Significance of Six Sigma
Six Sigma techniques and practices are a set of methodologies which were originally used perfected by Motorola in the late 1980. These helped the company to eliminate manufacturing defects by systematically and constantly improving production processes.
Defects in products have been defined as those units that fail to meet the set standards of specifications of the production lot. Since its original development, Six Sigma has emerges as one of the top contenders amongst the total quality management initiatives.
Bill Smith was not the "inventor" Six Sigma in the late 1980s; rather, he applied his mind and developed techniques to use the methodologies which were available since the 1920s. The methods used in Six Sigma environment are nothing but a subset of the Quality Engineering science and each could be considered as part of knowledge bank of any Engineering institute. The aim of Six Sigma is the use of old tools in perfect synchronization for a greater and better effect which results in near perfect production. The techniques and methods used in Six Sigma environment were developed by Bill Smith who worked at Motorola in 1986 and it was originally designed as a measure of defects in the quest for and improvement of quality, and a procedural methodology intended to reduce acceptable defect levels to below 3.4 defects million count. Recently the Six Sigma programs have been integrated tightly with the TRIZ techniques used for product design and process streaming.
Six Sigma is a now registered trademark of Motorola, Inc. Over the period of time until 2006, Motorola has reportedly saved over $17 billion using Six Sigma processes.
A lot of companies have come forward after Motorolas success story and adopted their own versions of Six Sigma techniques and methodologies and the list includes notably General Electric, Honeywell, Bank of America, Raytheon, Merrill Lynch, Caterpillar and many others.John Nash writes on topics such as Six Sigma, DMAIC and DMAIC Visit Significance of Six Sigma.