The main objective of a BUSINESS is profit maximization. Profits can be generated only if the business is able to sell its product in the market at a surplus. To have a sustained business growth it is very necessary that the market size of the business is large enough to yield the maximum revenues. In view of the above objectives, various management tools such as TQM, Value Engineering, MBO (Management by Objectives) etc have been formulated taking in conjunction the other supporting objectives of Corporate Responsibility, Shareholders’ wealth maximization, employee satisfaction etc.
“Customers are the revenue generators”.
Why only customers? Of course, they are. Since a business is set up to sell something and it is only by selling a product to the customer that revenue can be generated.
Hence, Customer Satisfaction is of utmost importance in any business concern.
Now, the question arises is, what is Customer Satisfaction?
A customer is satisfied only if a product can provide him with a sufficient reason to sacrifice his hard earned money in its exchange. So customer satisfaction can be measured in terms of price, quality, quantity i.e. uninterrupted supply of the product.
SIX SIGMA, is also such a Management Tool which emphasizes on CUSTOMER SATISFACTION and QUALITY PERFORMANCE and works on the identification and removal of all such hurdles coming on the way.
In other words,
Six Sigma is a systematical process of “quality improvement through the disciplined data-analyzing approach, and by improving the organizational process by eliminating the defects or the obstacles which prevents the organizations to reach the perfection”.
The term "six sigma process" comes from the notion that if one has six standard deviations between the process mean and the nearest specification limit, practically no items will fail to meet specifications. This is based on the calculation method employed in process capability studies.
HISTORY
At present, SIX SIGMA is the federally registered trademark of Motorola Inc. owing to one of its engineers Bill Smith who first formulated its methodologies in 1986. However, along with, the credit of giving SIX SIGMA a stage as a Management Strategy also goes to Shewhart, Deming, Juran, Ishikawa, Taguchi and others. Now a days, SIX SIGMA is widely accepted as a way of doing business since it is much more than the general quality management principles i.e. TQM, Value Engineering etc.
As Geoff Tennant describes in his book Six Sigma: SPC and TQM in Manufacturing and Services: "Six Sigma is many things, and it would perhaps be easier to list all the things that Six Sigma quality is not. Six Sigma can be seen as: a vision; a philosophy; a symbol; a metric; a goal; a methodology."
METHODOLOGIES
In order to work on SIX SIGMA principles and achieve its fundamental objectives the following methodologies are required to be adopted:
1. DMAIC
2. DMADV
DMAIC is used for the process improvement of existing businesses whereas DMADV has been formulated to cope up with the requirements of new product or processes. Both of the methodologies have five phases, on which lines the implementation proceeds. There are various other quality management tools used in SIX SIGMA while moving through DMAIC and DMADV viz. ANOVA (Analysis of Variance), Correlation, Measure of Dispersion and Central Tendency, Run Charts, Pareto Charts, Monte Carlo Simulation and many other related statistical and operational techniques and methods.
APPLICATION:
SIX SIGMA is usually found beneficial to large businesses owing to their complexities and large size of operations. According to industry consultants like Thomas Pyzdek and John Kullmann, companies with less than 500 employees are less suited to Six Sigma implementation, or need to adapt the standard approach to make it work for them. This is due both to the infrastructure of Black Belts that Six Sigma requires, and to the fact that large organizations present more opportunities for the kinds of improvements Six Sigma is suited to bringing about.
CONCLUSION:
SIX SIGMA is a very productive and beneficial approach for the growth and development of today’s business due to increasing number of new opportunities and technicalities involved. Also, in case of competitive environment, it can make a business survive even in the stiffest of the cases by cutting down its huge costs. However, while adopting this approach, Industry experts should be involved and consulted upon so as to ripe maximum benefits.
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