It’s easier to start a Six Sigma project than to close it successfully. Green Belts and Black Belts are expected to be working on projects constantly, so they work on projects to meet the existing expectations. Some of these projects are unlikely to yield significant improvement due to lack of opportunity. Others are losing propositions because they were chosen on the fly, without numbers that indicate the potential savings or potential improvement.

To make a Six Sigma initiative yield good results, it’s important to identify opportunities by mapping the profit stream for an organization. If the profit stream has built-in waste streams, those must be seen as opportunities for improvement. The most important tool for Six Sigma professionals is the Pareto principle, which they can use to prioritize opportunities for improvement using the Six Sigma methodology. A simple cost-benefit analysis will help prioritize the opportunities for best return on investment. Once the projects have been formulated based on improvement opportunities, Six Sigma professionals must aim for virtual perfection by fine-tuning the process so it performs under close to the target conditions and with the ideal outcomes. The key is to establish the performance targets rather than a performance window. It’s crucial to remember that excellence doesn’t imply zero defects. Excellence means being on target.

The most important purpose of Six Sigma is to accelerate improvement. Thus, if the target and the current performance are known, then one must aim to move toward the target rapidly and aggressively. It is important to pursue target performance aggressively by using creativity and process knowledge rather than applying statistics and project management.

Being committed to achieving excellence rapidly makes any project interesting and challenging. Remember—no pain, no gain; no sweat, no equity. Thus, to understand the opportunity for improvement better, one should use descriptive statistics, which includes averages, standard deviation or variance, Cp and Cpk (I assume readers know about these measures). We use the descriptive statistics to decide whether to improve the means or reduce the variance. Improving the means implies adjusting the process, while reducing the variance implies process characterization, or a thorough process capability study. In terms of Cp and Cpk, for example, if Cp is low, less than 1.0, the variance must be reduced. Similarly, if Cpk is low, for a good Cp the means must be adjusted.

Knowing whether to improve the mean value or variance enables us to focus on the necessary aspects of the affected process. A cause-and-effect analysis will lead to identifying 22 to 30 potential causes that must be continually reduced through application of brainstorming, regression analysis, process modeling, and research to a manageable number such as two to four factors. Normally, if the mean needs to be adjusted, a lesser number of process parameters need to be tweaked. If the variability needs to be reduced, a greater number of variables must be tweaked.

Once the critical variables are identified, various solutions must be developed and evaluated to discover the right combination. Here, a design of experiment can be used to expedite the selection process. However, the process knowledge is critical to formulate various solutions. One must understand the difference between correlation and causation. A strong causative relationship means a stronger correlation, however, the opposite may not be true.

Once we have selected the right solution, it must be verified before implemention in the production environment. Process improvement in production doesn’t stick, because solutions are developed in the engineering environment and needn’t stand the challenges of the production environment. We must therefore take caution to protect the real-world user environment while still developing a solution to exploit an opportunity. There will be organizational barriers, discouragement, resistance, and challenges to implementing a good solution. The Six Sigma project team members must be tough and caring enough to overcome technical as well as personnel challenges for successful implementation of the solution.

Remember that just when we think we’re almost done, about 90 percent done, we may actually have an additional 30 percent more to go. We have to go into overdrive to gather extra energy beyond our normal working conditions. Successful closers know how to muster that additional, invisible 20-percent increase in energy and resources from somewhere.