Six Sigma: Breaking Through The Quality Hype

10 Pages 2564 Words

1996, p. 1).
The Juran Institute states:
…another important motivator for quality initiatives was the concept of "the costs of poor quality". This relates to all of those costs that would disappear in an organization, if everything were done correctly right from the start. We saw early on that most companies were simply throwing away about 25% of their sales revenues on scrap, repairs, warranties and other costs of quality (Blackiston, 1996, p. 1).
As the years went by, the reasons for implementing TQM piled up; however, the Juran Institute figured that 80% of the companies that tackled TQM in the 1980s failed (Blackiston, 1996, p.1). Although quality improved, TQM seemed to be mired in “find and fix” the problem and not worry about the cost. Joseph Defeo of the Juran Institute believes it wasn’t until the 1990s when General Electric popularized Six Sigma that companies realized quality and cost reduction can go hand-in-hand (Defeo, 2000, p. 1).
Defeo (1999) states:
Six Sigma is a lot more structured and profit-oriented than Total Quality Management. Each project has to improve processes 70 percent and produce $250,000 in cost savings. It is a data-driven method for achieving near-perfect quality […]what makes Six Sigma different from other quality efforts is that it catches mistakes before they happen. More specifically, it is a disciplined effort that closely examines a company’s repetitive processes for product designs, production, suppliers, services and organizations (p. 1).

Don Redinius at the International Society of Six Sigma Professionals (ISSSP) defines Six Sigma as a statistical method of translating a customer’s needs into separate tasks and defining the optimum specification for each depending on how all of the tasks interact. Six Sigma can reduce defects in products and services to unprecedented levels because of its strong emphasis on statistical analysis and measurement in design, manufactu...