Six Sigma is a quality improvement and business strategy that began in the1980’s at Motorola. Emphasis is on reducing defects to less than 4 per million, reducing cycle time with aggressive goals such as 30-50% reduction per year, and reducing costs to dramatically impact the bottom line. The statistical and problem solving tools are similar to other modern day quality improvement strategies. However, Six Sigma stresses the application of these tools in a methodical and systematic fashion to gain knowledge that leads to breakthrough improvements with dramatic, measurable impact on the bottom line. The secret ingredient that really makes Six Sigma work is the infrastructure that is built within the organization. It is this infrastructure that motivates and produces a Six Sigma culture or “thought process” throughout the entire organization. The power of a Six Sigma approach is best described by proven return-on-investment (ROI) as shown next from Motorola, AlliedSignal, and General Electric (GE).
     Warning! Over one-third (33%) of all Six Sigma efforts fail.
A recent study done by Quality Digest Magazine found that only 64% of respondents said that Six Sigma has significantly improved profitability and that many companies seem to be abandoning Six Sigma after 2-3 years.
     Pathetic! The costs of these failures can run into the millions for wasted training and teams. Unfortunately, most companies are using the same, dumb implementation strategy they used for TQM on Six Sigma! Don't let your Six Sigma implementation fail.
     Traditional Six Sigma training can take up to four weeks and between $10,000 - $40,000 for a Blackbelt and one week and $5,000 or more for a Greenbelt. Since these are classroom trainings, 90% of this information will be lost within 48-72 hours.