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Quality management is no longer primarily a technical subject. Instead, it is an understanding of the principles of quality management that allows organizational leadership to make their organization more effective. Quality management has moved from beyond an emphasis on management of quality to a focus on the quality of managing, operating, and integrating the customer service, marketing, production, delivery, information and financial areas throughout an organization’s quality value chain, with a subsequently favorable impact on overall organizational effectiveness. Quality of management also focuses on enabling employees to be enthusiastic about their jobs, going well beyond empowerment and emphasizing the development of individual job quality for the entire workforce.

In mid-80s, six- sigma began as a rigorous and absolute statistical measurement reflecting no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities (DPMO). Since that time, however Six-sigma has been perfected as a new science of doing business. It is about results – enhancing profitability through improved quality and efficiency.

Sigma scale is a measure of process capability. Higher the sigma value, higher the process capability and lower the cost of quality. On the sigma scale, typical Indian companies are at about 2-3 sigma. However, the world-class companies are at 6 sigma. Cost of quality (COQ) in a 3-sigma company is around 25% and in a 6 sigma company COQ is less than 1% of sales. 

The six-sigma concept was conceived by Bill Smith, a reliability engineer for Motorola Corporation. His research leads him to believe that the increasing complexity of systems and products used by consumers created higher than desired system failure rates. Motorola largely achieved the goal.

Even though six-sigma originated at Motorola. GE has mastered the deployment with great success and is today considered a benchmark for the six- sigma implementation. GE launched a corporate wide quality improvement strategy in 1995. Jack Welch, Chairman and CEO started that each GE operation, from credit card service to aircraft engine plant to NBC-TV. GE averaged about 3.5 –sigma level at the time of launch of the six-sigma initiative. Most of the Korean companies are aggressively working on six sigma initiative and the competition will become move tough for India companies. Unlike most of the past quality initiatives, six-sigma approach is highly focused on breakthrough results and can help reduce business risks. I strongly believe that, what SPC did to Japan after World War II, six sigma will do the same to

India in these highly turbulent times.

The real challenge to Indian companies is to acquire six sigma competencies. There are two approaches – get the experts from USA or develop expertise locally. The first option is very costly, about $40,000, for training one six-sigma black belt in One of the key success factors for any change initiative is the right people and six-sigma deployment is no exception. Six sigma players are known as Champions, Master Black Belts, Black Belts and Green Belts.

Champions

A Champion may be anyone from an executive vice-president to a manager in charge of a functional group at an operating site. These champions work to implement six sigma throughout their respective business/functional groups. They play a role similar to the CEO, in terms of leadership and commitment, but take on the additional responsibilities necessary to nurture the success of six-sigma.

Master Black Belts

MBBs are individuals selected by Champions to act as in-house consultants for deployment of six-sigma within the units. They devote full time to six sigma activities.

Black Belts

At the pivotal centre of six sigma implementation, a Black Belt is an individual who has developed a synergistic proficiency between his or her technical discipline and the six sigma strategies, methodology and tools, Black Belts typically work full time on projects. Black Belts spend about 50% of their time on projects.

Green Belts

GBs are employees in the organisation who execute six sigma as a part of their overall job.

Advantages six-sigma:

The organisations using six-sigma correctly can  achieve significant benefits that enhance the competitive advantage of the organisation which ultimately change organisation culture from reactive problem solving to proactive solving prevention.