Introduction

The focus of this chapter is measurement. We ll spend most of the time reviewing the nuts and bolts of understanding and carrying out good measures, but the underlying objective is for you to acquire good data that you can use to plan and track your Six Sigma improvement effort. Unfortunately, you can t do that unless you have some solid measures to start with.

Depending on your purpose, measures can be easy, or a major effort. For example, gathering data on specific problems can be fairly quick: If the data already is available, the gathering may take as little as a few hours. On the other hand, getting enough data to use to comparatively measure core business processes can take weeks or even months of effort. Other than training, measurement is probably the biggest investment any organization makes in its Six Sigma initiative. The long-term development of a measurement infrastructure however, is a key building block for a full organizational Six Sigma system. The huge benefit is an ability to monitor and respond to change in a way that few organizations can lay claim to today.