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What Is Six Sigma Improvement Methodology?

Six Sigma today has come to mean many things. When it began as a program in Motorola in 1987 it started as a normalised measure and a target for process capability. The ulitmate objective is to continuously improve the processes critical for customer satisfaction and for the bottomline of a company to near perfection levels.

Six Sigma stated in defect terms means the process will not produce more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities that the process is capable of producing. In order to achieve this the process specifications or the customers' requirements should be at a distance of 6 times the standard deviation of the process as the diagram below shows.

 

The Six Sigma Black Belt Program

One of the emerging forms the Six Sigma program is taking is the Black belt program. This has come about because of the failure of many prior customer satisfaction or quality efforts to meet expectations because they are added on to employee duties. At Motorola, AlliedSignal, and GE, full-time teams manage, promote, conduct training, improve the quality process, and share best practices. Because permanently removing "evil" product and service defects requires diligence, special training, and unique skills, Six Sigma practitioners proudly carry the titles Master Black Belt, Black Belt, and Green Belt. Similar to progressing through a martial arts discipline, 6s encourages people to continually "hone" skills and work to achieve higher degrees of proficiency.

People usually learn faster and retain more of what they learned when they can immediately apply their new knowledge. Because Black Belt candidates are carefully matched to qualified projects, enthusiasm and success rates are very high.

Black Belts usually have college degrees and are working in their field. Black Belts receive four weeks of training spread over four months and use a preselected project as the basis for the training. Following training, Black Belts provide full-time high-level breakthrough project leadership.

Green Belts often have college degrees and are working in their field. Green Belts work under the watchful eye of a Black Belt and lead smaller projects. Green Belts receive 10 days of Six Sigma methods training, spread over 2 to 4 months. Training is conducted on preselected projects. An example of a Green Belt project assignment is a need to improve a measurement system that is part of a larger project.

The tool set of the Six Sigma Black Belt program is expanding, the basic tools each Black Belt has to become proficient in are:

  • 7 QC Tools
  • Process Mapping
  • Cause and Effect Analysis
  • FMEA
  • Measurement Systems Analysis
  • Process Characterisation Techniques and associated Tools
  • Inferential Statistical tools- range of tools
  • Regression Analysis
  • Correlation
  • Design of Experiments- variety of different Designs
  • Process Control and Standardisation
  • Poka Yoke

The ability to use the basic tool set is a prerequisite to Six Sigma Black Belt training and certification where emphasis on using advanced quality and statistical skills is focused on five major phases of process improvement; Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, and Control (DMAIC)

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