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Next-Generation Six Sigma
- 7/1/03
When Smith applied this mathematical concept to manufacturing and engineering at Motorola, it captured Bob Galvin’s passion for quality and business excellence. Six Sigma became the method for ensuring that products would meet the increasingly demanding expectations of customers. In 1988, Motorola became the first company to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. In 1990, Motorola—together with companies like IBM, Texas Instruments and Xerox—created the Black Belt concept for experts who apply statistical methods to business problems. Allied Signal and GE successfully applied and popularized Motorola’s Six Sigma methods in a manner that gained international attention. In 2002, Motorola become one of the few organizations in history to win the Baldrige award for the second time.
Six Sigma was originally designed to address continuous quality improvement, but today it is significantly different than the Total Quality Management (TQM) approach of the 1980s:
| Six Sigma | TQM |
|
Executive ownership |
Self-directed work teams |
|
Business strategy execution system |
Quality initiative |
|
Truly cross-functional |
Largely within a single function |
|
Focused training with verifiable ROI |
Mass training in statistics and quality, no ROI |
|
Business-results-oriented |
Quality-oriented |
At Motorola today, the application of Six Sigma goes well beyond counting defects in a process or product. The new Six Sigma provides an overall high-performance business system for the execution of business strategy. Six Sigma methodology has become a powerful business process improvement tool to help executives align the right objectives and targets, mobilize improvement teams, accelerate results and govern sustained improvements. The following are four key insights gained from Motorola’s 17-year experience with Six Sigma.
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