Six Sigma - the number six, and sigma, the Greek letter. But Six Sigma means something more in business and industry. It represents a statistical measure and a management philosophy. 

Six Sigma works best when everyone's involved, from the CEO at the top of the organization to the guy in the mailroom. 

The real power of Six Sigma is simple - it combines People power with Process power. 

Good companies focus on not making mistakes: not wasting time or materials, not making errors in production or service delivery, not getting sloppy in doing what they do best.

Six Sigma is a management philosophy focus on eliminating mistakes, waste, and rework. It’s not a rah-rah Do Better program. It establishes a measurable status to achieve and embodies a strategic problem-solving method to increase customer satisfaction and dramatically enhance the bottom line. It teaches employees how to improve the way they do business, scientifically and fundamentally, and how to maintain their new performance level. It gives you discipline, structure, and a foundation for solid decision making based on simple statistics. It also maximizes your return on investment and your return on talent – your people.

Sigma is like a measurement, used to determine how good or bad the performance of a process is; in other words, how many mistakes a company makes, doing whatever it does.

Six is the Sigma level of perfection we’re shooting for.

If you want to improve something, you have to know where you stand and where you want to go, or else it isn’t going to happen. But when you define those things in anything but numbers, the goal quickly becomes subjective and fuzzy. Numbers bring clarity.

If you can’t express what you’re trying to say in numbers, you probably don’t know what you’re talking about.  Everything in Six Sigma can be measured, and that’s how you figure out what to fix and when you’re actually fixed it. Dreams don’t come true, Goals do. It’s all manageable when you write it down.

In Six Sigma, improved quality is a means to an end, not the end itself. The goal is not simply to improve quality for the sake of improving quality, but to make customer happier and add money to the bottom line.

Six Sigma companies learned that quality saves money, because there are fewer throw-outs, fewer warranty payouts, and fewer refunds. And doing all that, in turn, increases profits.

Give customer an excellent product and excellent service at an excellent price. Focus on customer retention.

Imagine of a football coach whose game plan consisted of yelling, ‘Work harder! Play harder! Good luck!’ without telling you what to do or giving you the help you need to do it.

Instead of just getting rid of the bad end products, you try to solve Why the bad results are occurring. There’s no point throwing good money after bad, which is what a lot of programs seem to recommend. They urge you to keep driving a horse with a bad leg to make it go faster. Better to fix the leg or get a new horse. Don’t keep patching leaks. Build a better boat. Don’t keep paying for constant tune-ups on a car with a rotten engine. Fix the Engine!

Six Sigma doesn’t try to manage problems, it tries to eliminate it.

Ask the customers what problems we need to solve.

We’ve all made the same mistake: assuming what we want is what the customer wants. That’s why it’s so important to start with customer and work your way back to the source of the problem.

In Six Sigma, you only pick one problem to solve at a time as a project. Pick the one is going to produce the biggest bang for the buck.

Master Black Belt: the role of MBB is played by outside consultants who come in to act as in-house experts on Six Sigma. They are the people most responsible for creating lasting, fundamental changes in the way the company operates from top to bottom. They must have the ability to pick the right projects and the right people, and teach, coach, and monitor them. Summary: the MBB works with Champions to pick the project they’re going to work on, and the people who are going to work on it. Then they train and coach those people to succeed. The most important person they pick, though, is the Black Belt.

Black Belt (dedicate): people who really do the work, the key to whole project, the true leaders of Six Sigma. People who have considerable intellect and drive and to be willing to think outside of box – outside your usual way of thinking. BB must have both management and technical skills – a mix not everyone possesses – and the ability to inspire passion in front-line employees and the confidence of the top brass. They turn the Six Sigma vision into reality. They put the rubber to the road.

Champion

Executive Champion: acts as the general, picking his personnel with great care.

Deployment Champion: provide leadership and commitment and work to implement Six Sigma throughout their business.

Project Champion: pick, evaluate, and support the BB in tackling their project. Oversee, support and fund the Six Sigma projects and personnel necessary to get the job done. This allows the people on the project to focus solely on the project at hand.

Green Belt: Provide the BB the support they need to get the project done. Sort of work bees.

Executive Leadership: driving force behind adopting the Six Sigma philosophy and inspiring the organization from Day One.

One of the most important elements of Six Sigma is the role everyone plays. This is the People power side of the equation.

A good CEO will likely appoint one of his executives to oversee and support the entire mission. This sends the signal to everyone that the company is serious.

The people working on a Six Sigma project are usually the most valuable people in the corporation.

Executive Leaders and Champions worry about what gets done, while Master Black Belts and Black Belts focus on how things get done.

BB are most effective when they’re in the role for at least two years but not more then three.

Tell me, I forget. Show me, I remember. Involve me, I understand.

Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. These four phases are composed of things like statistics, quantitative benchmarking, and design of experiments.

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what you want done and they will surprise you with their ingenuity in getting there.

The biggest things a BB gets are structure and tools. The structure is to know what to do and when, with deadline and numerical goals in place, and the statistical tools are for analyzing how you’re doing and what needs to be done next.

Dissatisfied employees is not low pay, long hours, or a hectic schedule. It’s this: I don’t know what my boss wants, and no one appreciates what I do.