Solved: What the six sigma process, and how has it helped organizations improve their quality

What the six sigma process, and how has it helped organizations improve their quality and profitability

Expert Answer

Six Sigma (6σ) is a set of techniques and tools for process improvement. It is a rigorous, disciplined, data-driven methodology that was developed to enhance product quality and company profitability by improving manufacturing and business processes. It seeks to improve the quality of the output of a process by identifying and removing the causes of defects and minimizing variability in the processes. It uses a set of quality management methods, mainly empirical, statistical methods, and creates a special infrastructure of people within the organization who are experts in these methods.

By using Six Sigma approach organizations get benefitted in quality and profitability in the following ways:

  1. Processes that operate with “Six Sigma quality” over the short term are assumed to produce long-term defect levels below 3.4 defects per million opportunities. Reduced defect reduces cost and increase profitability.
  2. In order to improve the entire process, Six Sigma does the required things better and faster, that too at a much lower cost.
  3. The best part of adopting Six Sigma approach is getting a clear focus on quality improvement methods that are extremely crucial to the valuable customers.
  4. It eliminates the process variation and also inconsistency thus reducing defects that causes rejection and rework. Eventually the production cost and hence the product cost reduces and the profitability increases.
  5. It brings about active participation of top management.
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