Avid followers of Six Sigma, the management process large corporations credit for saving them millions of dollars, may soon use the same thought processes at home.
Mikel J. Harry, a principal architect of the process, shared with a group of business leaders Six Sigma’s humble start at Motorola and how the process may soon permeate schools, small businesses and homes.
A Ball State graduate, Harry recently told the group assembled at the Ball State University Indianapolis Center how Six Sigma’s journey started with a weakening company and developed into a worldwide phenomenon among top businesses. He helped develop the quality management process at Motorola.
In the 1980s, Motorola went through a transition as it lost many of its top products such as car radios and televisions.
“At Motorola we were in deep trouble,” he says. The company learned its problem was with quality. “What we discovered was we weren’t as good as we thought.”.
That’s when the company decided to change how quality is measured by looking at defects per million opportunities. The data-driven process quickly reversed Motorola’s downward spiral: “Five years later we were voted the best managed company in the U.S.,” Harry notes.
Since Harry’s early days with Six Sigma, he has founded Motorola’s Six Sigma Research Institute, created the Six Sigma black belt concept and written numerous books including an eight-volume set titled “The Six Sigma Series.”
“Six Sigma is like a turbo charger on a business,” Harry relates. The process starts with the CEO or business owner and the determination to become a world class business.
What does Six Sigma mean?
In statistics, the Greek letter sigma represents how far a process deviates from a mean. Six Sigma means 3.4 defects per one million. That level of quality is what businesses strive for in the Six Sigma process.
Harry offered this example: When Motorola first measured its quality, it learned it was a 4.08 sigma. That’s the equivalent to how well airlines handle luggage, losing one in 200 bags. A company wants errors to be closer to the number of airline fatalities, which is one in two million. Airlines are a 6.4 sigma in fatalities, he says.
“You are about 10 times more likely to arrive (at your destination) than your bags,” Harry relates.
Companies that implement Six Sigma aim to reduce errors or inconsistencies to improve quality.
The Six Sigma process allows businesses to complete tasks in an easier, more efficient way while using simple strategies. By instilling a common way of reasoning, employees can move and work in a common way, Harry explains.
Harry sums up the process: “Simple strategy plus smart system equals stellar success.”
What’s next
Generally used by organizations with more than 500 employees and $50 million or more in annual revenue, Six Sigma is about to spread to the masses – including children.
The phenomenon saturated large corporations and manufacturers and spread through hospitals, hotels, and even the U.S. Department of Defense, Harry asserts.
It still hasn’t reached its full potential audience.
Harry now wants to demonstrate ways the Six Sigma concepts can be applied in small businesses, small work teams and personal life. For example in a small team, employees can focus on developing ways to complete a task that are repeatable and teachable to others, Harry explains.
In a person’s personal or work life, Six Sigma can be used as a systematic way of thinking about how to realize goals, he adds.
“It’s about how to work more effective and efficient,” he asserts.
Currently, a film is in production to demonstrate how Six Sigma translates into everyday living. The idea is learning how to find the few vital forces that will accelerate the rate of process toward a goal. That can happen by learning how to think in innovative ways and how to execute those ideas, Harry explains.
A curriculum is even being developed, with Harry’s aid, in an Asian school. Schools don’t teach children how to succeed in life, Harry notes. The Six Sigma program can eventually serve as that tool.
Harry believes that the concepts of the management process can be applied with people of all ages and in businesses across the board.
“Six Sigma allows the ordinary to do the extraordinary,” he concludes.
