OVERVIEW

The original roots of Six Sigma (6 ?) can be traced back to Carl Frederick Gauss (1777 1885), who introduced the concept of the normal curve. Six Sigma as a measurement standard in product variation was used in the 1920s when Walter Shewhart showed that three sigma from the mean is the point where a process requires correction. The real credit for 6 ? as we know it today goes to Motorola in the late 1970s and specifically an engineer named Bill Smith. Motorola developed the 6 ? methodology and documented over $16 billion in savings. More recently, hundreds of organizations around the globe are pursuing 6 ? as a critical component of their business strategy. More recent pioneers such as Mikel Harry, Rich Schroeder, Bill Ross, Gary Cone, Steve Zinkgraf, John Lupienski, and several others deserve honorable mention for further development and implementation of the 6 ? methodology in places like GE, Allied Signal, Whirlpool, and other highly publicized successes.

Six Sigma is rapidly becoming the new metaphor shift in today's industrial society and the new world standard for customer satisfaction and profitability improvement. Almost every organization is either implementing, contemplating, or busy learning more about 6 ?. Notwithstanding its 20-plus-year history beginning at Motorola and the usual hype of any new management concept promising organizations huge bottom-line benefits, 6 ? is paying off big time. Benchmarking information obtained from industry sources such as the American Society for Quality, iSixSigma.com, consultants, and...