Benchmark Six Sigma Expert View by Venugopal R
Many of the tools used in Six Sigma project, where samples are used for analysis and decision making, apply the principle of Central Limit Theorem (CLT). As per the CLT, Sample means tend to follow normal distribution, irrespective to the population distribution, and hence the properties of Normal distribution apply for the sample means. The normality gets better with higher sample size.
In today’s world with so many user-friendly statistical software, the analysis and even the choice of the tools to be applied, (for instance the type of test of hypothesis to be used for comparative analysis) could be left to the software. Hence the practical application of CLT would be happening inadvertently while using these tools.
Control charts that use mean value of subgroups have their limits and rules based on the CLT. The significance tests where mean values of samples are compared, have the acceptance conditions based on CLT. If these tools had been used as part of the Six Sigma projects, the CLT has been put to use as part of the inbuilt working of these statistical softwares.