What is Six Sigma?

The identification of the term, Six Sigma, with certain process and quality improvement methodologies, originated at Motorola Coporation in the 1980's. Six Sigma represents a concept that has gained widespread acceptance in a variety of organizations as a means of facilitating continuous improvement. This impressive achievement led American companies, such as General Electric Corporation to embrace and in some cases, enhance Motorola's methods. Six Sigma today is recognized as the "best practice" throughout the business world.

Technically speaking, "sigma" is a common statistical term that measures the spread of variation of outcomes around the average outcome of any process. At the six sigma level of performance, 3.4 defects occur for every 1 million opportunities. Such performance is often referred to as "world-class."

Today, Lean Six Sigma can be defined in a variety of ways. In a broad context it can essentially be described as a proactive management philosophy that utilizes various problem solving and process improvement methods to facilitate improved performanceby identifying and eliminating variation and "non-value added" activity or waste in organizational functions. Foremost among the expected net results of Six Sigma activity are both reduced costs and increased customer satisfaction.

In a more focused context, Six Sigma can be described as a rigorous applicaiton of an extensive set of skills and methods, both statistical and non-statistical, utilized to reduce the amount of output variation in any given process. Less variation results in more consistent and predictable results along with other benefits.

	Performance Excellence
	Logistics
	Health Care
	Lean Six Sigma — Health Care
	Lean Six Sigma - Logistics
	Lean Six Sigma — Constraints Management
	Lean Six Sigma - Champion Training

	Six Sigma Green Belt
	Lean Six Sigma Green Belt

	Six Sigma Black Belt Coming in 2007!

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