Six Sigma Principles with Practice

Six Sigma Principles with Practice

Welcome

The purpose of this short ebook is to introduce the reader to some of the key concepts that underpin Six Sigma. Six Sigma is all about boosting business results by improving the underlying process. It’s also about making business processes more predictable by controlling the variation associated with them. It is not intended as an exhaustive text on the subject, more as a summary with some practical examples and anecdotes that will help the reader understand what is meant by Six Sigma. This ebook is intended for the manager who has recently been introduced to Six Sigma and seeks guidance regarding key concepts, or managers from manufacturing and service sectors wishing to familiarise their employees with Six Sigma concepts as well as students seeking to gain an understanding of Six Sigma in its many guises within various industries. To help illustrate these concepts and engage the reader, we have also used examples from the soccer world. In particular, data released publically by Opta and Manchester City Football club relating to the 2011/ 12 season in the Barclays Premier League.

Acknowledgements

To all those who have attended courses as delegates or run projects with us, and in particular, Erol Thompson, Harry Rever and Isaac Newton; thank you for your involvement and insights that have illuminated this text. We would also like to thank PwC Norway for permission to use the image on the front that John took during a Six Sigma training course he ran for them.

Introduction

The principles of Six Sigma have largely been attributed to proponents in the United States and in particular, Motorola. However, it has expanded beyond traditional manufacturing sectors such as Aerospace and Automotive to transactional and services businesses such as Finance, Healthcare, and Telecommunications.

Out of this and further developments emerged the methodologies of Six Sigma that are applied across products and business processes from Steel manufacturing plants to Healthcare services that in turn enhance the end customer experience. If you want to understand what Six Sigma is and how it may be easily applied to your business, then this ebook will introduce you to the tools and techniques needed to make the first steps on the path to Six Sigma thinking and working.

How does Six Sigma compare with other improvement methodologies?

There are a number of other methods that are currently used by businesses to address process improvement or product development issues. Such approaches include Lean, Agile and Project Management methodologies. Lean has a focus on the elimination of ‘waste’ in processes, as outlined in the companion ebook; ‘Lean Principles with Practice’. Agile project management is an iterative method of determining requirements for engineering and information technology development projects in a highly flexible and interactive manner. Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling resources to achieve specific goals. Inherent to the Lean Six Sigma approach are the Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve and Control (DMAIC) phases used to manage a project. The resulting combination of Lean and Six Sigma then drives out waste and controls variation.

What is Six Sigma?

In essence, Six Sigma is a methodology designed to help businesses improve results. Six Sigma is flexible enough that it can be applied to virtually any