* What is six sigma?

* Historical overview.
* How the term six sigma has been derived.
* Origin &meaning of the term “six sigma.”
* Sigma levels.
* Six themes of six sigma.
* Methodology.
* Criticism.
* Conclusion.
 WHAT IS SIX SIGMA?

six sigma is a business management strategy

originally developed by Motorola.
* It seeks to identify and remove the causes of
defects and errors in manufacturing and
business process.
* It uses a set of quality management methods,
including statistical methods.
* It creates a special infrastructure of people within
the organization who are experts in these
methods.
Historical overview:

The methodology of six sigma was first formulated

by Bill smith at Motorola in 1986.It was originally
Developed as a set of practices designed to
Improve manufacturing process and eliminate
Defects.
It includes the following:
- Continuous efforts to achieve stable and predictable
results.
- Manufacturing and business process have
characteristics that can be measured, analyzed,
improved And controlled.
* Achieving sustained quality improvement requires
commitment from the entire organization .
Features that make six sigma apart-:
* 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 six sigma approach.
How the term six sigma has been
derived?

The term six sigma is derived from a field of

statistics known as process capability studies.
Originally it referred to the ability of manufacturing
Process to produce a very high proportion of output
within specifications.
Process that operate with “ Six sigma Quality” over the
short term period are assumed to produce long-term
defect level below 3.4 defects per million
opportunities (DMPO). Six sigma’s implicit goal is to
improve all processes to that level of quality or better
* Origin and meaning of the term “six sigma
process”
Sigma is used to represent the standard deviation (a
measure of variation) of statistics. The term Six
sigma process comes from the notion that If one
has six standard deviations between the mean of
a process and the nearest specification limit, there
will be practically no items that fail to meet the
specifications.
Graph of the normal distribution ,which underlined the statistical
assumptions of the six sigma model
Sigma levels-:
One sigma=690000 dmpo, means efficiency 31%
Two sigma=308000 dmpo, means efficiency 69.2%
Three sigma=66800 dmpo,means efficiency 93.32%
Four sigma=6210 dmpo, means efficiency 99.379%
Five sigma=230 dmpo, means efficiency 99.977%
Six sigma=3.4 dmpo, means efficiency 99.9997%

Six themes of six sigma-:

-genuine focus on the customer
-data and fact driven management
-process focus ,management &improvement
-proactive management
-boundary less collaboration
-drive for perfection ;tolerance failure
Methodology-:
1> dmaic- used to improve existing business
process.
2> dmadv- used to create new product or process
design.
Dmaic :
*define:process improvement goals that are
consistent with customer demands and the
enterprise stategy.
*measure key aspect of the current process and
collect relevant data.
*analyze the data to verify cause and effect
relationship.
*improve or optimize the process based upon data
analysis using techniques.
*control to ensure that any deviations from target
are corrected before they result in defects.
Dmadv
*define design goals that are consistent with
customer.
*measure and identify characteristics that are critical
to quality ,product capabilities ,production process
capability and risks.
*analyze to develop and design alternatives,create a
high design and evaluate design capability to
select the best design.
*design details, optimize the design, and plan for
design verifications.
*verify the design, set up pilot runs, implement the
production process and handle it to the process
owners.
Criticism of six sigma:-
-lack of originality
-role of consultants
-based on arbitrary standards.
Conclusions:-

six sigma a concept evolved which involves the best

part of previous improvement methodologies such
as quality control, tqm, and zero effects and new
techniques of the modern business world which
makes it unique .This is the reason why other
companies are adopting it.