Six Sigma

Developed from the original lean statistical methods in the 1990’s in the US and initially implemented by Jack Welsh, former CEO of General Electric, Six Sigma was supported by other pioneering US companies such as Motorola, Honeywell, and Caterpillar, before becoming regularly used as a powerful business performance improvement tool, across all business sectors.

Our Focus

Greenview focusses their Six Sigma activity on projected improvement, usually financial, by embracing the Define-Measure-Analyse-Improve-Control (DMAIC), or Define-Measure-Explore-Develop-Implement (DMEDI for design or project management purposes, often known as Design for Six Sigma – DFSS) structured methodologies, complemented with training of the specialist yellow, green and black belts.

Stakeholder Management is one of the first crucial steps, with all aspects being ‘on the table’ which are only eliminated by thorough measurement, analysis, and test. Problem solving tools, such as ‘the seven Quality Tools’, mapping value and identifying waste, design-of-experiment, and other lean tools are selected by the ‘Black Belt’ in a similarly appropriate manner to how to a Doctor optimises selected treatment unique to each patient.

The term describes the acceptable minimal variation of any process, which, if capable statistically to ‘Six Sigma’, suggests only 3.4 defects per million. Six Sigma provides a very structured, sequenced methodology delivered by a team of specially-trained and proven experts, and is applied to specific tasks or problems in the business.

Six Sigma and Lean

Six Sigma is often now linked to Lean, as ‘Lean Six Sigma’, whereby the quite specific scope of Six Sigma mostly as a problem and project management technique, is broadened across the business through the cultural and further business improvement methods of lean-thinking.