“Six Sigma is the most important initiative GE has ever undertaken—and is part of the genetic code of our future leadership.”
– Jack Welch, CEO, General Electric
– Jack Welch, CEO, General Electric
Six Sigma’s Approach to Problem-solving
Six Sigma is best described as a journey—for business professionals who are truly committed to improving productivity and profitability. Six Sigma isn’t theoretical; it’s an active, hands-on practice that gets results. One doesn’t contemplate Six Sigma; one does it. Doing it has proven to be the fast track to vastly improving the bottom line for major corporations such as American Express, General Electric, Motorola and a multitude of others in all industries.
Because of its success in the business world, I cannot help but think it could be successfully transferred into MBA education, as well, by incorporating similar evaluation measures within the classroom or modeling lifelong learning (six sigma beliefs and methodologies). The thought here is, if the process of educating business professionals emulated the best businesses in the world, it seems those same professionals would be more prepared to join that world after their graduate education.
The Six Sigma story began at Motorola in the 1980s. Reliability engineer Bill Smith concluded if a product was defective, found and corrected during production, then it is very likely that other defects were probably being missed and would later be found by customers. His point was that if products were assembled completely free of defects, they probably would not fail customers later.
Mikel Harry, PhD, founder of Motorola Six Sigma Research Institute, further refined the methodology, to not only eliminate process waste, but to also turn it into “growth currency”—regardless of the specific type of service, product or market sector. Six Sigma statistically measures and reflects true process capability; its value is in transforming cultural outlooks and norms from complacency to accomplishment across the spectrum of industry, to include, in my mind, the business of graduate-level business education (Brue, 2002).
Six Sigma Methodology Essentials—Cover Your Assets
The first thing to know about Six Sigma is that it relies on good, old-fashioned hard work—coupled with factual data and a disciplined problem-solving approach. There is no magic bullet or quick external fix. It affects every aspect and level of an organization from line workers—middle management to the CEO—to transform people and processes within an organization.
The Six Sigma mind-set considers “your people” as assets not cost liabilities. Work gets done through processes executed by people; success, failure and processes problems are usually the result of what lots of people do, not just one person. Managers often tend to focus just on people in their organization, looking for someone to congratulate or to blame when something goes wrong. Once an organization thinks in terms of “human assets,” it is equally important to realize the monetary value of rooting-out wasted materials and steps in processes, as it is a key factor to unlocking hidden returns on your people investment (Brue, 2002).
This “people investment” notion resonates deeply with graduate education. Truly, educators are investing in their students. The problem comes when that investment is based on out-dated and inappropriate information. Just as a viable business entity would only be governed by real-time information that would profit it considerably, business educators would benefit greatly with information gained by recent business experience or applicable lifelong learning practices.
Likewise, their investment in their people/student assets would be more valuable to their institution if visible gains resulted from evaluating and re-evaluating their educational processes—just as a business organization yields gains by consistently and continuously re-evaluates its manufacturing, management and marketplace processes.
The Six Sigma methodology uses statistical tools to identify the “vital few factors”, or the factors that directly explain the cause-effect relationship of the inputs that drive the process and the process output being measured. Typically, there are 6 or fewer factors (even where hundreds of steps can generate a defect) within a process; thus, slight adjustments will improve the quality of the process and generate bottom-line results. By changing the way one looks at processes and by understanding the vital few factors that cause waste, error, and rework, one can improve the ability of processes to deliver higher quality to customers and achieve lower costs associated with delivery.
Once the vital factors are known, improvements that deliver dramatic results can follow. By putting one’s people to work solving process problems with proven statistical tools, one eliminates errors, but also the rumor mill of inaccurate speculation by individuals as to why processes don’t work. Instead of opinion, one’s people and organization is armed with quantifiable information—based in facts, not on hunches or guesswork. When armed with facts, a manager is in a position to fix the problem permanently and gain long-term benefits throughout the organization.
The Six Sigma methodology is not rigid. Applications and approaches vary between companies and/or industries, in some cases are significantly different between players within the same industry. Six Sigma professionals recognize that the methodology is a “roadmap to improvement.” Indeed, it doesn’t even matter what the model is called; the point is that this set of tools help managers and employees understand and improve critical organizational processes. Six Sigma consists of four or five phases based on a few key concepts, as noted in Figure 5 below.
The application of this model to MBA education seems evident. If educators defined, measured, analyzed, improved, and controlled their instruction and institutional goals, more of their students would learn and retain information vital to their future success. Indeed—the benefits of this model to graduate education comes in at least two forms: 1) graduate students can learn the model their instructors are employing as well as 2) benefit from its successful integration first-hand as graduate business education improves.
Six Sigma has been employed in countless circumstances and has been proven to effectively direct an organization’s assets and processes to lead to greater success and decreased costs. Though this model has been employed mainly in business organizations and corporations, it could easily transfer to graduate business education.
Six Sigma is best described as a journey—for business professionals who are truly committed to improving productivity and profitability. Six Sigma isn’t theoretical; it’s an active, hands-on practice that gets results. One doesn’t contemplate Six Sigma; one does it. Doing it has proven to be the fast track to vastly improving the bottom line for major corporations such as American Express, General Electric, Motorola and a multitude of others in all industries.
Because of its success in the business world, I cannot help but think it could be successfully transferred into MBA education, as well, by incorporating similar evaluation measures within the classroom or modeling lifelong learning (six sigma beliefs and methodologies). The thought here is, if the process of educating business professionals emulated the best businesses in the world, it seems those same professionals would be more prepared to join that world after their graduate education.
The Six Sigma story began at Motorola in the 1980s. Reliability engineer Bill Smith concluded if a product was defective, found and corrected during production, then it is very likely that other defects were probably being missed and would later be found by customers. His point was that if products were assembled completely free of defects, they probably would not fail customers later.
Mikel Harry, PhD, founder of Motorola Six Sigma Research Institute, further refined the methodology, to not only eliminate process waste, but to also turn it into “growth currency”—regardless of the specific type of service, product or market sector. Six Sigma statistically measures and reflects true process capability; its value is in transforming cultural outlooks and norms from complacency to accomplishment across the spectrum of industry, to include, in my mind, the business of graduate-level business education (Brue, 2002).
Six Sigma Methodology Essentials—Cover Your Assets
The first thing to know about Six Sigma is that it relies on good, old-fashioned hard work—coupled with factual data and a disciplined problem-solving approach. There is no magic bullet or quick external fix. It affects every aspect and level of an organization from line workers—middle management to the CEO—to transform people and processes within an organization.
The Six Sigma mind-set considers “your people” as assets not cost liabilities. Work gets done through processes executed by people; success, failure and processes problems are usually the result of what lots of people do, not just one person. Managers often tend to focus just on people in their organization, looking for someone to congratulate or to blame when something goes wrong. Once an organization thinks in terms of “human assets,” it is equally important to realize the monetary value of rooting-out wasted materials and steps in processes, as it is a key factor to unlocking hidden returns on your people investment (Brue, 2002).
This “people investment” notion resonates deeply with graduate education. Truly, educators are investing in their students. The problem comes when that investment is based on out-dated and inappropriate information. Just as a viable business entity would only be governed by real-time information that would profit it considerably, business educators would benefit greatly with information gained by recent business experience or applicable lifelong learning practices.
Likewise, their investment in their people/student assets would be more valuable to their institution if visible gains resulted from evaluating and re-evaluating their educational processes—just as a business organization yields gains by consistently and continuously re-evaluates its manufacturing, management and marketplace processes.
The Six Sigma methodology uses statistical tools to identify the “vital few factors”, or the factors that directly explain the cause-effect relationship of the inputs that drive the process and the process output being measured. Typically, there are 6 or fewer factors (even where hundreds of steps can generate a defect) within a process; thus, slight adjustments will improve the quality of the process and generate bottom-line results. By changing the way one looks at processes and by understanding the vital few factors that cause waste, error, and rework, one can improve the ability of processes to deliver higher quality to customers and achieve lower costs associated with delivery.
Once the vital factors are known, improvements that deliver dramatic results can follow. By putting one’s people to work solving process problems with proven statistical tools, one eliminates errors, but also the rumor mill of inaccurate speculation by individuals as to why processes don’t work. Instead of opinion, one’s people and organization is armed with quantifiable information—based in facts, not on hunches or guesswork. When armed with facts, a manager is in a position to fix the problem permanently and gain long-term benefits throughout the organization.
The Six Sigma methodology is not rigid. Applications and approaches vary between companies and/or industries, in some cases are significantly different between players within the same industry. Six Sigma professionals recognize that the methodology is a “roadmap to improvement.” Indeed, it doesn’t even matter what the model is called; the point is that this set of tools help managers and employees understand and improve critical organizational processes. Six Sigma consists of four or five phases based on a few key concepts, as noted in Figure 5 below.
Figure 5. Six Sigma Phases & Key Concepts
(Adapted from Brue, 2002)
(Adapted from Brue, 2002)
The application of this model to MBA education seems evident. If educators defined, measured, analyzed, improved, and controlled their instruction and institutional goals, more of their students would learn and retain information vital to their future success. Indeed—the benefits of this model to graduate education comes in at least two forms: 1) graduate students can learn the model their instructors are employing as well as 2) benefit from its successful integration first-hand as graduate business education improves.
Six Sigma has been employed in countless circumstances and has been proven to effectively direct an organization’s assets and processes to lead to greater success and decreased costs. Though this model has been employed mainly in business organizations and corporations, it could easily transfer to graduate business education.
