With the onset of the First Industrial Revolution, society underwent a radical transformation, shifting from a rural economy based on agriculture and trade to one centered on industrialized cities.
This transformation has continued over time, passing through various phases, including a period of excess demand in the 19th century and the current situation in which we find ourselves, where excess supply prevails.
In this context, companies have had to adapt to these changes in order to remain competitive, by increasing the efficiency of their services, improving their quality, and reducing costs.
To achieve this, companies have innovated by creating new work methodologies that enable them to improve their processes, such as Lean Manufacturing, Agile Methodologies, and—the focus of our discussion today—Six Sigma.
Key Elements of the Six Sigma Methodology
The Six Sigma methodology, developed by Motorola, became widely adopted in the 1990s as a tool for improving business processes.
Using an aggressive approach, the goal was to achieve a quality rate of 3.4 defects per million opportunities (DPMO), defining a defect as any occurrence in which a service or product failed to meet customer requirements.
To this end, this methodology is based on a customer- and business-oriented approach, the measurement, improvement, and control of process variability, and the definition of the actions to be taken at each step of the improvement process.
Phases of the Six Sigma Methodology
As explained above, Six Sigma aims to improve inefficient processes within a company in a simple and effective way. This is achieved through five well-defined stages:
- Define
First, you must identify the problem to be solved and select the most appropriate team to apply the methodology. You must also define the expected benefit and the resources available for its implementation.
- Measure
This phase focuses on identifying the key characteristics of the product or service that affect the customer and the customer's requirements, in order to subsequently measure the process's performance accurately and establish the appropriate sigma level.
- Analyze
Once the measurements have been taken, the team in charge must evaluate the data obtained, identify the key factors causing the instability, and develop an analytical cause-and-effect relationship.
- Improve
During the improvement phase, a predictive model is established that minimizes investments and maximizes results, while also optimizing the operation of the process under study by eliminating the root causes of the problem.
- Control
Finally, it is necessary to design and document the systems that will be put in place to sustain the results achieved following the implementation of the methodology.
