Why You Need This Book

Motorola developed Six Sigma around 1987 and other companies, large and small, embraced the theory in the 1990's.

Although the theory is simple, many who implement Six Sigma often struggle with the details of overall deployment. Your company is not GE or AlliedSignal; therefore, you cannot simply adopt their Six Sigma deployment models. But it makes sense to take what has worked successfully in other organizations and adapt those approaches and methods and that is the focus of this book.

To use an initial public offering (IPO) analogy, when a small private company decides to go public, there are legal, financial, investor relations, and other issues to be addressed. If this book were on IPOs, it would not attempt to convince the reader to go public. Nor would it focus on the details of corporate law, public accounting rules, or the history of investor relations policy. Rather, it would provide a step-by-step strategy for going public, and give details on how to succeed. It would answer questions commonly asked by executives of the company going public, and point out pitfalls to avoid, based on a careful study of successful—and unsuccessful—IPOs.

We focus on overall deployment strategy and step-by-step guidance for two reasons:

• First, our research indicates there is a lack of literature on these critical topics. Being sold on Six Sigma is of little value if it cannot be successfully implemented.
  
  
• Our second reason is that this focus coincides with our collective experience. Neither of us invented Six Sigma, but each has over seven years experience deploying it in large and small companies, manufacturing and research and development (R&D), and non-manufacturing organizations such as financial services.
  
  

As you will see in Chapter 2, implementing Six Sigma is no guarantee of success. The focus in the press has been on the successes, but there have certainly been failures. In Chapters 2 and 3 you will see specific reasons why some companies succeeded and others didn't. This book will highlight these factors, and integrate them into an overall strategy for deploying Six Sigma within an organization. The focus of Chapter 4 is on launching the initiative, probably the most important phase of Six Sigma. If Six Sigma is poorly launched, it will be difficult to reorganize and regain momentum.

Chapter 5 changes from the launch stage to the manage stage, keying in on putting systems into place. After Six Sigma has been implemented, however, there is often a loss of momentum as other priorities take center stage. Chapter 6 introduces ways to sustain momentum and growth. Like a good coach, it focuses on the defensive effort needed to hold the line and the offensive effort needed to score more points.

Bringing Six Sigma to the level of day-to-day work is the focus of Chapter 7. Chapter 8 covers final thoughts for leaders: understanding Six Sigma tools, ensuring success for the project and the overall initiative. Answers to frequently asked questions and references will help clear the air further. An example of a deployment plan is shown in the appendix.

Using this book as a guide, you can get your Six Sigma deployment process off to a solid start and help assure its continuing success. A body of knowledge of how to properly deploy Six Sigma is now available, as well as the pitfalls to avoid. You can speed up the deployment and success of Six Sigma if you utilize what those who have gone before you have learned; as such you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Each element of Six Sigma is relatively simple. However, putting it all together is the hard part. This book not only provides a roadmap for deploying Six Sigma, but also the key elements of successful deployment and a “way to maintain the gains,” putting it all together in a single document. By reading this book you will:

• Learn what works and what doesn't

• Learn effective deployment strategies

• Become fluent in the language of Six Sigma

Of course, a roadmap is not a cookbook—each organization will still need to customize its approach based on its own unique situation.