The 6 Key Principals of Six Sigma

Organizations can enhance their sigma level by integrating Six Sigma principles into leadership, process management, and improvement efforts. Some Common Six Sigma Principals are:

1. Customer Centric Improvement

The primary principal of six sigma methodology is to focus on customer. Voice of the Customer (VoC) and methods for determining what the customer truly want from a product or process. Organizations can boost customer happiness by combining that knowledge with measurements, analytics, and process improvement approaches, resulting in higher profits, client retention, and loyalty.

2. Continuous Process Improvement

The Six Sigma approach requires constant process improvement. An organization that fully implements the Six Sigma technique never stops improving. It continuously discovers and priorities opportunities. Once one area has been improved, the organization will move on to another. The organization continuously find ways to increase the signa level because the goal is to achieve the level of 99.99966 accuracy for all processes inside an organization while also making sure other essentials like financial stability.

3. Reduce Variation

A method to continuously improve a process is to reduce its variation. Every process has an inherit variation. Variation in processes can lead to errors, these errors can lead to product defect and product defect can leads to poor customer satisfaction. By reducing variation and errors six sigma can reduce process cost and increase customer satisfaction. Suppose there are some developers developing web application, variation will exist as every developer have different coding styles, expertise levels, environment factors and project requirement. By adopting strategies like coding standards and guideline, code reviews, automated testing and documentation variation can be reduce to some extent.

4. Eliminating Waste

Waste is a major problem in the six sigma methodology. Eliminating waste means removing items, procedures or people that are not required for the process’s outcome or removing anything that does not add value to customer. Eliminating waste can reduce processing time, errors in process and lowers overall costs.

5. Empowering Employees

Until organizations provide employees with the tools they need to monitor and sustain improvements, implementing improved processes is only a temporary solution. Process improvement usually involves two approaches in most organizations. An improvement is first defined, planned, and carried out by a process improvement team consisting up of project managers, methodology specialists, and subject matter experts. The employees that deal with the process on a daily basis are then equipped by that team to supervise and handle it in its improved condition.

6. Controlling the Process

Six Sigma improvements are frequently used to handle uncontrolled processes. Out-of-control processes meet certain statistical conditions. The purpose of improvement is

to bring a process back under statistical control. Then, after the improvements are implemented, measurements, statistics, and other Six Sigma tools are utilized to keep the process under control. Implementing controls and training people on how to apply them is a key component of continuous improvement.

Six Sigma is a methodology that helps organizations in making their process better and more efficient by identifying and removing errors and variations. Variations in processes can lead to errors, these errors can lead to product defects and product defects can lead to poor customer satisfaction. By reducing variation and errors Six Sigma can reduce process costs and increase customer satisfaction. Six Sigma was introduced in 1986 by an American Engineer Bill Smith. He introduced this term while working at Motorola. Industries like manufacturing, service industry, government agencies, aerospace, and e-commerce use Six Sigma to improve their processes and product quality.