As a methodology, Six Sigma has been around since the 1980s. Yet it took a couple of U.S. industry giants, Allied Signal and GE, to draw the world’s attention to the benefits the program offers businesses.

(Publisher’s Note: This article, is reprinted with permission from THE INFORMED OUTLOOK, in which it first appeared in Nov. 2003.)

Would you spend millions of dollars for a return of more than a billion? Sure you would, but that’s just a fantasy, right? It wasn’t just a pipedream for GE’s CEO Jack Welch, who expected to reap a hefty return for every dollar his company spent on Six Sigma.

Would you spend millions of dollars for a return of more than a billion? Sure you would, but that’s just a fantasy, right? It wasn’t just a pipedream for GE’s CEO Jack Welch, who expected to reap a hefty return for every dollar his company spent on Six Sigma.

To succeed in our increasingly competitive global economy, many companies have implemented lean manufacturing, a step beyond just-in-time production systems. Other companies claim they’re "lean" but hedge on the concept.

Jack Welch had a unique vision of an organization that made data-based decisions. At times his tactics for bringing this about were described as “violent,” “abrupt” and “painful,” but his methods worked.