many other situations, the means could gradually and unwittingly become the end. Witness the myriad of overprized (or, interestingly in some cases, discounted) commercial Black Belt or Green Belt training programs that promise certication at the end. It seems forgotten that customers benets, and ultimately an organizations business interests, were the very motivation for Six Sigma originally. This is where some CTQ ought to be dened: is Six Sigma meant to benet an organizations customers or a certication project owner? Because Six Sigma calls for a hierarchy of professionals with a differentiation in levels of expertise and responsibilities, designation by different colors of belts is useful. However, most advertisements today for Six Sigma training and many potential takers seem to treat certication to a belt of a certain color to be the sole objective; the brutal fact is that classes are nowadays offered with individuals improved resumes as the unabashed motivation, rather than any customers improved satisfaction or any organizations improved bottom line. A practice has already been observed that presents BB or MBB in a resume as it were a professional degree, rather than a role within Six Sigma implementation.

implies that an individual is now t to handle Six Sigma implementation; in reality, all it means is that the person has satised certain requirements prescribed by anything from an established organization such as ASQ to a fee-grabbing consulting outt with unknown track record. Admittedly, some enlightened trainers and their learners are aware of the ocean of knowledge and tools left untouched during the standard Six Sigma training: a well-designed training program would use the Pareto principle to emphasize to the trainees that what is covered, the vital 20%, is actually not always needed, whereas the rest, 80% of other tools not in the DMAIC syllabus, are not really all trivial and occasionally have to be called forfor that, help from professional statisticians would certainly be needed. For a fuller discussion, see, for example, Hahn and Hoerl (1998).

Tragedy No. 4
Irresponsible hype of Six Sigma: Many, especially managers, are attracted by easy benets casually promised by Six Sigma promoters, many of whom nowadays could be entirely commercially motivated. For example, it remains to be proven whether seductive statements such as this are scientically supported: As much as $175,000=project and $1 million=yr= Black Belt (Harry 1998; interestingly, one may note the inconsistency between this promise and the statement quoted in the Introduction section of this article). It is real, though, that exorbitant amounts tend to be quoted by many commercial training-cum-certication offerings. Other motivators include descriptions, accompanied by data and graphs, of enviable rises in stock prices that only Six Sigma companies would enjoy, though the fact was that during the early 1990s, there was a general rise in stock prices in the United States, and practically all prices dipped toward the end of 2008, Six Sigma or no Six Sigma! There actually was a formal study on this subject some time ago (Goh et al. 2003). Because the likes of General Electric are invariably held up as models for Six Sigma implementation, for example, Snee and Hoerl (2003), the practice begs the question as to whether only organizations with the scale and operations of General Electric would benet from Six Sigma deployment. The upshot is
Six Triumphs and Six Tragedies of Six Sigma

Tragedy No. 3
The idea that professional statisticians are no longer needed: The main feature that contributes to the triumphs of Six Sigma could become an inhibitor of further successes. Many Six Sigma workers, particularly freshly minted Black Belts, tend to have the idea, albeit an implicit one, that the tools entailed in DMAIC are both necessary and sufcient for problem solving in the real world. (Tragedy No. 1 thus comes to mind again). The certication process, if anything, helps foster this misconception because it
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likely to be either (a) smaller organizations believe that Six Sigma is not appropriate for them, therefore ignoring it; or (b) such organizations are disillusioned when the fancied extraordinary prots turned out to be too good to be true and do not materializeafter hefty fees have been paid out and no one is answerable for the failure of Six Sigma. If this is not a tragedy, one wonders what is.

Tragedy No. 5
A bigoted In Data We Trust mentality: Precisely because Six Sigma is data driven, sometimes a practitioner could go overboard with statistical evidence. Thus, arguments could be advanced in favor of a course of action on the strength of some p-value generated by some computer software, rather than considered opinions based on the experience or insights of business leaders. This is particularly seen in projects presented for certication purposes: one could get the impression that the world is ruled by outputs from MINITAB (or such like), because once some p-value falls within a certain range and the residual checks look passable, all would seem to live happily ever after. This is not to say, of course, that different attitudes cannot be found; a good Six Sigma training program would produce professionals who are masters, rather than slaves, of statistical tools and software packages. In fact, the slave mentality in Six Sigma is exemplied by a practitioners condence and ability in handling merely quantitative information. Some would make a mountain out of a molehill, using data of dubious quality or data from some poorly constructed or responded survey. Not a few would be at a loss when encountered with a CTQ that is obviously non-numeric. A quote would sufce to describe the syndrome and its consequence: To many it will always seem better to have measurable progress toward the wrong goals than unmeasurable progress toward the right ones (Galbraith 1978). Apparently the tragedy is not conned to the world of economists.

those wearing Belts of whatever color in Six Sigma are expected to conform to the DMAIC straitjacket. Quick results and tangible savings are sometimes engineered to reect the success of a project especially by those associated with the unguaranteed prot promises, as pointed out previously. This is not necessarily consistent with customer satisfaction or business competitiveness, because suboptimization and short-term benets could be mistaken as fundamental improvements. Even adherence to, say, the 3.4 dpmo benchmark is not always logical; it could actually go against customer satisfaction, as pointed out elsewhere (Conti et al. 2003). A parable on suboptimization can be drawn from a scene in the movie Titanic, in which one could certainly applaud the exquisite music performed with seamless teamwork by the quartet, oblivious of the fact that the ship was slowly sinking! (In the same vein, one could ask: would it make sense to throw in Six Sigma manpower to improve the productivity of a mechanical typewriter assembly line?) There is one further point that is no less important. One expectation of Six Sigma is the development of Black Belts into business leaders of the future. Leaving aside the rigidity of DMAIC (during the certication-based training anyway), it is clear that nothing in Six Sigma prepares a Black Belt for technology changes or breakthroughs, technology substitution, lifestyle evolution, or cultural differences. Furthermore, human attributes that relate to successes are hardly ingredients found in DMAIC: imagination, vision, passion, insight, judgment, creativity, curiosity, perseverance, just to name a few though this is not to imply that none of these has been seen in actual Six Sigma endeavors. The spirit of innovation, synergy, breakthrough, and entrepreneurship, for example, could prove to be the prime mover of an organization, not the behavior of many a Six Sigma certication seeker. So the point is, it would be tragic indeed if carefully chosen and nurtured Black Blacks fail to realize their potential precisely because of what is lacking in Six Sigma itself.

Tragedy No. 6
Ignorance or neglect of what is important beyond DMAIC: Six Sigma as commonly practiced is technology-blind and human-ignorant. In particular,
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CONCLUDING REMARKS
In the nal analysis, Six Sigma offers a quality improvement and business excellence roadmap inspired by statistical thinking and guided by
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data-driven techniques. In this respect, useful insights can be gained from, for example, Hoerl and Snee (2002). The observations highlighted in the previous sections arose, as explained before, from the authors experience in organizations ranging from ones with a handful of employees to one of General Electrics large companies, personally interacting with nationals of about a dozen countries over the years. The discussions here are motivated by the fact that there are still companies today trying to decide, among other things, whether it is wise or safe to embrace Six Sigma, so to speak, after being exposed to various forms of publicity on the subject. This article is basically a two-pronged promotion of Six Sigma, namely, a call for reinforcement of its merits or triumphs and sounding of caution where tragedies could happen. Promoters of Six Sigma may well highlight the inherent Six Sigma triumphs to the uninitiated, but they owe the quality profession a responsibility to minimize the chances of tragedies. In particular, they should avoid the greed and fear approach in securing the next Six Sigma buyer (yes, for want of a better word); this author, for one, considers arguments such as the $XXX savings per project inducement and the 99% not good enough threat as used by some Six Sigma peddlers cheap, nonprofessional, and an intellectual insult to business leaders. In fact, Six Sigma does not need to depend on hyperbole to gain acceptance; with responsible professionals conscious efforts to avert potential tragedies, it has all the ingredients to continue to be triumphant for many years to come.

2006) which won the inaugural Masing Book Prize of the IAQ. Currently he serves on the editorial boards of ten international technical journals.

REFERENCES
ASQ Discussion Boards. (2005). Various contributions. Available at: http://www.asq.org/discussionBoards/thread.jspa?threadID=1517& forumID=18 Brady, J. E., Allen, T. T. (2006). Six Sigma literature: A review and agenda for future research. Quality and Reliability Engineering International, 22(3):335367. Conti, T., Kondo, Y., Watson, G. H., Eds. (2003). Quality into the Twenty-First Century. Milwaukee, WI: ASQ Quality Press. Galbraith, J. K. (1978). The New Industrial State, 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifin. George, M. L. (2002). Lean Six Sigma: Combining Six Sigma Quality with Lean Production Speed. Blacklick, OH: McGraw-Hill. Goh, T. N. (2002). A strategic assessment of Six Sigma. Quality and Reliability Engineering International, 18(5):403410. Goh, T. N., Low, P. C., Tsui, K., Xie, M. (2003). Impact of Six Sigma implementation on stock price performance. Total Quality and Business Excellence, 14(7):753763. Hahn, G. J. (2005). Six Sigma: 20 Key lessons learned: Experience shows what works and does not work. Quality and Reliability Engineering International, 21(3):225233. Hahn, G. J., Doganaksoy, N., Hoerl, R. W. (2000). The evolution of Six Sigma. Quality Engineering, 12(3):317326. Hahn, G. J., Hoerl, R. W. (1998). Key challenges for statisticians in business and industry. Technometrics, 40(3):195200. Harry, M. J. (1998). Six Sigma: A breakthrough strategy for protability. Quality Progress, 31(5):6064. Harry, M. J., Crawford, D. (2005). Six SigmaThe next generation. Machine Design, February. Harry, M. J., Schroeder, R. (1999). Six Sigma: The Breakthrough Management Strategy Revolutionizing the Worlds Top Corporations. New York: Doubleday. Hoerl, R. W. (2001). Six Sigma Black Belts: What do they need to know? (with discussion). Journal of Quality Technology, 33(4):391435. Hoerl, R. W., Snee, R. D. (2002). Statistical Thinking: Improving Business Performance. Pacic Grove, CA: Duxbury Press. Lee, C. (2001). Why you can safely ignore Six Sigma. Fortune, January. Mika, G. (2006). Six Sigma isnt lean. Manufacturing Engineering, July. Morris, B. (2006). New rule: Look out, not in. Fortune, July. Penzias, A. (1989). Teaching statistics to engineers [Editorial]. Science, 244(4908):1025. Pignatiello, J. J., Ramberg, J. S. (1991). Top ten triumphs and tragedies of Genichi Taguchi. Quality Engineering, 4(2):211225. Piller, F. T., Tseng, M. M., Eds. (2010). Handbook of Research in Mass Customization and Personalization. Singapore: World Scientic. Schrage, M. (2001). Make no mistake? Fortune, December. Snee, R. D., Hoerl, R. W. (2003). Leading Six Sigma: A Step-by-Step Guide Based on Experience with GE and Other Six Sigma Companies. Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT-Prentice Hall. Taguchi, G. (1986). Introduction to Quality Engineering. Tokyo: Asian Productivity Organization. Tennant, G. (2002). Design For Six Sigma: Launching New Products and Services without Failure. Hampshire, UK: Gower.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

T. N. Goh holds a B.E. from the University of Saskatchewan and a Ph.D. from the University of WisconsinMadison. A Fellow of ASQ and Academician of the International Academy for Quality (IAQ), he is also a former Director of the Ofce of Quality Management and former Dean of Engineering at the National University of Singapore. He is a coauthor of the book Six Sigma: Advanced Techniques for Black Belts and Master Black Belts (Wiley,

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Six Triumphs and Six Tragedies of Six Sigma

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