Essential Six Sigma Concepts and Tools

Six Sigma is a globally valid Quality methodology. The credit for developing this methodology is attributed to Bill Smith, a Motorola engineer, who came up with this concept in 1986. Now, to answer the question of which the best Six Sigma course is, we have to understand the fact that no single, universally acknowledged institute that is officially authorized to issue Six Sigma certification. Several institutes offer it.

You could consider getting certified from any of these institutes:

• The International Association for Six Sigma Certification (IASSC)
• American Society for Quality (ASQ)
• International Six Sigma Institute
• Lean Six Sigma Institute

Like most other structured learning, it will be a good idea to plan your Six Sigma certification in stages. Consider Six Sigma certification seriously if you are a Quality professional who is serious about long-term career aspirations. It will be a good idea to take these steps towards Six Sigma certifications:

Analyze what your organization expects from you

• Decide what level you want to start at
• Become familiar with all the training institutes, the fees, and the efforts involved
• Very important: check with your management if it sponsors your certification
• Enroll for a training course
• Complete the certification.

Well, this is a subjective question. It depends on how passionate you are about getting Six Sigma certified and the value it is going to be of. Yes, as with any professional augmentation, it involves after-office efforts for a few months.

This again is entirely up to the individual. Some people would do with just a couple of hours a day, while many others may have to put in more.

A big yes. It is a fact that those with Six Sigma certifications with belts that correspond to their career grade earn anywhere between $16,000 and $26,000 more than those with the same experience and skillset level, but without the certification.

Six Sigma being a professional, and not an academic certification, sets no fixed prerequisite in terms of education qualification for those who want to take it up.

The cost of obtaining a Six Sigma certification can vary depending upon the level, or the Belt being sought, to the institute from which you want to take it. You could consider a ballpark of $3,000 as a realistic one, if you are thinking of starting at the lowest Belt and reaching the highest.

This again varies due to a variety of factors. A few professionals take up one Belt after another in quick succession, and others could delay it. Six months for each Belt is a roughly approximate timeframe, but this is a very broad estimate.

The White Belt is the entry level Six Sigma certification.

Usually, most institutes do not set a limit for the number of times you can retake the Six Sigma test, but stipulate the gap between one exam and the next, if you need to take it. Check with the institute to get a clearer idea.

However, the fee you pay for one take is valid for only that. Every time you retake your Six Sigma test, you have to pay the exam fee afresh.

Yes. Each Belt is considered a certification. These are the ones:

• Six Sigma White Belt certification
• Six Sigma Yellow Belt certification
• Six Sigma Green Belt certification
• Six Sigma Black Belt certification
• Six Sigma Master Black Belt certification

Start with the Six Sigma White Belt Certification is best idea and easy to pass.

Considering the fact that certified Six Sigma professionals are preferred over noncertified ones, and also considering that their pay is a few notches higher, Six Sigma certification is worth the cost.

You should, however, be sure of the long-term stay in your industry. If you are planning to change the industry from one in Quality to something else, it may not be worth.

The Six Sigma concept is essentially centered around achieving the aim of managing defects at under 3.4 per million events (or opportunities, as they are also called). A defect is defined as the failure of a product or a service to meet customer expectations.

Six Sigma is built on these 5 principles:

·        Focus on who your customer is, and understand her needs;

·        This understanding should be data-driven, and not subjective;

·        Build continuous improvement into every stage;

·        Do this in consultation with the people that constitute your team;

·        Check yourself at every stage

In addition to the 5 Six Sigma principles elucidated above, Quality professionals add a couple more into these:

·        Create a value stream at each stage;

·        Reduce waste

It is good for a Quality professional to be familiar with a set of Six Sigma skills. These are not strictly concerning educational or technical experience, but rather, a set of soft skills, which, when cultivated, can be very useful in implementing Six Sigma principles.

These are some of the skills expected from those who implement Six Sigma:

·        Sound grasp of the business process

·        People skills

·        Teamwork

·        Collaboration

·        Cooperation

·        Synergy with other team members

·        Sharp eye for detail

·        General management skills

The Belts awarded in Six Sigma are based on the levels of proficiency that the professional attains at each stage.

Not really. Each level, except the beginner level, the White Belt, takes off from the previous one. So, as you go up, you will never really be learning anything in isolation. Each belt carries the learning from the previous belt, so your learning for each belt is fortified at each level.

The 6 S's in Six Sigma denote the six attributes of Lean management.

These are:

·        Sorting: making work organized by clearing the clutter

·        Set (in order): items needed to be worked on should be placed at convenient and strategic places

·        Shine: involves cleansing the workplace

·        Standardize: bringing about consistency in the workplace by identifying best practices

·        Sustain: ensuing long-term maintenance of these practices

·        Safety: the latest addition to this methodology, this aims at ensuring complete safety at the workplace

6S was originally called 5S and came to be called 6S when safety was added to these.

The 3 key attributes of Six Sigma are the ones that are absolutely essential for its implementation. Accordingly, these are the 3 key attributes of Six Sigma:

·        Support and commitment from the organization’s leadership

·        Adaption of an approach that is driven by data and not by individual subjective assessments

·        Instilling a six Sigma culture into the organization, where there is openness and a willingness to learn and adapt to change

The 5S tools or 5S cycle in Quality management are:

·        Sort

·        Set

·        Shine

·        Standardize

·        Sustain

We can think of the various Belt levels as the key roles in Six Sigma because the roles that Six Sigma professionals play are directly related to their belt designation.

The core elements of Six Sigma pertain to the ways of improving processes. Hence, the core elements are these three:

Customer: Obviously because no talk about Quality can even be initiated without the customer; 

Processes: These define the metrics for achieving Quality and describe how to go about putting them in place;

Employees: One of the hallmarks of the Six Sigma methodology is that it takes every employee on board to achieve defect-free quality

The core concept in Six Sigma is the achievement of a defect rate that is acceptable, i.e., 3.4 defects per million events. Six Sigma seeks to reduce and possibly eliminate variations (inconsistencies) in the product or service, and the processes that go into them through the use of statistical methods.

Six Sigma tools are those tools or techniques that Six Sigma professionals at various levels use to achieve quality standards for a product. These are the popular tools in Six Sigma:

·        Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control, or DMAIC

·        Define, Measure, Analyze, Design, Validate, or DMADV

Into these two main tools are built a few subsets, among which mention may be made of the following:

·        Failure Mode & Effects Analysis (FMEA)

·        Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed (RACI Matrix)

·        Value Stream Map

·        Pareto Chart

·        5 Whys Analysis

·        Design of Experiments

·        Kanban

·        Kaizen

Talking about the etymology of the term is derived from the Greek word sigma. One sigma denotes a standard deviation in a dataset. The term Six Sigma means that six standard deviations should take place to detect a defect in a process. A process is said to have achieved Six Sigma when there are only 3.4 defects or errors in a million process events.

The steps in Six Sigma are the data-driven process improvement cycles with which to improve, optimize, and stabilize the processes.

Six Sigma is built on these five steps, collectively known by the acronym DMAIC:

·        Define the problem

·        Measure the efficiency or performance of the process through data

·        Analyze the root of the issue

·        Improve the process based on these inputs

·        Control the process over the long term to ensure that the defects are not repeated