Happy Birthday, Six Sigma

Six Sigma was officially launched January 1, 1987, at Motorola, and it took more than nine months to make Six Sigma real. Twenty years later, Six Sigma has grown from a good baby methodology into a mature system that affects thousands of corporations and millions of people and that saves billions of dollars.

I had the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time. I joined Motorola in 1981, the year the company started its “quality” transformation. In early 1986, it started working on the development of something beyond three sigma in Austin, Texas; and, later that same year, the company joined Bill Smith on his journey to implementing Six Sigma in Schaumburg, Illinois. I remember brainstorming solutions during cigarette breaks or in Bill’s office. It was even more fun debating how many solder connections and washers to count to determine a sigma level. At that time, managers understood that the higher the number of opportunities, the better the sigma level, and it was all about riding a learning curve in good spirits.

The methodology was developed by an engineer, and it has a human touch, which makes it a practical methodology. However, it must be clearly understood that the Six Sigma methodology isn’t about facts or statistics. Six Sigma is all about good engineering consisting of process knowledge, graphical tools, statistical methods, leadership, aggressive goal setting for intellectual challenge and innovation.

As I was learning about Six Sigma, I wanted to prove it to myself and not take Bill’s words for granted. I sought volunteers to work with me and eventually found Charles Delott, a process engineer in microcircuits manufacturing. He and I made a good team, doubling the process capability and realizing savings of more than $250,000. (We were often surprised by the magnitude of the savings we realized from so many process changes over the years.) Bill was pleased with our success and asked me to present our story to the Science Advisory Board. I was so excited that I saved the announcement. The project report was submitted to Quality Engineering and was published in 1990. The case study is available at www.asq.org.

While guiding the implementation of the first the four projects, called “Small Wins,” we discovered challenges in implementing Six Sigma, and we solved them as we moved along. One of the challenges was to determine the sigma level for various values of parts per million (PPM) or defects per million opportunities. Having determined sigma levels dozens of times, I wrote the first Six Sigma software program in late 1987 to help my boss figure out the sigma level for any PPM value.

After we resolved implementation issues and developed the software, our process engineering group was ready to handle additional projects. We started taking on multiple projects, including some in graphics, product design and wave soldering. Two of those projects received the CEO award in 1987 and 1988 (the medals are shown at right). The CEO award was a major incentive to complete projects, and the participative management program (PMP) was a great driver to start projects.

According to our PMP, each quarter all employees were expected to identify a project with stretch goals and beyond normal duties. These projects were in our department, and still required special effort to succeed. People learned about Six Sigma by participating in one day of awareness training.

Twenty years later, people go through about 20 days of Black Belt training, one to two weeks of Green Belt training, or an awareness training. Today, there’s a lot of knowledge about Six Sigma—good or bad—and many of its implementations are successful while others aren’t.

Six Sigma is rapidly maturing. Today, more and better tools are available for monitoring Six Sigma’s progress, implementing the methodology and managing the program. The Six Sigma methodology was standardized as people learned and got certified. Six Sigma goals, however, are marginally set.

The intent of Six Sigma is often overlooked. Six Sigma was developed to achieve a lot of improvement fast. To achieve similar results as the first implementers such as Motorola, Allied and GE, companies must refresh the intent of Six Sigma and establish aggressive goals for improvement.

Many experts argue about aggressive goals in terms of numeric goals. Irrespective of establishing aggressive numeric goals, it’s important to focus on establishing goals aggressively enough that people are forced to come up with a creative solution. The creative solution brings out the best in us intellectually, so the satisfaction is extreme and results are beyond expectations. Developing innovative solutions is the fundamental tenet of Six Sigma. So, before looking into the Six Sigma toolbox, practice the intent of Six Sigma first. By implementing innovative solutions, you will see results beyond imagining.

About The Author