Six Sigma:

A Techno-Statistical
Analysis
Presented to : Prof. Jaydeb Bhattacharjee

Submitted By,

Name: Sohong Chakraborty

Roll: JSB-01-012,

Trimester: 2nd Term,

Batch: PGDM, 2009-11,

Jyotirmoy School of Business.

Contents

Introduction

-----What is Six Sigma? By definition

Brief history and Features

-----The six steps of Six Sigma

Methodologies for Implementing Six Sigma

-----DMAIC

-----DMADV

Role of 1.5 Sigma Shift

Original concepts and theories of Motorola with Six Sigma

Implementation Rules

-----Members evolution and training process

Six Sigma Challenges

Six Sigma benefits

-----Six Sigma level measurements

Potential negative effect

Criticism of 1.5 Sigma shift

GE’s Six sigma Experience

-----Reaping the Benefits

Conclusion

Bibliography
Introduction

Quality control involves the examination of a product, service, or process for certain
minimum levels of quality. The goal of a quality control team is to identify products or
services that do not meet a company’s specified standards of quality. If a problem is
identified, the job of a quality control team or professional may involve stopping production
temporarily. Depending on the particular service or product, as well as the type of problem
identified, production or implementation may not cease entirely.

Usually, it is not the job of a quality control team or professional to correct quality issues.
Typically, other individuals are involved in the process of discovering the cause of quality
issues and fixing them. Once such problems are overcome, the product, service, or process
continues production or implementation as usual.

Quality control can cover not just products, services, and processes, but also people.
Employees are an important part of any company. If a company has employees that don’t
have adequate skills or training, have trouble understanding directions, or are misinformed,
quality may be severely diminished. When quality control is considered in terms of human
beings, it concerns correctable issues. However, it should not be confused with human
resource issues.

Often, quality control is confused with quality assurance. Though the two are very similar,
there are some basic differences. Quality control is concerned with the product, while quality
assurance is process–oriented.

One of the most dynamic processes in the field of quality control over the last thirty years has
been Six Sigma as pioneered by Motorola. Six Sigma is a quality control standard in which
the goal is to reduce variability in every business practice within an organization.

The Six Sigma quality control standard was originated by the Motorola Company in the
1980’s and was designed to help eliminate the rate of defects perceived to be caused by
manufacturing variation. An organization that achieves Six Sigma is required to have, at the
most, 3.4 defects for every one million customer requirements.

To understand this, we can take this matter into consideration. There would be a period of
two hours every month in which the public sanitation industries would allow the water
quality to become unsafe. Now, if Six Sigma were to be achieved in each of these industries,
quality would be improved to the following level. There would be only one improperly filled
drug prescription every twenty-five years in the pharmaceutical industry. Only three babies
would be dropped every one hundred years in the healthcare industry. Finally, the public
would only have to endure one second of unsafe drinking water every sixteen years.

Six Sigma strives to remove variability in all facets of an organization and challenges each
member of the company to become committed to this culture. Six Sigma is much more than a
way of removing flaws in the manufacturing process and the product. For Six Sigma
companies, process improvement needs to be included in every business practice, including
those jobs that are considered indirect labor or non-revenue producing. Six Sigma has been
applied to unconventional business practices such as the percentage of properly filed
paperwork, customer complaints, and even effectiveness of solvents used in restrooms.

What is Six Sigma ? By the definition:-

Six Sigma simply means a measure of quality that strives for near perfection. Six Sigma is 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.

Origin and meaning of the term "six sigma process"

(Graph of the normal distribution, which underlies the statistical assumptions of the Six Sigma
model. The Greek letter σ (sigma) marks the distance on the horizontal axis between the mean, µ,
and the curve's inflection point, in this case µ=1. The distance is equally distributed horzontally to
both sides of the mean µ as: [µ - σ/2, µ + σ/2]. The greater this distance, the greater is the spread of
values encountered. For the curve shown above, µ = 0 and σ = 1. The upper and lower specification
limits (USL, LSL) are at a distance of 6σ from the mean. Because of the properties of the normal
distribution, values lying that far away from the mean are extremely unlikely. Even if the mean were
to move right or left by 1.5σ at some point in the future (1.5 sigma shift), there is still a good safety
cushion. This is why Six Sigma aims to have processes where the mean is at least 6σ away from the
nearest specification limit.)
Brief History and Features

The roots of Six Sigma as a measurement standard can be traced back to Carl Frederick
Gauss (1777-1855) who introduced the concept of the normal curve. Six Sigma as a
measurement standard in product variation can be traced back to the 1920's when Walter
Shewhart showed that three sigma from the mean is the point where a process requires
correction. Many measurement standards (CPK, TQM, Zero Defects, etc.) later came on the
scene but credit for coining the term "Six Sigma" goes to a Motorola engineer named Bill
Smith. (Incidentally, "Six Sigma" is a federally registered trademark of Motorola, USA).

Like its predecessors, Six Sigma doctrine asserts that:

 Continuous efforts to achieve stable and predictable process results (i.e., reduce
process variation) are of vital importance to business success.
 Manufacturing and business processes have characteristics that can be measured,
analyzed, improved and controlled.
 Achieving sustained quality improvement requires commitment from the entire
organization, particularly from top-level management.

Features that set Six Sigma apart from previous quality improvement initiatives include:

 A clear focus on achieving measurable and quantifiable financial returns from any Six
Sigma project.
 An increased emphasis on strong and passionate management leadership and support.
 A special infrastructure of "Champions," "Master Black Belts," "Black Belts," etc. to
lead and implement the Six Sigma approach.
 A clear commitment to making decisions on the basis of verifiable data, rather than
assumptions and guesswork.
 The term "Six Sigma" comes from a field of statistics known as process capability
studies. Originally, it referred to the ability of manufacturing processes to produce a
very high proportion of output within specification. Processes that operate with "six
sigma quality" over the short term are assumed to produce long-term defect levels
below 3.4 defects per million opportunities (DPMO). Six Sigma's implicit goal is to
improve all processes to that level of quality or better.

In the early and mid-1980s with Chairman Bob Galvin at the helm, Motorola engineers
decided that the traditional quality levels -- measuring defects in thousands of opportunities
-- didn't provide enough granularities. Instead, they wanted to measure the defects per million
opportunities. Motorola developed this new standard and created the methodology and
needed cultural change associated with it. Six Sigma helped Motorola realize powerful
bottom-line results in their organization - in fact, they documented more than $16 Billion in
savings as a result of our Six Sigma efforts.
Since then, hundreds of companies around the world have adopted Six Sigma as a way of
doing business. This is a direct result of many of America's leaders openly praising the
benefits of Six Sigma. Leaders such as Larry Bossidy of Allied Signal (now Honeywell), and
Jack Welch of General Electric Company. Rumor has it that Larry and Jack were playing
golf one day and Jack bet Larry that he could implement Six Sigma faster and with greater
results at GE than Larry did at Allied Signal. The results speak for themselves.

Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the
causes of defects (errors) and minimizing variability in manufacturing and business
processes. It uses a set of quality management methods, including statistical methods, and
creates a special infrastructure of people within the organization ("Black Belts", "Green
Belts", etc.) who are experts in these methods. Each Six Sigma project carried out within an
organization follows a defined sequence of steps and has quantified targets. These targets can
be financial (cost reduction or profit increase) or whatever is critical to the customer of that
process (cycle time, safety, delivery, etc.).

The Six Steps to Six Sigma

Step #1 - Identify the product you create or the service you provide

In other words ... WHAT DO YOU DO?

Step #2 - Identify the Customer(s) for your product or service, and determine what they
consider important i.e. Customer Requirements etc.

In other words ... WHO USES YOUR PRODUCT AND SERVICES?

Step #3 - Identify your needs (to provide product/service so that it satisfies the Customer)

In other words ... WHAT DO YOU NEED TO DO YOUR WORK?

Step #4 - Define the process for doing your work

In other words ... HOW DO YOU DO YOUR WORK?

Step #5 - Mistake-proof the process and eliminate wasted efforts using...

In other words ... HOW CAN YOU DO YOUR WORK BETTER?

Step #6 - Ensure continuous improvement by measuring, analyzing and controlling the
improved process using called DMAIC (illustrated below)

In other words ... HOW PERFECTLY ARE YOU DOING YOUR CUSTOMER-FOCUSED
WORK?
Methodologies for implementing Six Sigma

Six Sigma projects follow two project methodologies inspired by Deming's Plan-Do-Check-
Act Cycle. These methodologies, comprising five phases each, bear the acronyms DMAIC
and DMADV.

 DMAIC is used for projects aimed at improving an existing business process.

 DMADV is used for projects aimed at creating new product or process designs

DMAIC

The DMAIC project methodology has five phases:

 Define the problem, the voice of the customer, and the project goals, specifically.
 Measure key aspects of the current process and collect relevant data.
 Analyze the data to investigate and verify cause-and-effect relationships. Determine
what the relationships are, and attempt to ensure that all factors have been considered.
Seek out root cause of the defect under investigation.
 Improve or optimize the current process based upon data analysis using techniques
such as design of experiments, mistake proofing, and standard work to create a new,
future state process. Set up pilot runs to establish process capability.
 Control the future state process to ensure that any deviations from target are corrected
before they result in defects. Control systems are implemented such as statistical
process control, production boards, and visual workplaces and the process is
continuously monitored.

DMADV

The DMADV project methodology, also known as DFSS ("Design For Six Sigma"), features
five phases:

 Define design goals that are consistent with customer demands and the enterprise
strategy.
 Measure and identify CTQs (characteristics that are Critical To Quality), product
capabilities, production process capability, and risks.
 Analyze to develop and design alternatives, create a high-level design and evaluate
design capability to select the best design.
 Design details, optimize the design, and plan for design verification. This phase may
require simulations.
 Verify the design, set up pilot runs, implement the production process and hand it
over to the process owner(s).

Role of the 1.5 sigma shift

Experience has shown that in the long term, processes usually do not perform as well as they
do in the short. As a result, the number of sigmas that will fit between the process mean and
the nearest specification limit may well drop over time, compared to an initial short-term
study. To account for this real-life increase in process variation over time, an empirically-
based 1.5 sigma shift is introduced into the calculation. According to this idea, a process that
fits six sigmas between the process mean and the nearest specification limit in a short-term
study will in the long term only fit 4.5 sigmas – either because the process mean will move
over time, or because the long-term standard deviation of the process will be greater than that
observed in the short term, or both.

Hence the widely accepted definition of a six sigma process as one that produces 3.4
defective parts per million opportunities (DPMO). This is based on the fact that a process that
is normally distributed will have 3.4 parts per million beyond a point that is 4.5 standard
deviations above or below the mean (one-sided capability study). So the 3.4 DPMO of a "Six
Sigma" process in fact corresponds to 4.5 sigmas, namely 6 sigmas minus the 1.5 sigma shift
introduced to account for long-term variation. This is designed to prevent underestimation of
the defect levels likely to be encountered in real-life operation.

Original Concepts and Theories of Motorola with Six Sigma

What Is Six Sigma and the 1.5 shift?

To quote a Motorola hand out from about 1987 ...

The performance of a product is determined by how much margin exists between the design
requirement of its characteristics (and those of its parts/steps), and the actual value of those
characteristics. These characteristics are produced by processes in the factory, and at the
suppliers.

Each process attempts to reproduce its characteristics identically from unit to unit, but within
each process some variation occurs. For more processes, such as those which use real time
feedback to control outcome, the variation is quite small, and for others it may be quite large.

A variation of the process is measured in Std. Dev, (Sigma) from the Mean. The normal
variation, defined as process width, is +/-3 Sigma about the mean.

Approximately 2700 parts per million parts/steps will fall outside the normal variation of +/-
3 Sigma. This, by itself, does not appear disconcerting. However, when we build a product
containing 1200 parts/steps, we can expect 3.24 defects per unit (1200 x .0027), on average.
This would result in a rolled yield of less than 4%, which means fewer than 4 units out of
every 100 would go through the entire manufacturing process without a defect. Thus, we can
see that for a product to be built virtually defect-free, it must be designed to accept
characteristics which are significantly more than +/- 3 sigma away from the mean.

It can be shown that a design which can accept TWICE THE NORMAL VARIATION of the
process, or +/- 6 sigma, can be expected to have no more than 3.4 parts per million defective
for each characteristic, even if the process mean were to shift by as much as +/- 1.5 sigma. In
the same case of a product containing 1200 parts/steps, we would now expect only only
0.0041 defects per unit (1200 x 0.0000034). This would mean that 996 units out of 1000
would go through the entire manufacturing process without a defect. To quantify this,
Capability Index (Cp) is used; where:

Design Specification Width

Capability Index Cp =

Process Width

A design specification width of +/- 6 Sigma and a process width of +/- 3 Sigma yields a Cp
of 12/6 = 2. However, the process mean can shift. When the process mean is shifted with
respect to design mean, the Capability Index is adjusted with a factor k, and becomes Cpk.
Cpk = Cp(1-k), where:

Process Shift

k Factor =

Design Specification Width

The k factor for a +/- 6 Sigma design with a 1.5 Sigma process shift ...

1.5/(12/2) or 1.5/6 = 0.25

and the

Cpk = 2(1- 0.25)=1.5

Other early adopters of Six Sigma who achieved well-publicized success include Honeywell
(previously known as AlliedSignal) and General Electric, where Jack Welch introduced the
method. By the late 1990s, about two-thirds of the Fortune 500 organizations had begun Six
Sigma initiatives with the aim of reducing costs and improving quality.

In recent years, some practitioners have combined Six Sigma ideas with lean manufacturing
to yield a methodology named Lean Six Sigma. 

Implementation roles

One key innovation of Six Sigma involves the "professionalizing" of quality management
functions. Prior to Six Sigma, quality management in practice was largely relegated to the
production floor and to statisticians in a separate quality department. Six Sigma borrows
martial arts ranking terminology to define a hierarchy (and career path) that cuts across all
business functions.

The implementation of Six Sigma follows a strict protocol.

First, projects are selected starting with those that are thought to have the highest
organizational priority. For many years the process of Six Sigma implementation followed a
five-step process referred to as DMAIC. However, there is a new eight-step Six Sigma
Breakthrough Process that many organizations are using to rework quality issues. The eight
steps include: Recognize, Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control, Standardize, and
Integrate.

Member evolution and Training Process

The Six Sigma training process is very organized and structured. This structure serves two
purposes. Corporate decision makers can see progression at each level of implementation.
Most importantly, the Six Sigma training process incorporates a climate of employee
involvement. This employee involvement is very important as it ensures that the transition to
Six Sigma has the best possible chance to succeed. When employees are involved,
transitional management is much easier. As employees go through Six Sigma training they
earn belts, similar to those earned in the martial arts. These belts signify the employee's Six
Sigma skill and knowledge.

• Yellow belt: The yellow belt is the starter level of Six Sigma. When an employee goes
through yellow belt training they are taught the essentials of Six Sigma and discover how the
process works. Yellow belt training normally takes one week to complete. Upon completion
of yellow belt training, the employee can serve as an organizational leader in simple projects
or support green and black belts in implementation of more complex projects.

• Green belt: Green belt training can normally be completed during a two-week seminar.
Upon completion of this training the employee can lead Six Sigma projects with estimated
returns greater than $25,000 annually. In this training program, potential green belts learn
about various methods of measuring data, including many quantitative models that can be
used to diagnose organizational inefficiencies. Most Six Sigma projects are led by green
belts. A Six Sigma organization should have one green belt for every $100,000 in annual
revenue.

• Black belt: Whereas green belts fully understand the concepts of data collection and
interpretation, black belts have an equal or greater knowledge of these statistical tools in
addition to the knowledge of how to lead many groups of Six Sigma projects simultaneously.
A Six Sigma organization should have one black belt for every $1,000,000 in annual
revenue. Black belts serve as leaders and points of reference for green and yellow belts.
Green belts will need to report to black belts regarding the status of their Six Sigma projects.

• Six Sigma champions: One of the highest level of Six Sigma training is the Six Sigma
champion. These employees are those who have proven to be effective as black belts. The
champion training differs from the black belt training in that the employee focuses on
organizational leadership and the strategic decision making process. A Six Sigma champion
is often times connected with a member of the organization's senior management in order to
identify and lead projects of vital importance. Six Sigma champions are also referred to as
master black belts.

 Executive Leadership: This includes the CEO and other members of top management is
the highest level for a Six sigma trainee. They are responsible for setting up a vision for Six
Sigma implementation. They also empower the other role holders with the freedom and
resources to explore new ideas for break-through improvements.

Six Sigma Challenges:

Certainly, the process of implementing Six Sigma is a challenge for any organization. The
implementation process introduces a huge time of adjustment which is one of the primary
challenges of Six Sigma. Many of the Six Sigma organizational implementations that don't
stick have to do with these companies not being fully committed to the process.

In addition, many organizations are faced with challenges regarding implementation of Six
Sigma because they fail to assign metrics to all business functions. One of the necessities of
Six Sigma is to quantify all business functions in order to improve on them. Even when it
comes to support functions such as paperwork, quality of this function must be analyzed
quantitatively. Stating that peripheral business functions are good or bad is not precise
enough. It is essential to determine how many errors are made per million attempts.

Six Sigma Benefits

The division of Motorola that oversees their Six Sigma services is known as Motorola
University. Motorola University claims that the return on investment for properly
implemented Six Sigma projects ranges between 10:1 and 50:1. Few organizations would not
be interested in learning more about a process that can offer that level of return on
investment. The popular literature is filled with the benefits that Six Sigma can provide
organizations in which its principles are incorporated. Many of these benefits can be
associated with how an organization must be aligned towards continuous improvement in
everything it does.

• Teambuilding: Teambuilding is an essential element of Six Sigma. Many organizations

wish that their workforce would communicate effectively across functional silos. However,
they have no idea how to initiate this communication. The Six Sigma process requires just
this kind of cross-functional communication in order to succeed.

• Constant improvement: One of the most basic tenets of Six Sigma is constant
improvement. Six Sigma supporters state that while 3.4 defects per million attempts may be
unattainable for the vast majority of companies; this goal serves as a constant reminder that
there is no such thing as good enough. The only constant is the need for improvement.
• Mandated training: Many organizations never seem to have time for training. Either these
organizations do not properly prioritize training or they see it as an unnecessary expenditure
of capital with no obvious correlation to revenue. The Six Sigma Quality Control Program
mandates training in all aspects of organizational processes. Any business process that
incorporates Six Sigma must be refined and this refining process requires training.

• Return on investment: One of the greatest advantages that the Six Sigma Quality Control
Program offers organizations are the reported return on investment. According to its 1997
annual report, AlliedSignal reported a $1.5 billion savings due to Six Sigma. GE chairman
Jack Welch has been credited with claiming savings in the billions of dollars that directly
correlated to Six Sigma implementation. Yet, in order to achieve these levels of return on
investment, organizations must be willing to commit significant time, energy, and resources
to the process. There is no such thing as partially committing to Six Sigma as it is an all or
nothing proposition.

• Increased aptitude for organizational change: Finally, Six Sigma can introduce an
increased aptitude for change. Six Sigma is devoted to constant improvement and continual
change in all business processes. All members of the organization are continually asked for
examples of processes that can be improved and recommendations of solutions to these
inefficiencies. This constant solicitation of input creates a corporate culture in which change
is sought after and implemented with relative ease.

Sigma levels

A control chart depicting a process that experienced a 1.5 sigma drift in the process mean
toward the upper specification limit starting at midnight. Control charts are used to maintain
6 sigma qualities by signaling when quality professionals should investigate a process to find
and eliminate special-cause variation.

The table below gives long-term DPMO values corresponding to various short-term sigma
levels.

Note that these figures assume that the process mean will shift by 1.5 sigma toward the side
with the critical specification limit. In other words, they assume that after the initial study
determining the short-term sigma level, the long-term Cpk value will turn out to be 0.5 less
than the short-term Cpk value. So, for example, the DPMO figure given for 1 sigma assumes
that the long-term process mean will be 0.5 sigma beyond the specification limit (Cpk = –
0.17), rather than 1 sigma within it, as it was in the short-term study (C pk = 0.33). Note that
the defect percentages only indicate defects exceeding the specification limit to which the
process mean is nearest. Defects beyond the far specification limit are not included in the
percentages.
Sigma level DPMO Percent defective Percentage yield Short-term Cpk Long-term Cpk

1 691,462 69% 31% 0.33 –0.17

2 308,538 31% 69% 0.67 0.17

3 66,807 6.7% 93.3% 1.00 0.5

4 6,210 0.62% 99.38% 1.33 0.83

5 233 0.023% 99.977% 1.67 1.17

6 3.4 0.00034% 99.99966% 2.00 1.5

7 0.019 0.0000019% 99.9999981% 2.33 1.83

Potential negative effects

A Fortune article stated that "of 58 large companies that have announced Six Sigma
programs, 91 percent have trailed the S&P 500 since". The statement is attributed to "an
analysis by Charles Holland of consulting firm Qualpro (which espouses a competing
quality-improvement process)." The summary of the article is that Six Sigma is effective at
what it is intended to do, but that it is "narrowly designed to fix an existing process" and does
not help in "coming up with new products or disruptive technologies." Many of these claims
have been argued as being in error or ill-informed.

A BusinessWeek article says that James McNerney's introduction of Six Sigma at 3M may
have had the effect of stifling creativity. It cites two Wharton School professors who say that
Six Sigma leads to incremental innovation at the expense of blue-sky work. This
phenomenon is further explored in the book, Going Lean, which provides data to show that
Ford's "6 Sigma" program did little to change its fortunes.

Based on arbitrary standards

While 3.4 defects per million opportunities might work well for certain products/processes, it
might not operate optimally or cost effectively for others. A pacemaker process might need
higher standards, for example, whereas a direct mail advertising campaign might need lower
standards. The basis and justification for choosing 6 (as opposed to 5 or 7, for example) as
the number of standard deviations is not clearly explained. In addition, the Six Sigma model
assumes that the process data always conform to the normal distribution. The calculation of
defect rates for situations where the normal distribution model does not apply is not properly
addressed in the current Six Sigma literature.

Criticism of the 1.5 sigma shift

The statistician Donald J. Wheeler has dismissed the 1.5 sigma shift as "goofy" because of its
arbitrary nature. Its universal applicability is seen as doubtful.
The 1.5 sigma shift has also become contentious because it results in stated "sigma levels"
that reflect short-term rather than long-term performance: a process that has long-term defect
levels corresponding to 4.5 sigma performance is, by Six Sigma convention, described as a
"6 sigma process." The accepted Six Sigma scoring system thus cannot be equated to actual
normal distribution probabilities for the stated number of standard deviations, and this has
been a key bone of contention about how Six Sigma measures are defined. The fact that it is
rarely explained that a "6 sigma" process will have long-term defect rates corresponding to
4.5 sigma performance rather than actual 6 sigma performance has led several commentators
to express the opinion that Six Sigma is a confidence trick.

GE’s Six Sigma Experience

Before beginning the implementation, studies revealed that GE's operations were carried out
between 3-4 sigma, i.e., about 35,000 defects per million opportunities. According to
company estimates, avoidable expenditure of $7-10 billion was being incurred in the form of
scrap, reworking of parts, correction of transactional errors, inefficiencies, and lost
productivity. 

According to analysts, the groundwork for the implementation of Six Sigma at GE had begun
in 1988 in the form of an initiative known as the 'WorkOut' program. The company realized
that employees were an important source of intellectual power for new and creative ideas.

The Work-Out program gave each employee an opportunity to influence and improve GE's
operations. The program had set four major goals that later helped to lay the groundwork for
Six Sigma. The goals were as follows:

• Build Trust: Employees were encouraged to criticize GE and the way they performed their
jobs without negative consequences to their careers.
 
• Empower employees: As employees who performed a particular task knew how to do it
perfectly, GE granted them more power, to encourage them to take more responsibility for
their jobs...

Reaping the Benefits

Analysts felt that the implementation of Six Sigma enabled Welch to transform an old-
economy industrial giant into a competitive and growing company. No other corporation
seemed to have integrated Six Sigma in to its operations as widely as GE. Within five years
of its implementation of Six Sigma at GE produced annual benefits of more than $2.5 billion
for GE worldwide. Analysts remarked that Six Sigma was an indisputable success at GE
whether in terms of customer satisfaction, improvement in internal performance, or in the
improvement of shareowner value...
Conclusion

Six Sigma has been described as a critical business tool for the 21st century. Many books, articles,
conferences, and web sites exist to support Six Sigma. Could the business continuity, security and
emergency management professions benefit from Six Sigma

Bibliography

i. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma

ii. “Six sigma Implementation” by Jim Long from Brynmor Associates, LLC

iv. http://www.sixsigmaonline.org/

v. http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/cs_quality_six-sigma_ge.html

vi. http://www.sixsigma.in

vii. “Information technology and Six sigma Implementation” by Chang-Tseh-Hsieh, Binshan

Lin, Bill Manduca , a research paper