Page 30 - Design for Six Sigma for Service (Six SIGMA Operational Methods)

12 Chapter One

accomplished by superior service design as well as flawless and efficient
service delivery. It is the author’s belief that Six Sigma can be a tremendous
help in service design and service delivery. The fundamental aspects of Six
Sigma are discussed in Sec. 1.3.

1.3 Overview of Six Sigma

1.3.1 What Is Six Sigma?
Six Sigma is a business strategy that provides businesses with the tools to
improve the capability of their business processes. In Six Sigma, a process
is the basic unit for improvement. A process could be a product or a service
that a company provides to outside customers, or it could also be an internal
process within the company, such as a billing process or a production process.
In Six Sigma, the purpose of process improvement is to increase a process’
performance and decrease its performance variation. This increase in per-
formance and decrease in process variation will lead to a reduction in
defects and an improvement in profits, employee morale, quality of product,
and eventually to business excellence.

Six Sigma is the fastest growing business management system in industry
today. It has been credited with saving billions of dollars for companies over
the past 10 years. Developed by Motorola in the mid-1980s, the methodology
only became well known after Jack Welch, from GE, made it the central
focus of his business strategy in 1995.

Compared with other quality initiatives, the key difference of Six Sigma
is that it applies not only to product quality, but also to all aspects of
business operation by improving key processes. For example, Six Sigma
can be used to help create well-designed, highly reliable, and consistent
customer billing systems, cost control systems, and project management
systems.

1.3.2 Six Sigma in a Nutshell
Six Sigma is not just statistical jargon; it is a comprehensive business
strategy with multiple aspects. Figure 1.4 illustrates the whole picture of Six
Sigma. There are five aspects of Six Sigma: fundamental beliefs, organi-
zational infrastructure, training, project execution, and methods and tools.
We present a general overview of all these aspects.