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As Jack Welch, one of the best CEOs of all times, has said, "Six Sigma is the most important initiative we have ever undertaken." Welch indicated that those who aspire for top-level positions in the GE management must have both knowledge and experience with
Six Sigma to ensure that its values become ingrained throughout the company.

Introduction

For a long time, quality control and improvement has been considered an important means for acquiring competitive advantage. Quality-control methodologies like statistical quality control, zero defects, and total quality management, are some of the key methodologies undertaken for many years. Six Sigma can be considered as the latest quality improvement methodology in this series, that has gained popularity and acceptance in many industries across the globe. Evolving continuously over the past few years, today, it has acquired the status of a business management strategy rather than mere quality assurance methodology. Moreover, the strategy has been utilised by many world class organisations such as General Electric (GE), Motorola, Honeywell, Bombardier, ABB, and Sony, to name a few from the long list.

The concept of Six Sigma was introduced by Bill Smith in 1986, a senior engineer and scientist within Motorola’s Communication Division. Mikel Harry formerly at Motorola is accredited with the development of the Six Sigma concept in the late 1980s. Following this, for three consecutive years, Motorola spent $ 170 Million on workers' education and training, thus, saving $ 2.2 Billion in terms of cost incurred as a result of poor quality, and was honoured with the Malcom Baldridge Award in 1988.

Instrument of Quality Control

The main aim of Six Sigma methodology is to reduce the drawbacks in any process and improve its capability, thus, bringing the defects in the output within tolerance limits. In a way, it strives for perfection allowing only 3.4 defects per million opportunities. The methodology strives on assertions that, first of all, continuous efforts to reduce variation in process outputs is key to business success; secondly, manufacturing and business processes can be measured, analyzed, improved and controlled, and finally, successful achievement of sustained quality improvement requires commitment from the entire organization, particularly from top-level management.

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* Contributed by: -
Ankur Gupta & Sumit Roshan,
IMT, Ghaziabad.