The History of Six Sigma

 The History of Six Sigma

Six Sigma is a Methodology that has evolved over a period of time. Though the concept behind Six Sigma took shape centuries ago the actual methodology took shape only later.

The roots of Six Sigma as a measurement standard can be dated back to Carl Frederick Gauss (1777 - 1855) who introduced the concept of the normal curve. Later in the 1920's Walter Shewhart showed that the three Sigma from the mean is a point where a process requires correction, and Six Sigma emerged as a measurement standard in product variation. Many measurement standards like (Cpk, Zero Defects, etc...) later came on the scene but the credit for coining the term Six Sigma goes to an Engineer from Motorola named Bill Smith. Incidentally "Six Sigma" is a federally, registered trademark of Motorola.

Even with the advent of Six Sigma over the years there was an Era of change in the form of measurement and understanding of Six Sigma. In the early and mid - 1980's with Chairman Bob Galvin at the head of Motorola, Engineers decided that the traditional quality levels - measuring defects per thousands of opportunities - didn't provide enough granularity. Motorola then developed this new level of measurement of defects per million opportunities and also created the standard, methodology and cultural change associated with such a system.

 

The proper utilization of Six Sigma Methodology helped Motorola to realize powerful results in their Organization which in terms of results is documented to the tune of achieving more than $16 Billion savings as a result of application of Six Sigma Methodology.

Since then hundreds of companies all over the world started taking notice of this methodology, and applying it to their system, and adopted Six Sigma as a way of doing business. Over the years the Leaders and Top Management of companies like Larry Bossidy of Allied Signal (Now Honeywell), and Jack Welch of General Electric Company not only praised the benefits of Six Sigma, but applied them to their companies in a way that the results speak for themselves.

 

 

 

 

Six Sigma has evolved over time, and apart from not being a Quality system like TQM, or ISO, it has evolved as a way of doing business, a vision, a philosophy, a metric,or a goal setting methodology that has taken the Corporate by storm, and achieved results that many would want to emulate. But this can happen only with a dedicated approach to the system, and a systematic application of Six Sigma to the Company Work Methodology.

In the Posts that follow we will see in detail how Six Sigma emerged as a force to reckon with.