What is Six Sigma?
Six Sigma is a disciplined approach to improving quality, eliminating waste, reducing cost, and improving customer satisfaction. It is based on the quality tools pioneered by people like Walter Shewhart, W. Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran. Companies like Motorola, ITT, General Electric and Bank of America have attributed billions of dollars in hard savings to Six Sigma.
Using the “DMAIC” methodology, (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control,) The Six Sigma practitioner, or Black Belt, leads his team in finding the key process inputs (the “X’s”) that have the largest impact on the outputs that affect the customer (the “Y’s”). By changing the process and bringing the inputs under control, the process is made to perform more effectively, with fewer defects, and at lower cost. Where Kaizen (continuous improvement) looks at incremental change, Six Sigma strives for “breakthrough” improvements that justify the investment in training many times over.
While originally applied to manufacturing processes, Six Sigma is now widely used to improve processes of all kinds, including transactional, administrative, and even creative processes. The United States Government is now harnessing Six Sigma in a major effort to save taxpayer dollars and improve federal services.
Using the principle that experience is the best teacher, our training philosophy is to work with aspiring Black Belts, Green Belts and Project Champions through real-world business projects as they learn “hands-on” the Six Sigma methodology and tools.
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