Six Sigma
Six Sigma is a business management strategy, originally developed by Motorola that today enjoys wide-spread application in many sectors of industry.
Six Sigma seeks to identify and remove the causes of defects and errors in manufacturing and business processes. It uses a set of quality management methods, including statistical methods, and creates a special infrastructure of people within the organization ("Black Belts" etc.) who are experts in these methods. Each Six Sigma project carried out within an organization follows a defined sequence of steps and has quantified financial targets (cost reduction or profit increase).
Six Sigma asserts:
- Continuous efforts to achieve stable and predictable process results (i.e. reduce process variation) are of vital importance to business success.
- Manufacturing and business processes have characteristics that can be measured, analyzed, improved and controlled.
- Achieving sustained quality improvement requires commitment from the entire organization, particularly from top-level management
Features that set Six Sigma apart from previous quality improvement initiatives include:
- A clear focus on achieving measurable and quantifiable financial returns from any Six Sigma project.
- An increased emphasis on strong and passionate management leadership and support.
- A special infrastructure of "Champions," "Master Black Belts," "Black Belts," etc. to lead and implement the Six Sigma approach .
- A clear commitment to making decisions on the basis of verifiable data, rather than assumptions and guesswork.
Its two key methodologies are:
- DMAIC (define, measure, analyse, improve, control): and
- DMADV (design, measure, analyse, design, verify).
Information and links to relevant legislation, standards and frameworks in the Service Management industry:
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