IT Governance and Six Sigma

Six Sigma History

The Six Sigma method was developed at Motorola in the mid-1980s, most notably by Bob Galvin and a Motorola engineer, Bill Smith. It was fairly quickly adopted by other large manufacturing companies, such as Honeywell and General Electric.

What is Six Sigma?

Six Sigma is a quality management program that measures and improves an organization's operational performance of by identifying and correcting procedural defects.

It defines two basic methodologies, known as DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) and DMADV (Define, Measure, Analyze, Design, Verify). The former is intended to improve existing processes, the latter to develop new, customer-focused processes.

A formalized training system for Six Sigma is also established, offering two levels, known as Black Belts and Green Belts. Often, Black Belts are on-site Six Sigma implementation experts, with Green Belts being employees within the organization who use Six Sigma as part of their overall jobs.

Six Sigma's Future

Within the manufacturing sector Six Sigma clearly has a stong presense, which undoubtedly will continue. Whether it can break out of this sector on a truly significant scale remains to be seen. The future will see various opportunities for this, but whether they will come fruition depends at least to some degree on the progress (or lack of) of other methods.

Identified Source References for this Article:
Motorola
GE