What is Six Sigma?

Errors in production or in business processes of companies might have negative consequences. A current example for this is Toyota in the US. They must probably recall millions of cars because of a production error. The recall will probably comprise more cars than Toyota has sold last year. One possibility to avoid respectively to detect process errors and to induce adequate counteractive measures is Six Sigma.

Six Sigma (6σ) is an effective method, which helps to improve a process on basis of statistics and analytics so that the process is nearly errorless. Central point is the reduction of costs while simultaneously increasing quality. The focus here is the removal of errors, because this increases customer satisfaction.

A process controlled by means of Six Sigma has only 3.4 defects (errors) per 1 million opportunities in the mean.

Ancestors of Six Sigma were established in dockyard industry and later in Asian industry. Six Sigma was developed in the 1980th. Today, Six Sigma is used in a lot of international companies. With the success of General Electric, the Six Sigma approach got popular and famous all over the world.

In the beginning, Six Sigma was only used in production, but in the last years it is also used in service industry domains, e.g. banking and insurance.

Every Six Sigma project applies a standardized and systematic methodology. Most frequently used is the DMAIC cycle. DMAIC stands for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control.

In the following articles I will show how Six Sigma can be used in business process management and how ARIS platform tools support Six Sigma. I am looking forward for your feedback and helpful suggestions.