Six Sigma

Six Sigma is a process improvement methodology using data and statistical analysis to identify and fix problem/opportunity areas. Six Sigma also refers to a deployment model that aligns employees with a series of high-impact projects. It was pioneered by Motorola in the mid-1980s by Bob Galvin, who succeeded his father and the founder of Motorola as head of the company, Paul Galvin, and by Motorola engineer Bill Smith.

It has since spread to many other manufacturing companies, including GE, Honeywell, Raytheon, and Microsoft, delivering a variety of benefits to companies, e.g., reducing costs, increasing revenues, improving process speed, raising quality levels, and deepening customer relationships.
In addition, Six Sigma has been used across a variety of industries and business models, from manufacturing to services.

Six Sigma is a process improvement methodology using data and statistical analysis to identify and fix problem/opportunity areas.

During that time, no approach to business process improvement has built the track record of Six Sigma:

• 10-20 percentage point improvements in gross margins
• Enhanced relationships with customers
• Efficient processes and discipline within an organization
• Sustained benefits (not just one-off improvements disappearing with time)
• Enduring change, as your employees continue executing projects years after initial deployment

Deployed correctly, Six Sigma has the ability to generate breakthrough value in a business. In the case of GE, AlliedSignal, Dow, DuPont, Ford Motor Company, Merrill Lynch, Toshiba, and hundreds of other companies, Six Sigma has provided billions of dollars of top-line growth and bottom-line earnings improvement.

Nevertheless, Six Sigma in many organizations simply means a measure of quality that strives for near perfection. Six Sigma is a disciplined, data-driven approach and methodology for eliminating defects (driving towards six standard deviations between the mean and the nearest specification limit) in any process - from manufacturing to transactional and from product to service.

The statistical representation of Six Sigma describes quantitatively how a process is performing. To achieve Six Sigma, a process must not produce more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities. A Six Sigma defect is defined as anything outside of customer specifications. A Six Sigma opportunity is then the total quantity of chances for a defect. Process sigma can easily be calculated using a Six Sigma calculator.

The fundamental objective of the Six Sigma methodology is the implementation of a measurement-based strategy that focuses on process improvement and variation reduction through the application of Six Sigma improvement projects. This is accomplished through the use of two Six Sigma sub-methodologies: DMAIC and DMADV.

The Six Sigma DMAIC process is an improvement system for existing processes falling below specification and looking for incremental improvement.

The Six Sigma DMADV process is an improvement system used to develop new processes or products at Six Sigma quality levels. It can also be employed if a current process requires more than just incremental improvement.

DMAIC

1. Define	Define the project goals and customer (internal and external) deliverables
2. Measure	Measure the process to determine current performance
3. Analyze	Analyze and determine the root cause(s) of the defects
4. Improve	Improve the process by eliminating defects
5. Control	Control future process performance

DMADV

1. Define	Define the project goals and customer (internal and external) deliverables
2. Measure	Measure and determine customer needs and specifications
3. Analyze	Analyze the process options to meet the customer needs
4. Design	Design (detailed) the process to meet the customer needs
5. Verify	Verify the design performance and ability to meet customer needs

BeauTec Business Pilot functions enable Six Sigma

• The BeauTec Business Pilot is the ideal software solution to support the full scope of functions required to implement the Six Sigma methodology. There is no better tool to:

  • Gather information from various sources in real-time without duplication
  • Define indicators and set up, control, and modify limits including Audit Trail
  • Measure constantly indicator results
  • Build unlimited hierarchies of indicators
  • Apply statistical analysis on measured data
  • Report on any time wise and structural aggregation level
  • Historize results for long-term evaluation and extrapolation

• Our solution provides the following features to support the above functions:

  • Global Information Integration
  • Unlimited historization of information
  • Flexible definition of indicators, hierarchies and aggregations
  • Intuitive visualization of indicators, definitions, and history
  • Interactive intervention including commenting and problem classification
  • Sophisticated trending including extrapolation and statistical analysis
  • Automatic notification and related escalation in case of issues
  • Open Excel based reporting providing access to any measured data
  • and many more

Please read details on our solutions and technology for details.
Contact us for further details.