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  Master Black Belts: These are individuals identified by the Champions and they are expert coaches with Six Sigma. They are going to be guides to the Black Belts as well as the Green Belts and they will assist the Champions in implementing Six Sigma throughout the organization.

  Black Belts: These individuals will operate under the guidance of the Master Black Belts. Their main task is to supply the ideas of Six Sigma to the different projects specified. They can also be in charge of executing the Six Sigma project. They will need direction from the Master Black Belts, but they do have some leadership qualities as well to perform their jobs.

  Green Belts: These individuals will work on the implementation of Six Sigma in the business. They can also work with other projects in the business. The belts above this one will devote all their energies to Six Sigma, while these individuals will be able to work on other projects that the business needs, but can also work with Six Sigma a little bit.

  Yellow Belts: These employees have some training with the techniques of Six Sigma, but they do not really have the opportunity to apply their knowledge to a project that is using or relying on Six Sigma.

  Each of these levels is going to be important to implementing Six Sigma for a business. This is not something with which just one or two people can do and be effective. This large methodology can help reduce waste, create better products, and help a company to meet and exceed the expectations of their customers. However, it is going to take some work from top management, as well as from others who are well versed in Six Sigma, in order to see the great results. Everyone can play a role in Six Sigma, which is why it is so important for a company to implement it throughout the whole business and ensure everyone is a part of it.

  Chapter 3: Why is Six Sigma Used?

  Now that we have looked at Six Sigma and what it is about, you may have some more questions. A common one is “Why is Six Sigma used in the first place?” Is it that good at getting rid of defects in a business? Can it really help to reduce waste as much as it claims? Or is it too much work to implement? There are many reasons why a business would choose to implement Six Sigma, and some of the main ones include:

  The quality of the product that the company provides to customers will improve by quite a bit. The same can be said when talking about the productivity of the company.

  The number of possible defects that happen out of a million opportunities will reduce quite a bit. This means that the quality of a product is going to improve way more than a company can do on its own. The fewer defects in a product, the happier the customer is.

  The result of any process that is defined here is going to be based on data that has been collected, rather than just on some assumptions that management tries to make.

  The amount of profit that the company is able to make is going to increase rapidly. This means that the company now has growth in the terms of more profits and more opportunities.

  It calls on the business to come up with a more correlated and integrated approach to help them solve problems that are already there.

  Some of the other conventional cost-cutting methods are not going to be the best for some companies. Six Sigma will prefer to remove costs that end up not giving value to their customers.

  The net production costs that you will incur when you manufacture a new product will be reduced as well.

  By being able to reduce how many defects they are dealing with effectively, a company may be able to raise their expectations in the future.

  Six Sigma can help to meet the needs and the expectations of more of their customers. This is because the company can use this method in order to provide them with the same product they love, but with higher expectations that it will be good, last a long time, and do what it promises.

  The internal understanding inside of a business across the various departments is going to increase. This means that the employees of a business are going to be more aware of the techniques and strategies that each part uses in order to solve a problem. This helps them all to learn and do better with their own work.

  There seems to be more job satisfaction for employees when Six Sigma is used. Because of this job satisfaction, the amount of internal communication that occurs inside of an organization is going to increase as well.

  The time spent on production while manufacturing a new product is going to decrease. This allows the business to deliver the service faster than ever.

  The market value of that company will increase due to all of the other factors.

  As you can see, there are tons of great benefits that come with Six Sigma; it is a tool that many businesses are using so that they can provide a better product to their customers and make more money in the long-term.

  The other side of Six Sigma

  Even though there are many reasons to love Six Sigma, some people do not rank this process very high. Six Sigma sets up a standard of 3.4 defects per a million opportunities. For many businesses, this sounds fantastic because it can help them to provide better products and services to their customers.

  However, this type of quality standard is not always the optimal one to go with depending on your process. For example, if you are working with a process that concerns the well-being of a person, you may want to go with a quality standard that is even higher.

  In addition, there are also some other types of businesses and operations that are going to work well if they have a lower level of Sigma. Many find that there really isn’t a clear justification as to why a business would choose to go with the number six from the table, and they may do better if they go above or below this level. Because of this capriciousness, there are some quality managers who are not as fond of using Six Sigma and they will choose a different method to get their defects taken care of.

  Chapter 4: Tools to Use with Six Sigma

  There are many tools that you can use in order to make Six Sigma work for you. These tools are there to ensure that you are providing good quality management to your business and some of the tools are so successful that they can be used outside of a Six Sigma application as well. Some of the main methods that can be used include:

  5 Why’s

  The 5 Why’s is a technique that is there to explore the cause and effect relationship of a problem. The goal of this technique is to find out the root cause of a problem by repeating the question “Why?” Each answer is going to form the basis of the following question. The 5 in the name derives from the idea that it takes about five iterations in order to resolve the problem, but depending on your particular issue, you may need to use more.

  Not all problems though are going to have one root cause. If you would like to figure out more than one root cause, this method is going to be repeated by asking a different sequence of this question each time that you use it.

  In addition, the method is not going to provide any hard rules about what lines you should explore with the questions, or how long you need to continue your search to make sure you find the root cause. Thus, even if you follow this method closely, it may not give you the outcome that you want.

  An example of the 5 Why’s includes the following:

  My vehicle is not starting:

  Why? The battery is not working.

  Why? Because the alternator is not functioning

  Why? The belt on the alternator has broken off.

  Why? The belt should have been replaced a long time ago, but was not.

  Why? The vehicle owner did not follow the required maintenance schedule for the vehicle.

  This helps to show why there was an issue with the vehicle, and you can easily choose to take it further into some more why’s until you find the solution that you are looking for.

  Axiomatic design

  The axiomatic design is a systems design methodology that is going to analyze the transformation of the needs of the customer into design parameters, functional requirements, and process variables. The method is going to get its name because it is going to use the design principles th
at govern the analysis and decision-making process. The two types of axioms that are used with this process include:

  Axiom 1: This is the independence axiom. It is going to help you to maintain the independence of your functional requirements.

  Axiom 2: This is the information axiom. This is going to help you to minimize the informative content of the design.

  Cost-benefit analysis

  Cost-benefit analysis, or CBA, is an approach that is meant to estimate the strengths or weaknesses of varies alternatives. It can be used with project investments, processes, activities, and even transactions. It can be used to determine, out of several solutions, which options will provide the best approach to a business in order to achieve benefits while still saving the company money.

  To keep it simple, the CBA method is going to come with two main purposes. These purposes are:

  To determine if a decision or an investment for a business is sound. This means that the benefits will outweigh the cost. You also want to look at how much this is. If the benefits do not outweigh the costs much, then it is probably not the best option to go with.

  To help provide a good way to compare projects. This can involve comparing the total amount that you expect each option to cost against the benefits you expect to get.

  The benefits, as well as the costs, are going to be shown in monetary terms, which makes it work well for Six Sigma. Moreover, they can be adjusted in the formula for the time value of money. This ensures that all flows of costs and those from benefits over time are expressed with a common basis.

  The simple steps that you will follow when you are working on a cost-benefit analysis include:

  You first have to define the goals and the objectives of the project or the activity.

  You can list the alternative programs or projects that you may be able to use.

  List the stakeholders

  You then select the measurements you want to use in order to measure all of the elements when it comes to benefits and costs.

  You can also work on predicting the outcome of the benefits and the cost of each alternative over a period of your choosing.

  You can then convert all of the benefits and costs into a common currency to help them compare better.

  Make sure to apply any discount rates

  Next, you can calculate the net present value of all project options.

  Perform a sensitivity analysis: This is going to be the study of how the uncertainty of the output from a mathematical system can be shared to different sources of uncertainty in its inputs.

  After you have all this information, you can then pick out the option that is the best.

  Root cause analysis

  A root cause analysis, or RCA, is going to be a method to help with solving problems and it focuses on finding the root causes of the problem. A factor will be considered the root cause if you can remove it and the problem does not recur. Essentially, there are going to be four principles that come with this type of method including:

  It is going to define and describe properly the problem or event.

  Establish a timeline from the normal situation until the final failure or crisis occurs

  Distinguishes between the casual factor or the root causes

  Once it is implemented, and the execution is constant, the RCA is transformed into a method of problem prediction.

  The main use of the RCA is to identify and then correct the root causes of an event, rather than just trying to address a symptomatic result. An example of this is when some students receive a bad grade on a test. After a quick investigation, it was found that those who took the test at the end of the day ended up with the lower scores.

  More investigation found that later in the day, these students had less ability to stay focused. In addition, this lack of focus is from them being hungry. So, after looking at the root cause and finding it was hunger, it was fixed by moving the testing time to right after lunch.

  Notice that the root causes are often going to come in at many levels and that the level for the root is only going to be where the current investigator leaves it. Nevertheless, this is a good way to figure out why one particular process in the business is not working the way that you want and then finding the best solution to fix it.

  SIPOC analysis

  If you are talking about process improvement, a SIPOC is there to be a tool that can summarize the inputs and then the outputs of at least one process and then shows it in table form. This acronym stands for suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, and customers and these will be used to form the columns on your table.

  Sometimes the acronym is going to be turned around in order to put customers first, but either way, it is going to be used in the same way. SIPOC is presented at the beginning of a process improvement efforts or it can be used during what is known as the define phase of the DMAIC process. There are three typical uses of this depending on who is going to use it including:

  To help those who are not familiar with a particular process a high-level overview.

  To help those who had some familiarity with the process, but may be out of date with the changes in the process or those who haven’t used it in a long time.

  To help those who are trying to define a new process.

  There are also some aspects that come with this method that are not always apparent. These include:

  The customers and the suppliers are sometimes external or internal to the organization that is trying to perform the process.

  Outputs and inputs can include things such as information, services, and materials.

  The focus of this method is to capture the set of inputs as well as outputs, rather than worrying about all the individual steps that are in the process.

  Value stream mapping

  When it comes to value streaming mapping, we are talking about a method that is there to analyze the current state of a business and then designing a new state to use in the future. It is meant to take a service or product that a company offers from its very beginnings all the way through to when it reaches the customers. The hope is that the process is used to help reduce lean wastes, especially when compared to the process that the business is using right now.

  The value stream is going to learn how to focus on any areas of a business that helps to add in value to the service or product. The purpose of this is to learn where the waste is in the business and then remove or at least reduce it. This can increase the efficiency of the business and can even increase productivity.

  The main part of this process is to work on identifying waste in the business. Some of the most common types of waste include:

  Faster than necessary pace: This is when the company tries to produce too much of their product that it can damage the flow of production, the quality of the product, and the productivity of the workers.

  Waiting: This is a time when the goods are not being worked on or transported.

  Conveyance: This process is used to move the products around. It can look at things like excessive movement and double handling.

  Excess stock: This is when there is an overabundance of inventory. This can add on storage costs and can make it more difficult to identify problems.

  Unnecessary motion: This waste means employees are using too much energy to pick up and move items.

  Correction of mistakes: The cost that the business will have when they try to correct a defect.

  This process is used often in lean environments to help look at and design flows for the system level. This is often something that is associated with manufacturing, but it can be used in many other industries including healthcare, product development, and even software development.

  Business Process Mapping

  The idea of business process mapping is going to be all activities that are involved when you try to define what a business does, who is the person or persons responsible, and at what standard a process in the business needs to be completed. It can also determine how the success of the process in
the business can be measured.

  Business process mapping is there to help a business become more effective. A clear business process map will allow even outside firms, such as consultants, to come in and look to see where improvements can be made, such as what can happen with Six Sigma, to help the business.

  This mapping is going to take a specific objective of a business and they can measure and compare it to the objectives of the company. This makes sure that all processes that are done can align with what the company holds as its capabilities and values.

  A good way to do business process mapping is with a flow chart. This can help you to see how the business does a certain process and can even include who is responsible for each part if that is important.

  These are just a few of the options that you can choose from when it comes to working with Six Sigma. All of the options above can help you to make informed decisions while finding the process that is causing your business the most trouble at the time. Pick one of these options that go along with your biggest issue and find out how you can make smart decisions that will turn your business into something even better.

  Chapter 5: Steps to Follow in the Six Sigma Methodology