The term sigma is a Greek alphabet letter (s) used to describe variability, where a classical measurement unit consideration of the program is defects per unit. A sigma quality level offers an indicator of how often defects are likely to occur, where a higher sigma quality level indicates a process that is less likely to create defects. A six sigma quality level is said to equate to 3.4 defects per million opportunities (DPMO).

Motorola originated the Six Sigma term in the 1980’s. GE in the late 90’s popularized the methodology when it aligned its Six Sigma implementation to business needs. With the GE approach, full-time practitioners, called Black Belts, are trained to orchestrate business improvement activities through the use of Six Sigma techniques. GE’s 2000 Letter to Share Owners reported the completion of more than 2000 Six Sigma projects “at the customer, for the customer” during the year.

Recently many companies are jumping on the bandwagon to implement Six Sigma; however, not all companies have had success with Six Sigma. The success of Six Sigma is a function of how it is implemented and the project execution roadmap used by Black Belts. To achieve success, organizations need to implement Six Sigma wisely.

Even though Six Sigma has helped many companies, I believe now is the time for organizations to go beyond current Six Sigma implementation methodologies. Organizations can gain much more from Six Sigma if they use what I call Satellite-Level and 30,000-Foot-Level metrics to direct their operational activities. These statistical metrics are useful to orchestrate the day-to-day activities and improvement efforts within the organization. With this approach, organizations can get out of the fire-fighting mode. Organizations can prevent crises and improve these metrics by selecting and competing Six Sigma projects that have a positive impact on these metrics. Organizations can even use this approach to build their strategic plans and then track their progress against these plans.

With this enhanced approach, Six Sigma becomes much more than a quality initiative; Six Sigma becomes a way of doing business. In addition, this view of Six Sigma can lead to very positive results through the integration of Lean Manufacturing, Balanced Scorecard, Malcolm Baldrige Assessments, ISO-9000:2000, Kaizen events, and other business initiatives. The easy-to-read book, Wisdom on the Green: Smarter Six Sigma Business Solutions, describes how this enhanced approach to Six Sigma can be accomplished in virtually any organization.

When assessing whether to pursue Six Sigma or not, an organization should consider the various options it has: doing nothing differently, creating a Six Sigma initiative, or creating a Six Sigma business strategy.
Let’s next consider each of these options:

• The “doing nothing differently” option might be the right choice for an organization; however, an organization needs to make this decision after comparing the cost of doing nothing differently to the cost of doing something.
• The “creating Six Sigma initiative” option typically is viewed by members of an organization as the “program of the month” and is usually abandoned quickly without much, if any, benefit. Furthermore this option might result in a degradation of employee attitude.
• The “Six Sigma business strategy” approach has the most benefit, if it is executed wisely. A Six Sigma business strategy involves executive ownership, a support infrastructure, projects with bottom-line results, full-time Black Belts, reward/motivation considerations, finance engagement (i.e., to determine the cost of doing nothing differently and return on investment for projects), and training in all roles, in both “hard” and “soft” skills. This approach can yield a very positive impact to both the bottom-line and customer satisfaction.