Six Sigma is a framework that was designed to eliminate waste and improve the customer experience. It was introduced to our mainstream business culture in the 1980’s when Bill Smith, an engineer for Motorola, first introduced the concept.
The smart guy will outsmart himself. The lucky guy will run out of luck. The money guy will never have the desire. But hard work will take you anywhere you want to go.Bill Smith
Today, according to many business development experts, Six Sigma is the most popular quality improvement methodology in history. It is used worldwide across a diverse range of organizations including nonprofits, prisons, hospitals, banks, and corporations. The article will look more closely at what Six Sigma is, what the benefits are of using it, and how businesses can successfully implement it.
What is Six Sigma?
So what does it mean to be a Six Sigma organization? If you are running a Six Sigma organization, then for every million opportunities there are no more than 3.4 inefficiencies. In other words, it demands results that are close to perfection.
If this sounds extreme or unrealistic to you then consider the alternatives. If a business was operating at a Three Sigma level, this would mean that for every million opportunities there would be 66,807 defects.
Or to put it another way, if a pharmacy operated at a Three Sigma level this would mean that there would be 54,000 incorrect drug prescriptions every year. At a Six Sigma level, that same pharmacy would have three incorrect drug prescriptions each year.
The ultimate goal is to improve the experience for the customer by eliminating variation. Variation is simply deviating from what the customer expects and it can cause your customers to quickly lose faith in your company. Variation tells your customers that you are inconsistent and don’t deliver predictable results.
DMAIC
Six Sigma is usually accomplished by implementing the basic methodology DMAIC. DMAIC stands for define, measurement, analysis, improvement, and control and it has helped many businesses get rid of waste.
- Design: During this phase, your team will clearly outline what the problem is. You will also decide on a goal and evaluate all the tools and resources available to you.
- Measurement: Next your team will look more closely at the process that is already in place and measure its performance. By evaluating how the process is performing you will have a better idea of what improvement is needed.
- Analysis: When your team analyzes the problem, you will try to discover the root cause of that problem.
- Improvement: Once the problem has been identified, your team is ready to brainstorm possible solutions and put a plan in place.
- Control: This is the final step and it involves creating systems to control the process performance. This is important because, without it, you may just end up dealing with the exact same issue in another six months.
Benefits of Implementing Six Sigma
Organizations from nearly every industry have benefitted from Six Sigma, including companies like Motorola, General Electric, and Honeywell. It can benefit the customer, individual employees, and the company as a whole. Listed below are the five biggest advantages many businesses see as a result of implementing Six Sigma:
Increased revenue
When your company improves the quality of its services and products you can see incredible long-term revenue increases. After its first year of using Six Sigma principles, General Electric saw $300 million in increased revenue.
Better quality
By operating a Six Sigma business, companies have to minimize defects and improve quality to the point that few customers will ever experience a problem. And this does not just apply to manufactured products; at Akron’s Children’s Hospital, the quality of their services increased tremendously by implementing Six Sigma. The wait times for MRI scans were cut down by 90 percent and the emergency room minimized the amount of time it took to locate supplies by 63 percent.
Reduced costs
Successful Six Sigma implementation can result in massive savings, which will allow your company to use that money elsewhere. In 2007, the United States Army implemented Six Sigma and saved over $2 billion that year by streamlining task management, cutting costs, and recycling fuel.
Improves the customer experience
When you improve the quality of your products and services and reduce variation, your customers will reap the benefits. And when customers receive a consistently positive experience, they are more likely to become loyal long-term customers.
Increased productivity
Often businesses think they are overstaffed when the real problem in insufficient training. Implementing Six Sigma can give your business clarity on the root cause of low productivity and help you effectively address it.
Belt Levels
When your company decides to implement Six Sigma, you will most likely work closely with a professional who will help you implement these changes. These professionals are given various “belt levels” based on their experience, past contributions, and capabilities. Working with a Six Sigma professional is an important component in achieving the success you are hoping for. Here is a list of the belt levels and what each one means:
- Master Black Belts: Master Black Belts are responsible for strategizing and finding ways to apply Six Sigma principles across business structures. They also will usually provide training to other team members.
- Black Belts: Black Belts will also lead projects for businesses that provide solutions to high-level problems. They are also responsible for providing training for team members.
- Green Belts: Green Belts will collect data and provide analysis.
- Yellow Belts: Yellow Belts usually assist the team with process improvements.
- White Belts: White Belts will usually help with solving problems but they are not necessarily a part of the team.
Implementing Six Sigma
Strategies for implementation can vary quite a bit depending on the organization and the specific business goals. However, once a company has decided to implement Six Sigma there are usually two ways to go about this. They can either implement a case-by-case initiative or create a Six Sigma infrastructure.
A case-by-case initiative involves certain employees being taught specific tools that they can apply to jobs as needed. Other employees can consult with that person if they need help on a certain project. This method can result in success but rarely does this strategy result in major changes to the organization.
By creating a Six Sigma infrastructure, you will use it through projects rather than just individual tools. This is often a more focused and productive way to implement Six Sigma tools. It can also lead to a more detailed understanding of important business processes.
Conclusion
Six Sigma can help your business eliminate waste, reduce variation, and improve the customer experience. It isn’t a fad and it isn’t going away anytime soon; it is a proven business method for improving a company’s operations.
But in spite of its many successes, over 60 percent of Six Sigma projects do not achieve the desired results. There are many reasons why this happens, but more often than not, the reason is not being able to enforce the changes you’ve made to the processes.
Process management software, however, can help with that. Tallyfy helps establish & enforce standardized processes, making sure that your business is running at peak efficiency.
Related Questions
What is Six Sigma in simple terms?
Six Sigma is like a detective story for your business processes. At its core, it’s a methodology that hunts down variation and defects – those pesky inconsistencies that create headaches for everyone. I’ve always thought of it as the difference between a chaotic kitchen where cookies randomly burn or come out raw versus a precise operation where every batch is consistently perfect. Six Sigma gives you tools to reduce errors to just 3.4 per million opportunities – which frankly, still blows my mind! It’s about making customers happier while saving your sanity and boosting your bottom line.
What are the 6 points of Six Sigma?
The backbone of Six Sigma is the DMAIC framework – not the catchiest acronym ever, but it works! It stands for: Define (get crystal clear on what needs fixing), Measure (gather actual data – no guesswork allowed!), Analyze (dig into root causes), Improve (implement solutions that actually work), and Control (make sure those improvements stick). Many practitioners add a sixth element – Repeat – because improvement never really ends. It reminds me of my perpetual quest for inbox zero – more journey than destination! Each step builds on the previous one, creating a systematic approach to taming chaos in any workflow.
What does 6 sigma level mean?
A “Six Sigma level” means achieving near-perfection – specifically, just 3.4 defects per million opportunities. As someone who occasionally puts my shirt on backward in the morning, I find this level of precision both impressive and slightly intimidating! To put it in perspective, if your local power utility operated at only a 3-sigma level, you’d be without electricity for almost 15 hours each day. At Six Sigma, you’d experience just one second of downtime every 34 days. That dramatic difference is why Six Sigma matters for critical business processes – imagine having that reliability in your daily operations!
What is Six Sigma and what is its goal?
Six Sigma is essentially a problem-solving superhero for business processes. While it comes packed with statistical tools and methodologies, its heart beats for excellence through continuous improvement. Its primary goal? Creating processes so reliable that defects become extraordinarily rare events. I love that Six Sigma doesn’t just treat symptoms – it’s like that thorough doctor who won’t rest until finding the root cause. Born at Motorola in the 1980s, its principles apply virtually everywhere – from manufacturing to marketing to client onboarding and beyond.
How is Six Sigma different from other improvement methods?
What sets Six Sigma apart is its uncompromising commitment to data and statistics – it’s for the “show me the evidence” crowd, not the “trust your gut” folks. While Lean focuses primarily on eliminating waste and Agile emphasizes adaptability, Six Sigma is laser-focused on reducing variation and defects. It’s like the difference between saying “this room feels hot” versus using a thermometer to confirm it’s exactly 78.6°F and then systematically figuring out why. This data-driven approach has saved Fortune 500 companies billions – and frankly, it’s hard to argue with those kinds of results!
Who can use Six Sigma?
Here’s a misconception I love to bust: Six Sigma isn’t just for manufacturing giants or corporations with deep pockets. The beauty of these principles is their versatility – I’ve seen them successfully applied in healthcare, financial services, education, and even in optimizing household routines! Whether you’re running a global operation or a local food truck, if you have processes that could be more consistent (and who doesn’t?), Six Sigma principles can help. The complexity might change, but the fundamental approach to improvement remains incredibly effective across contexts.
What are the levels of Six Sigma certification?
Six Sigma borrowed the colored belt system from martial arts, which always makes me chuckle – imagine business analysts breaking boards in their cubicles! The progression typically goes: White Belt (basic awareness), Yellow Belt (understands fundamentals), Green Belt (applies tools to projects), Black Belt (leads complex projects), and Master Black Belt (the senseis who train others). Each level represents deeper expertise in statistical methods and problem-solving techniques. What I love about this system is how it creates a clear development path while building an internal support structure – Green Belts might work on improvements part-time while Black Belts often become full-time change agents.
How long does it take to implement Six Sigma?
If I could offer one piece of advice about Six Sigma implementation, it’s this: patience pays off. Meaningful process transformation typically takes several months to a year before you’ll see substantial results. And honestly, that’s a good thing! Quick fixes rarely address underlying issues. A small team might complete their first improvement project in 3-4 months, while enterprise-wide deployment could be a multi-year journey. The key is balancing quick wins (to build momentum) with deeper, systematic changes. Remember, Six Sigma isn’t a one-time project but a capability you’re building into your organization’s DNA.
What are the common challenges in Six Sigma implementation?
Having seen my fair share of improvement initiatives, I can tell you the biggest Six Sigma hurdles rarely involve the technical aspects. The real challenges are human: resistance to change (people get mighty attached to “the way we’ve always done it”), leadership commitment that fades when quick wins don’t materialize, and the struggle to maintain momentum when everyday fires demand attention. Another sneaky obstacle? Data collection – many organizations are shocked to discover they don’t actually measure the things that matter most! The most successful implementations have strong executive sponsorship, clear communication about the “why,” and celebrate small victories along the way.
How does Six Sigma save money?
The financial impact of Six Sigma can be astonishing. I’ve seen companies discover they were hemorrhaging money in places they hadn’t even thought to look! The savings come from multiple angles: reduced waste (both materials and time), fewer defects requiring rework, decreased variability leading to more predictable outcomes, and increased capacity without additional resources. Beyond these tangible savings are the harder-to-measure benefits: improved customer satisfaction, reduced employee frustration, and freed-up capacity to focus on growth rather than fighting fires. The ROI can be substantial – many organizations report returns of 3-5x their investment in Six Sigma training and implementation.
How does Tallyfy support Six Sigma initiatives?
At Tallyfy, we see our workflow software as the perfect companion to Six Sigma initiatives. While Six Sigma provides the methodology for identifying and solving process problems, Tallyfy offers the infrastructure to document, standardize, and automate those improved processes. Our platform makes it easy to capture the “before” state (crucial for the Measure phase), implement and track the new improved process, and maintain the gains during the Control phase. By providing real-time visibility into process execution and gathering performance data automatically, Tallyfy eliminates much of the manual effort traditionally required in Six Sigma projects while ensuring that improvements stick around for the long haul.
How does Six Sigma relate to the real-world experiences of Tallyfy customers?
“Tallyfy has been transformative for us. It’s reduced manual errors, sped up processes like onboarding, and helped us document workflows that are critical as we grow. The ability to track tasks and aggregate them in one place saves us so much time and ensures that nothing falls through the cracks.” – Gwen Tormey, CEO at Corestream
“Tallyfy has revolutionized how we manage our marketing projects at West Community Credit Union. It allows us to quickly launch tailored campaigns and track every moving part, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks. The ease of creating flexible, repeatable processes has saved us significant time and improved team collaboration.” – Kim Berzack, Marketing at West Community Credit Union
These real-world experiences show how process improvement methodologies like Six Sigma become much more accessible when paired with the right workflow tools. See more customer stories at our customer page.
Why is Tallyfy passionate about process improvement methodologies like Six Sigma?
We’re naturally drawn to Six Sigma because we share the same obsession with eliminating chaos from business processes! We deeply respect how Six Sigma’s data-driven approach tackles the root causes of variation and defects. Both Six Sigma and Tallyfy recognize that documented, standardized processes are the foundation of quality. What particularly resonates with us is Six Sigma’s emphasis on measurement – you can’t improve what you don’t measure. That’s why we’ve built robust tracking into our platform, giving teams the data they need to identify problems and verify improvements. We believe combining Six Sigma’s analytical rigor with Tallyfy’s user-friendly workflow automation creates a powerful approach to process excellence.
