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What does the colour of the six sigma belt signify ? found this picture informative...

Hi, We say that Six Sigma corresponds to 3.4 defects per million opportunities, but mathematically speaking, 3.4 DPMO corresponds to 4.5 sigma levels. Why do we do this 1.5 sigma shift ?? why not call it 4.5 sigma.. or what is so special about '6' is six sigma.. ?? pls share your thoughts. Viswanathan.

From 1995 till 2007 - About 50,000 US citizens died due to want of a suitable organ donor. An interesting statistic - Only 28% Americans have chosen to donate their organs while 99.9% of French citizens are potential donors. What is the reason for this striking difference? Let us explore one by one. Awareness? - This cannot be the reason as large number of campaigns have been carried out in USA.Moral development? - Do Americans believe that Doctors may not work as hard to save life of patients who have agreed to donate organs? This cannot be the reason. Evidence - Germans and Austrians share the same language, culture and are neighbors but have huge difference on this issue - 12% Germans are donors while 99.9% of Austrians are donors.Something more important is at work behind all this - something more important than deliberate reasoning, national thought processes, or individual preferences. The reason is - In the US, Great Britain and Germany, the legal default is that nobody is a donor without registering to be one. While in France, Austria, Hungary, everyone is a potential donor unless they opt out. This means the DEFAULT RULE works everywhere on this issue. This is the same as Opt-In versus Opt-Out rule in a software program. As you see this rule can have serious long standing repercussions. Have you tried working with the default rule in organisational processes? It can work wonderfully for you. Comments welcome. Best Regards, VK This post has been promoted to an article

The difference lies in the definition iteself. DPMO (Defects per Million Opportunities) talk about the defects while DPPM (Defectives parts per Million) talks about the defectives. Take an example: A car manufacturer produces 1000 cars with each car having 50 checkpoints. Hence Units - 1000 Opportunities - 1000*50 = 50000 Assume, 10 cars are defective while the total number of defects are 250 (i.e. these 10 cars cumulatively failed on 250 checkppoints). Hence Defectives - 10 Defects - 250 DPMO = 250/50000*1000000 = 5000 DPPM = 10/1000*1000000 = 10000 Typically in a service industry, Customer is more concerned with DPPM. For a service provider it makes more sense to look at DPMO. Even if they start working with DPPM, they will eventually have to drill down to the defects that are rendering the service as defective. Not sure if the same logic applies to manufacturing, but even though DPPM is an excellent metric to track the performance of the manufacturing unit, for any improvements you still need to look at DPMO.

Like six sigma,,,, Excel is again a brilliant tool that can be used for an ample number of applications.. Thanks for sharing this link... very informative...

yes, Six Sigma can be used in all industries and functions... I was fascinated to realize that six sigma could be used in HR, Healthcare etc... If there exists a recurring problem, the best way out is to implement lean six sigma.. find the root cause, modify and improve it..

Six Sigma is all about Process Improvement, Data Driven Decision Making and Problem Solving and these three aspects are present in all industries and functions. Probably this makes Six Sigma universally applicable!

it would definitely have an impact... 1) Professional - It is an industry independent certification.. so it will help us shift industries.. also, we can use it any domain, be it marketing, finance, HR, IT... 2) Personal - There is a process in anything that we do, even in our personal life.. we have problems everywhere.. so these tools help us understand ourselves and become a better self by eliminating the recurring problems...

The Future of Lean Sigma Thinking provides the tools to not only survive, but prosper through the current business environment by supplying lean practitioners with a formal process for keeping up with technological advancements. It introduces cutting-edge business solutions across the business domains, and explains how to integrate these concepts with proven Lean principles.I think , this will definitely lead to a promising future.

Interesting Read !! Descriptive statistics provides simple summaries about the sample and about the observations that have been made. When we talk about ‘data driven decision making’, knowing and classifying data is a first important step to gain meaningful insights.

I think one may go for Continuous data instead of Discrete data in these cases. Continuous data can assume a range of numerical responses on a scale and it can be used to measure a wide range of different values which will lead to even the slightest defect being detected and measured. Can someone please suggest, if this can be the correct approach?

There may be times when despite the efforts the Six Sigma principles do not yield expected results. Despite being trained in Six Sigma, the team may not be able to deliver. So, what could possibly be missing from your Six Sigma training strategy? Chances are you've missed one of the most critical success factors for any quality or productivity initiative: communication skills training. Six Sigma, like ISO 9000 and total quality management (TQM), will fail without a relentless organizational focus on information and communication. Read more at http://clomedia.com/articles/view/communications_training_making_six_sigma_work/1

More infomration required on how the projects are modelled.

Organizations and people have varied decision making approaches which evolves with time and more often than not becomes part of the organization culture or personality trait respectively. Lean Six Sigma gives that additional edge due to its scientific approach and time tested methodologies. If used in tandem within the constraints of the organizational culture to start off and slowly working towards managing the change (Change Management Cycle) it will definitely start delivering tangible value and garner more support over a period of time. This will definitely deliver results if practiced in spirit and lead to a more promising future due to clarity of vision and greater control in the progress towards achieving the key milestones.

Hi All, I joined recently on this forum. I found this post interesting. Suresh and Velu said that six sigma is applicable to areas other than manufacturing as well, and P.B.Mohan has tried to push the envelope to see if there are any case studies available for KPO environment. I think this is an interesting question. I did not see any responses on this till now. I am getting the feeling that the applicability of six sigma in KPO environment has not been proven yet. The reason could be that unlike in BPO, the processes and services that are off-shored in KPO have a greater degree of ambiguity in it. There is also in many cases a lack of clarity of what the measurements for the process performance should be. But having said that it's probably only a matter of time and its a matter of working to actually customize the theory of six sigma to the practical aspects of delivering in a KPO environment. To me, it appears as if we should focus on the CTQ of customer satisfaction for the services delivered, and the CTP of on time receipt of good quality inputs, and on time delivery of good quality outputs. The specific definition of on-time and quality would depend on the nature of the process. Once a measurement system is in place, we can set targets for measurement and projects which help on a closing gap to target would be six sigma projects. These projects can then become examples for case-studies.I am currently leading the Continuous Improvement Program for an account, in an ITES company.