Six Sigma is a long-term
forward thinking concept
designed to generate immediate improvements to
profit margins. Traditionally, an organization compared
current performance with past performance not with what might have been
but now Six Sigma tears down the structures on the horizon
because there is no time to learn by trial and error. Generally, the success of
Six Sigma is based on people who are responsible for
implementing because they are the ones who play the primary role and act as a
central pillar of responsibilities for putting various techniques and tools of
Six Sigma into work in an organization. On these lines, Dennis
Sester, Senior Vice-President of Motorola Service stated that "Six Sigma is
not a product you can buy. It is a commitment." It is a process
which allows the organization to improve their bottom line by designing
and monitoring each and every activity, everyday of business, by
minimizing waste and resources with optimum customer satisfaction. The
concept was first developed by Motorola in the year 1980
translating knowledge into opportunities for business growth as it
mainly emphasizes on quality improvement, which is
directly proportional to financial results. Even though Six Sigma was
initially implemented at Motorola to improve the manufacturing
process, later all types of businesses were seen to profit from
implementing this strategy.
The goal of Six Sigma establishes the link between internal
processes and system management to consumer requirement.
The methodology of Six Sigma mainly eliminates the use of opinions
such as, `I think', `I feel', or `I believe' as it moves the organization in a
more scientific way of decision making and the basic results are
money, customer satisfaction, quality, growth, competitive advantages
and impact on employees, etc. A question that arises in
everybody's minds is: What is the difference between previous total
quality approaches and the Six Sigma concept? Total quality
management programs focused on finding and correcting defects whereas Six
Sigma in a broader sense provides a specific method to recreate the process
on making improvements in all operations within a process
and producing results more rapidly and effectively, so that an error
never occurs. So it can be said that Six Sigma approach
produces extraordinary results by including economic value and practical
utility for both the organization and the consumer. |