Six Sigma

Every year many people make resolutions to change themselves in some way they perceive would be for the better. For example, I’ve resolved to reduce the amount of coffee I drink from a full pot to a single cup per day because I believe drinking a lot of coffee is probably bad for me. Likewise, we’ve all heard friends, relatives or others talk about wanting to quit smoking, or wanting to go on a diet or go back to school — all with the common denominator of intent to improve some situation or aspect of their personal lives. In spite of the best intentions and fervent plans to change habits, change is difficult for most of us to manage. When it comes to executing change, it often takes much more effort and motivation than we anticipated, and the pain of working at change becomes a major hurdle — often at the expense of the desired goal. But when we stick to our plan and execute the change, we often embrace the results of our labor and with exuberant pride: “I did it!”

Most people tend not to think about plans for change in terms of managing a process, but those plans will get derailed when they don’t take a process approach. For instance, they often relate problems to the people involved, or they tend to look at isolated events and not at the “big picture” or context of those events. They often fail to recognize how all steps of a process work together, or they neglect to review the processes before and after.

Six Sigma is a disciplined, problem-solving methodology that uses statistical analysis in conjunction with the skill sets to understand the big picture and to break down that big picture into smaller chunks. Sigma is a performance indicator that describes the capability of a product, service, process and/or input of consistently meeting current and future defined requirements or expectations.