The Lean Six Sigma Improvement Process

Imagine the happiness, euphoria on the faces of those employees of Motorola who were involved in the success of the first-ever Six Sigma project which was launched in 1985 to remove the variations in its electronic products. It is believed that money started rolling in Motorola soon after to run into billions of dollars in the first five years after the introduction of Six Sigma in the organisation. This is the impact of improvement which Six Sigma process has on the operations of an enterprise. No wonder Ford and GE followed suit thereafter and today industry of all kind is adopting Six Sigma methodology to improve processes to an extent that they achieve a zero-defect yield. This entails that Six Sigma training or a Six Sigma certification stands tall amongst the numerous courses available in the market for total quality improvement.

One of the benefits of implementing Six Sigma in an organisation is that it improves all other associated processes in the organisation. In a manufacturing unit, the production line, the assembly line, the design department and even the marketing department come under the scanner. The microscopic look at them helps eliminate defects in the processes to bring total improvement in the organisation. It is for this reason that Six Sigma training is much sought after as it is a complete management system by itself.

The Six Sigma projects are chosen carefully depending upon the recurring complaints about the defects received from the customers and the market. The top management has to be convinced about the need to launch a Six Sigma project and once it happens all the employees of the organisation get involved in a Six Sigma project. That entails long hours of work and elongated periods of training for the employees. The employees are deployed to attend various Lean Six Sigma courses to earn different degrees of expertise. The green, black, master black belts represent the amount of expertise gained by doing Six Sigma training. They all get down to finding the best possible solution to the problem at hand and then implement it to regain the lost market. This is the essence on which Six Sigma methodology is based.

The metric of Six Sigma is that there will be only 3.4defects per million items produced. This is a dream figure which every manufacturer dreams of. The Six Sigma training lays a lot of emphasis on management professionals to pay heed to the voice of the customers. The stress on customer ensures that defect is identified and registered as one that needs to be rectified. The DMAIC tool is then deployed to ensure that all Six Sigma processes proceed smoothly till success is achieved. The defining of defect leads to measuring it to know the reason thereof and then the analysis is done to find the best possible solution to the problem. The solution so ascertained is then implemented until the new process merges with the production procedures to be certified a success.

Lean Six Sigma training and Six Sigma certification are thus high profile qualifications to add to your CV.