What is the History of Six Sigma
While the roots and history of Six Sigma are commonly attributed to companies such as Toyota and Motorola, the
methodology is actually grounded in concepts that date as far back as the 19th century.
The roots of statistical process control, which provide a backbone for Six Sigma methods, began with the development of the normal curve by Carl Friedrich Gauss in the 19th century. This has been the most widely used distribution across Statistics
The next big Step came from Walter Shewhart, Who contributed significantly to the statistics but the most widely adopted tool was the control chart. This earned him the name of “Father of Control Chart”. He defined a process in need of correction as one that is performing at three sigma. At a time when scholars were writing about the theoretical application of statistics in a growing number of fields, Shewhart developed ways to apply these concepts to manufacturing and industrial processes specifically.
W. Edwards Deming came up with the PDCA Cycle. he was working for U.S. Department of Agriculture. The fact that PDCA is a cycle means it never ends; there are always improvements to be made. This is a core tenet of Six Sigma.
Following World War II, Deming worked in Japan on behalf of the United States government in several capacities. In the end, Deming became a valued teacher and consultant to manufacturing companies in Japan, planting the ideas and concepts that would soon become the Toyota Production System, or Lean Six Sigma.Six Sigma. Deming is known as the “American Who taught Quality to Japan”
The next big thing was the Toyota Production system which is a great push on speed of delivery. The focus was mainly on speed and many people worked together to build the Toyota Production System. Kiichiro Toyoda introduced the same concepts on certain lines in the Toyota manufacturing process. Later, Eiji Toyoda and Taiichi Ohno introduced concepts known as Just-in-Time and jidoka, which are the pillars of the Toyota Production System.
The Six Sigma Methodology has its origin from Motorola, has an interesting history. Sigma is Greek for the letter ‘S’, and the term ‘sigma’ has been used for many years by statisticians, mathematicians and engineers, as a measurement unit of statistical variation till it was integrated into the quality System and business strategy by Motorola in 1987.
The seeds of this concept go back to 1970 when the Japanese management took over a TV manufacturing division of Motorola. The Japanese concentrated on the quality of the output and actually reduced the defects to 5% of defects when the same unit was managed by Motorola. This result made the Motorola Management to take serious note of Quality.
The actual push came in Motorola only after 1981, When Bob Gavin became the CEO of Motorola. He targeted a 10 fold increase in performance within a 5 year period.
The Motorola Engineers Bill Smith or Mikal Harry – felt that measuring defects in terms of thousands was Not Sufficient for achieving a rigorous standard. They increased the measurement scale to parts per million, described as ‘defects per million’, which prompted the use the the ‘six sigma’ terminology and adoption of the capitalized ‘Six Sigma’ branded name, given that six sigma was deemed to equate to 3.4 parts – or defects – per million opportunities. Bill Smith is widely know as “the Father of Six Sigma”
This has caught the eye of Gavin and launched the program Called “The Six Sigma Quality Program” on 15th Jan 1987. Stringent Targets were set to achieve Six Sigma Capability in 5 years. Astronomical Targets like 10 fold increase by 1989, and 100 fold increase by 1991 and Six sigma capability by 1992. A deep Sense of urgency was shown and every part of the organization was made to obsess with Six Sigma.
Soon after the success of Motorola, Allied Signal ( Now a part of Honeywell) plunged into this concept and achieved success.
The biggest push to Six-Sigma was given by Jack Welch the CEO of General Electric (GE) in 1995. He believed the possible improvement that can be achieved by this change and imbibed into the culture of the company. There were rewards, targets and training which were incorporated. By 1998, GE Reported a savings of more than three quarters of billion in profits.
By the year 2000, Six Sigma was effectively established as an industry in its own right, involving the training, consultancy and implementation of Six Sigma methodology in all sorts of organizations around the world.
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