What is Six Sigma?

- What exactly is Six Sigma? Six Sigma is a project-based approach for improving effectiveness and efficiency. It is a disciplined, customer-focused, data-driven approach for improving the performance of processes, products, or services. Now, the term Six Sigma can be used to refer to a philosophy, a performance metric, or a methodology. As a philosophy, Six Sigma strives for perfection in achieving effectiveness and efficiency in meeting customer and business requirements. Six Sigma is proactive and prevention based, instead of reactive and detection based. As a performance metric Six Sigma refers to a level of quality that is near perfection. It strives for a defect level that is no more than 3.4 parts per million. Sigma is a letter in the Greek alphabet used to represent standard deviation, a measure of variation. A Six Sigma process is very consistent, with very little variation, and therefore, has a very small…