By Craig Calvin

If you are looking to improve the quality of the products your business produces, no matter what the products may be, then Six Sigma can help. Six Sigma is a set of processes and tools that you can use within your business to help eliminate defects within your processes, and improve quality, which should help increase your profits. But in order to properly implement Six Sigma within your business you need to have extensive training so you understand how to properly implement the process and use the tools. If you think Six Sigma could be beneficial to your business, here is a quick overview to provide a better understanding.

It is very important, if you are going to bring Six Sigma into your business, that the owners of the business, or at least the upper management of your business are behind this decision. Six Sigma will require formal training for individuals who will be on the project but do not have the necessary certification. It is also recommended that you either bring in consultants with extensive Six Sigma experience, or hire an experienced Six Sigma project manager, who can guide you through the process until the employees in your business become more experienced themselves.

The next step in successful Six Sigma Projects is to involve the employees. Not only will they be more receptive to the changes if they're involved, but they won't feel like they are being overtaken by outsiders or discounted because their opinions don't matter.

When you are ready to begin your Six Sigma effort, the first thing you need to do is start obtaining data about the process that you are looking to improve. For example you should now how many defects are created as a result of your existing process, which defects occur most often, if there are customer complaints about the product, anything you can use to help you determine where the defects are originating from. After all of the data is collected it must be converted to a numeric format and analyzed. The analysis of the data is where the Six Sigma tools come into play, many involving advanced statistical analysis to help you see the actual trends in the data you have collected. It is only after you analyze the data that you can no for sure where the real problems are, and begin to consider solutions.

The final two steps go hand-in-hand. Improvements will be made after analysis is complete, and then those improvements need to be controlled after the project has been completed in order to keep things running smoothly. Random events can occur, and things can happen that can require much more attention than usual after a Six Sigma Process is completed, causing problems if the team or process owner isn't prepared. As you can see, Six Sigma is more than just a fancy buzzword that catches a lot of attention. It is a very detailed process of improving processes and products within an organization that requires a lot of special training and business skill.

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