Put another way, only 3.4 defects would be allowed per million opportunities. They determined that to achieve Six Sigma, 99.99966% of what they did had to be without defects. Most agree that the term “Six Sigma” was coined in the early 1980s by one or more engineers at Motorola who wanted to measure and improve the company’s operational performance by identifying and eliminating defects in the manufacturing process. I soon learned that Six Sigma has been around for a while some say the ideas upon which the system is based date back to the 18th century. Everywhere I turned, there seemed to be discussions about the success of this quality-management system. So it was in this frame of mind that I pondered all that I was hearing about Six Sigma. I took what was useful from each system and ignored the rest. As you can imagine, by the third time this happened, I simply wondered how long the latest management “flavor of the month” would last. However, in most cases, within 2 years, the top executive would be out the door-along with his way of doing business that was no longer all the rage. And as always, I would commit to adopting this latest philosophy.

Each new executive team at my former company had its own management system, complete with a cute name or clever acronym and a popular book on management that was currently flying off the shelves of bookstores everywhere. My previous job had left me somewhat jaded when it came to trendy management philosophies. When I first heard the term “Six Sigma” a week or so after joining CLP, my eyes rolled skyward and I silently wondered how long this newfangled idea would last.

Six sigma using success stories