Six sigma

in 50 Words Or Less

"o Sigma started as a way Six
to improve an operation's quality but has expanded to become a way to increase

.WHEN MOTOROLA ROLLED out itsinitial
Six Sigma system in 1987, there were no Green Belts (GBs), Black Belts (BBs), Master Black Belts (MBBs); Champions or any of the infrastructure or focused training we have come to associate with modem practices in Six Sigma.What Motorola did have was strong executive support, a training requirement of 40 hours per year per employee,

financial performance. "• Many organizations have
integrated lean with Six
Sigma, but deployment

"oA body of knowledge for
different lean Six Sigma

models vary widely.

models is recommended.

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Duglas H:'•: by D( ' P. Mader ....••

its Six Steps to Six Sigma and, most notably, a large opp6rtunity for improvement, which translated to an exceptional return on investment. What most people do not remember is that, in addition to its,Six Sigma initiative, Motorola had a secondary initiative to reduce cycle time. But, the cycle time reduction effort did not use the lean tools or structure we know today.

January 2008 • QP 41During Motorola's first five years of Six Sigma deployment, there was no formal MAIC training, let alone formal lean training. MAIC was the predecessor to today's define, measure, analyze, improve and control (DMAIC) strategy. However, in 1991, Motorola's Six Sigma Research Institute developed and delivered Motorola's very first .BB and MBB training using the

"MAIC'model.
Six Sigma useexpanded beyond the Motorola deployment in the mid-1990s via the Six Sigma Academy. Allied Signal and General Electric (GE) were two of the first organizations to deploy Six Sigma with the primary intent of improving financial performance rather than quality. Other large organizations followed, and once they showed significant return on investment

with the improved Six Sigma model, the revisedmethod gained widespread acclaim.' Several Six Sigma Academy clients made significant contributions to the Six Sigma method: o Allied Signal was the first to implement the Champion infrastructure. o GE added the define phase to the MAIC methodology. ° GE Capital brought a strong focus to voice of the customer (VOC) methods and integrated DMAIC with the business process reengineering (BPR) modeladvocated by Rummler-Brache2 and 3 Michael Hammer. Several divisions of GE as well as other Six Sigma Academy clients, such as Seagate and Toshiba, intro-

Integrated BOKS

/

FIGURE 1
Lean BoK Visual management practices 5S method Time and motion studies Value added vs. nonvalue added analysis Signaling devices (kanban) Continuous improvement (kaizen) Just-in-time principles Standardized workmethods Quality at the source methods Setup reduction methods Focused factory methods cellular production processes Order point production control Queuing analysis Cycle time reduction Project management BoK Project charter Project schedule Project evaluation and review technique/critical path Stakeholder analysis Communications plan Focus on economic value added Focus on strategy Projectidentification and selection Change management Requirements definition Pilot projects

Six Sigma body of knowledge (BOK) Focus on hard savings Measurement systems analysis Process mapping Basic statistical concepts Graphical methods Process capability analysis Hypothesis testing Statistical modeling tools Design of experiments Empirical optimization Nonlinear optimization Statistical tolerancing MonteCarlo simulation Statistical process control Nonparametric statistical methods Reliability methods

consultants
Motorola and Six Sigma

Lean

-

Business process reengineering BOK As-is process map Should-be process map Process management Change management Focus on job definition

GE

GE and Allied Signal

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