Chapter 3

Image

Six Sigma Overview

Six Sigma has come a long way since it was invented in the 1980s at Motorola. In today’s world, Six Sigma is a holistic approach to business improvement and includes philosophy, multiple performance measurements, multiple improvement frameworks, and a toolkit, all of which are intended to complement and enhance existing engineering, service, and manufacturing processes. Because of its many dimensions, Six Sigma can serve as both an enterprise governance model and a tactical improvement engine.

When first invented at Motorola, Six Sigma focused on product defects and a shift from the control-chart-oriented three-sigma ...

Get CMMI® and Six Sigma: Partners in Process Improvement now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.