11/08/2010

Six Sigma: An overwiew

The Value of Six Sigma
Six Sigma, and its counterpart Lean Six Sigma, have been buzz words for quite some time. Still, when most business people are asked they can’t quite pinpoint what it represents. First and foremost individuals that are seeking to implement the process must focus on learning what Six Sigma is. Contrary to what many folks have been led to believe, it is not a magic pill that will eliminate the problems your organization may have overnight. Six Sigma is as much of a culture as it is a system. The primary tenets of the program focus on impacting the culture of an organization and how they focus on problems, as opposed to using some system of mathematical equations to fix your process flows.

What Six Sigma Is
The Six Sigma process places a sharp focus on how things get done. Typically I recommend beginning the evaluation of a process by implementing either an Ishikawa Diagram or by performing a root cause analysis. These techniques are beneficial in that they allow me to look at the very basic processes that organizations have and then begin to evaluate the processes that evolve as an event unfolds. Regardless of what the event is, it must have a beginning, middle, and an end. By using the Fishbone Diagram I am able to evaluate the many pieces of the process I am examining and begin to focus on bottlenecks or constraints within the process that introduce inefficiencies into the workflow. By evaluating these processes early on, I can begin to identify steps in the workflow process that have a higher likelihood of introducing variability into the process. By isolating and then minimizing these instances of process variability I can then make recommendations regarding ways to increase the overall efficiency of the process and reduce variability.

What Six Sigma Is Not
Six Sigma is no silver bullet. Once all of the analysis has been performed, and the steps within the process that introduce heightened variability have been identified it is still the responsibility of management to put these findings to use. Without the commitment to implement the recommended methods to minimize variability, the evaluation of the entire process is merely a waste of time and resources.

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