I, for one, am tired of the quality flavor of the month. It isn’t quite that bad but it seems like it at times. Have you been through statistical quality control, TQM, total quality speed, re-engineering, zero defects, quality circles, SPC, Motorola Six Sigma, AlliedSignal Six Sigma, GE Six Sigma, lean manufacturing, ISO 9000, TS 16949, DFSS, DFM and more combinations than I care to count? They seem to come fast and furious. Thomas Pyzdek calculated quality fads occur an average of roughly every four years. Have you ever wondered how fads get started and why they die?Let us start with how fads are started. Someone in a company develops a new technique to solve an existing problem and it works. This technique is used in another part of the company to solve another problem and it works. Next the word travels outside the company and other companies use it. Once this technique is tried in other companies and it works, it will continue to spread. Another fad has been born and will grow and flourish for a while. Fad is a poor choice of words, for it’s truly a quality program. I don’t want to appear to be against all quality endeavors, because I’m not. Some of these programs have changed our viewpoint forever. They have taken us from trying to inspect quality into the product to comprehensive business plans to run the factory. Clearly, many of these programs have been good for all of us.

Now to the question “If they are so great, why do they die?” The answer is the same for everything in the company--management determines it no longer serves a useful purpose in the organization. Did the program change or did management’s expectation or perspective change? Somewhere in the cycle, we missed the point that not all programs work in every company. After all, companies are as distinctive as people and everyone is certainly different, especially going from industry to industry.

Is Six Sigma a fad? Is it going to fade into the sunset? Yes and no. The term Six Sigma will fade with time, but what it does will always be with us. Six Sigma has been viewed as a statistical approach to problem solving, and reams of paper have been written on its benefits. Different companies have added up the dollars it has saved. Six Sigma benefits and cost savings are real.

I was one of the first Black Belts to be certified and was part of the miracle of cost savings. But let us dissect Six Sigma for what it really is: a set of statistical tools for problem solving. Has Six Sigma produced new tools? No. In fact, one of the best Six Sigma tools is a control chart, which Shewhart developed control charts back in the 1920s. They’re widely used today and will be tomorrow as well. In reality all Six Sigma tools were available and in use before the Six Sigma movement was started.

What’s different then? To best answer this question, we need to evaluate quality cost: prevention, appraisal, internal and external failure. Six Sigma trained engineers in statistical problem solving and put them into the prevention cost category. Industry as a whole had failed to see the benefit of investing in prevention and reducing failure cost. The second thing Six Sigma accomplished was to obtain top management commitment to the program. These two events have made Six Sigma successful. Make no mistake about it, the most important part of this equation is the political part: getting top management committed to the program.

The next question
Why different companies have drastically different results with the program, if the program is so good? The answer is in the political part of the equation: management commitment. I observed one company who trained two Black Belts and allowed each of them to work part time on Black Belt projects. The company was disappointed with the results and concluded Six Sigma didn’t work for them, since the savings were only in the thousands of dollars. Six Sigma didn’t meet the company’s expectations from what they had heard in the media. I observed another company that trained ten Black Belts and all of them worked exclusively on Black Belt projects. This company saved millions of dollars and got back 10 to 20 times their original investment in Black Belt training. How has your company embraced Six Sigma? It seems you get what you pay for.

The last issue is the people who are chosen to be trained as Black Belts and how management handles them. I watched one company with strong management commitment literally place all of its Black Belts on a pedestal. This had the effect of alienating them from everyone else in the plant and had a negative effect on the cost-savings generated. Obviously, personalities of the individuals became a big factor in relationships with others and how effective each Black Belt was. Good Black Belts share some common traits--the ability to work without supervision, intelligence, product knowledge, interpersonal skills, etc., are the usual traits management looks for when selecting candidates. Other traits that are needed are tenacity, the ability to think outside the box and the ability to keep the end goal in mind while working the individual elements of problem solving.

Will Six Sigma be with us in the future? As long as companies need to reduce cost and improve all kinds of processes, Six Sigma tools will be with us, but not necessarily carry that name. Can you see what industry is doing wrong and what change will correct it? If you can, you may have found the next fad.