Six Sigmas Concept - Research Paper Example

27). The paper argues that Six Sigma is all these but not limited to the above-mentioned elements. Concisely put, Six Sigma is a business process that allows the companies to design their operations in such a way that helps in improving their bottom line profitability by decreasing the waste, increasing the quality. Six Sigma is the business philosophy that urges companies to create mechanisms, which to do fewer mistakes in everything that they do, from writing a checkbook to designing a aircraft, from sweeping the floor to refining petroleum (Carreira & Trudell, pp. 98-99). Despite the fact that Six Sigma could be placed in the life of quality management programs but it also has some striking differences from other quality management programs.

First, when other quality programs focus on finding, detecting and understanding the defects to fix them in the early stages of production, Six Sigma urges specifically to create mechanism, systems, and operations, which are defect free (Pande & Holpp, pp. 14-15). Six Sigma believes that products which show defects during production are more likely to do the same when used by the customers; therefore, the focus should be recreating these processes in such a way that defects do not arise in the first place.

Second, the way Six Sigma defines quality is much different from other quality programs. During the 1980s, when the prevalent definition of quality was about conformance to certain standards regardless of how these standards were being met. Under the umbrella of Six Sigma, quality is defined as “a state in which value entitlement is realized for the customer and provider in every aspect of the business relationship” (Summers, pp. 27). In the past, when companies focused solely to conform to standards and produce products according to customer requirements they always found themselves trapped.

This was because the companies had little or no focus on the process itself. The company producing the product after finding several defects in it during production, and the company producing it defect free in the first attempt, both were standing in the same line because both had the same “quality” (Carreira & Trudell, pp. 98-99). Despite working hard on those products, profit margins of these companies remain stagnant or they even kept shrinking. They could not increase the price because of the competition but their costs were sky rocketing because of extensive reworking, reprocessing, warranties, inspection, lost sales, buffer inventory, return and allowances, testing costs, overtime, complaint handlings and others (Zinkgraf, pp. 38). Furthermore, Six Sigma is also a business strategy and management philosophy, which cannot be implemented in the absence of support from the top management and the front line employees.

Unlike other quality programs, implementation of Six Sigma requires motivation and support from all employees of the day. It is about asking tough questions about the everyday operations in order to improve them (Carreira & Trudell, pp. 98-99). It is about asking tough questions and leaving comfort zone in order to become more effective in achieving the results. Moreover, Six Sigma believes