The improvement process adventure starts when your manager walks in and says "we need to - fix the product, increase the yield of, and reduce the cost of. The time table for achieving the assignment is usually now or sooner. If you're lucky you have until the staff meeting on Friday.
In considering how to improve quality of your product or process the quality improvement lexicon offers us many choices. We have Zero Defects, Quality Circles, TQM, Lean, Constraint Theory and the most recent Six Sigma. Each offers to improve quality, reduce cost and cost little to accomplish the result.
Six Sigma has proven its worth and has been championed by such notables as Jack Welch of GE and has been given credit for GE' success.
The Six Sigma process can be intimidating. With its black belts, green belts, KPOV, Cpk, FMEA, DPMO, and DMAIC etc. But if you look under the hood you see that the tools and methods used are those we have known for years. Six Sigma is not so much a new tool set, as a work plan to use the tools available to us, in an orderly fashion resulting fact based decisions.