Understanding Six Sigma - Streamlining Quality Management

Six Sigma is a quality management process used to help organizations to improvise their product, functionality & customer service by determining the defects & eliminating them. The goal of six sigma implementation is to streamline quality management, to avoid even the slightest of inconsistency throughout.

The Greek letter Sigma is a statistical symbol, which represents a standard deviation. Trademarked by Motorola in 1980s, Six Sigma process is expected to be defect-free 99.99966 percent of the time. Motorola had primarily set this goal for its own manufacturing operations, but it quickly became a widely adopted standard in the industry.

Sig Sigma Principles

The main objective of six sigma approach is to identity the defects and eliminate the ones causing variation in quality of the product or customer services. Learn to deploy a six-sigma framework and methodologies for continuous improvement. Learning Operations Management with Six Sigma is the key to achieving competitive advantage for organizations, whether they are in manufacturing or in the service industry.

• Consistent & Practical Approach to reap profitable results
• Involve a strong problem-solving team
• Eliminate variation to improve process
• Data accuracy that helps find the root cause of the problem
• Focus on customer requirement

Six Sigma process aims to utilize collected data and stats, which help professionals objectively, identify errors and defects that will impact the quality. Six Sigma framework is designed specifically to fit diversified business goals, which allows organizations to define objectives around specific industry needs.

Six Sigma methodologies

There are two sub-methodologies used in Six Sigma projects: DMAIC and DMADV:

Six Sigma DMAIC

The Six Sigma DMAIC project methodology includes five segments, each represented as a letter in the DMAIC acronym. These include:

• Define: To be able to define the problem & needs of the customer, the project requirements and the ultimate goals and delivery expectations.
• Measure: It is imperative to measure your current performance by establishing a plan based on the collected data to determine defects and improvise metrics.
• Analyze: To analyze the process to determine the root cause of variations and defects, which helps professionals in identifying the in-depth issues & how they are not aligned with the current strategy that stand in the way of the end results.
• Improve: Improvise the complete process by eliminating the root causes of defects/variations through innovative solutions.
• Control: Last but one of the most important phases is to avoid the new processes from falling into old habits & ensuring that the new strategies stay on the right track.

Six Sigma DMADV

DMADV, which is popularly known as the Design for Six Sigma (DFSS), includes five phases:

• Define: Defining realistic goals, which ultimately help organization in achieving customer satisfaction.
• Measure and identify: It is imperative for professionals to measure & identity the CTQ (customer’s critical to quality) requirements & decipher them into clear project goals.
• Analyze: Analyzing a slew of options and alternatives for the customer along with the estimated total life cycle of the project.
• Design: To design the process at a high level, before defining the prototype to identify variations & make amendments in the plan.
• Verify: The most important one is to verify the final product or process, which is approved by all customers and clients — whether internal or external.

DMAIC vs. DMADV

The DMAIC and DMADV methodologies are almost similar, but their usage is diversified. DMAIC methodology is used to enhance your existing processes or enhancing the quality of your products that are not performing to customer's standards. Whereas, DMADV is used when a new product is being developed or when an optimized product falls short.

Developed in 1986, Six Sigma has become a global phenomenon with companies around the globe. Learn to deploy a six-sigma framework and methodologies for continuous improvement. It is increasingly known as an important factor, contributing to the effective performance of firms. Click on the following link to learn more about how six sigma implementation plays a vital role in Operations Management https://bit.ly/3pOVyV1