The Six Sigma Way

"The only way to continue double-digit growth and retain a hold on shifting markets is to constantly innovate and remake the organization. Six Sigma creates the skills and culture for constant revival."

"Like most great inventions, Six Sigma is not all new. While some themes of Six Sigma arise out of fairly recent breakthroughs in management thinking, others have their foundation in common sense."

"The formula Y=f(X) ( Y is a function of X ) is just a mathematical way of saying that changes or variables in the inputs and process of the system will largely determine how the final score—or Ys—turn out."

"The vast majority of Six Sigma projects are Process Improvement efforts."

"In most Service organizations, starting to investigate processes is like turning up the lights. Though often something of a rude awakening, it can also be an enlightening event that gets the Six Sigma effort off to a fast start."

"One way to change the internal focus of Manufacturing is to target Six Sigma improvement projects that demand cross-functional cooperation, including Manufacturing."

"The Roadmap is not the only path to Six Sigma improvement; you will very likely need to adjust the order of these steps, or even start more than one of them simultaneously."

"The starting point in gearing up for Six Sigma is to verify that you're ready to—or need to—embrace a change that says "There's a better way to run our organization.""

"We've observed through the years that one of the weakest elements in change management is what we call change marketing."

"One of your key tasks, as you start on the Six Sigma Way, will be to define the appropriate roles for your organization, and to clarify their responsibilities."

"If you take into consideration only a few anecdotal pieces of data as you decide where to focus your Six Sigma efforts, you are that much more likely to have irrelevant or unmanageable projects."

"More and more organizations are starting to grasp the distinction between a function and a process. And the idea that business success is driven by understanding and improving work processes has become a basic principle in many organizations."

"Understanding what customers really want—and how their needs, requirements, and attitudes change over time—will require a combination of discipline, persistence, creativity, sensitivity, science, and, sometimes, luck."

"With concrete requirements defined, you can measure your actual performance and assess your strategy and market focus against customers' demands and expectations."

"A model being used at a growing number of companies to analyze requirements is based on the work of Noriaki Kano, a Japanese engineer and consultant."

"The most important step is to get the "thing" being measured boiled down to an objectively observable event or behavior."

"Selecting just your optimal performance measures (because you can't measure everything) means balancing two major elements: 1) what's feasible, and 2) what's most useful, or valuable."

"Six Sigma measurement focuses on tracking—and reducing—defects in a process."

"Tests of Statistical Significance are some of the most important techniques used by statisticians to look for patterns or to test their suspicions about data. In Six Sigma these tools have various possible applications."

"The methods and tools of Six Sigma make sense for successful organizations in the 21st century."