About Six Sigma

Six Sigma management is the relentless and rigorous pursuit of the reduction of variation in all critical processes to achieve continuous and breakthrough improvements that impact the bottom-line and / or top-line of the organization and increase customer satisfaction.

Another common definition of Six Sigma management is that it is an organizational initiative designed to create manufacturing, service and administrative processes that produce a high rate of sustained improvement in both defect reduction and cycle time (e.g., when

Motorola began their effort the rate they chose was a 10-fold reduction in defects in two years along with a 50% reduction in cycle). For example, a bank takes 60 days on average to process a loan with a 10% rework rate in 2000.  In a “Six Sigma” organization, the bank should take no longer than 30 days on average to process a loan with a 1% error rate in 2002, and no more than 15 days on average to process a loan with a 0.10% error rate by 2004.  Clearly, this requires a dramatically improved/innovated loan process.