Week #8
Prepare a 400 word report describing “Six Sigma” and how it is either used or could be used in your organization

Six Sigma
On page 34 of our test book, the author states that the new Six Sigma is called “Lean Six Sigma”, which focuses on the issues such as critical customer opportunities, significant training of employees and “Black Belt” improvement specialists, a value-driven project selection process, and an increased customer focus with a clear linkage to business strategy and objectives. Six Sigma is a good approach which could help firms gets improvement by finding and eliminating the causes of errors or defects in manufacturing or service process, and it helps firms calculate out a clear financial return by focusing on the outputs. Hahn (2007) states that “Six Sigma is a disciplined and highly quantitative approach to improving product or process quality.” In the last decade, Six Sigma has been accepted by many major firms such as Xerox, and General Electric. The successes of Xerox and General Electric illustrate that Six Sigma is good for the quality improvement of one organization. In the early 1980s, Xerox encounters a big challenge from its Japanese competitors. Its market share fell to less than 50 percent because of its Japanese competitors. In this condition, rework, losing business, and scrap are the problems that Xerox need to face. However, even if in this predicament, by following “Lean Six Sigma” and David T.Kearns’s lead, the operation situation and quality of Xerox improved. Several years later, Xerox gets the market share back from its Japanese competitors. In Xerox’s success, Lean Six Sigma played an important role. On the other side, the success of General Electric is another example to support that Six Sigma is useful in quality improvement. By the end of 1995, General Electric began to use Six Sigma. And by 1999, it received $1.5 billion savings with only $200 million costs. It indicates