I’ve cited the big companies that I would be interviewing for my Six Sigma project. Some of you may have wondered, and one of them is my colleague Mr. Reden Rodriguez, if smaller companies would benefit from Six Sigma or could even afford it.
Yes to both questions. Six Sigma can help any company to grow, especially if Management is committed to support the initiative 100 percent.
Most functions in business can be seen as processes. Six Sigma comes in as the methodology to understand, analyze, and improve processes via projects. The projects take on one process at a time with the goal of improving the results of the process. The approach includes understanding a problem, collecting and analyzing data, identifying the root cause, implementing the corrective action/solution, and making sure the process sustains the improvements. More importantly, decisions are based on facts and data, not gut feelings or how it is done somewhere else. Ultimately, the whole organization improves customer satisfaction, product and service quality and on-time delivery, and saves on product or service development cost.
Despite these promised benefits, most organizations hesitate to take on the Six Sigma challenge not because they fear they may not afford it but because they do not know how to get it started. Initially, what a company needs is the decision to go for Six Sigma. Once the commitment is there, everything will follow.
Read more: What Small Business CEOs Must Know to Start Six Sigma
