Chapter 2

Linking Quality and Business

In This Chapter

arrow Defining the voice of the customer through specifications

arrow Understanding the basis of true quality

arrow Recognizing that the quality of a system’s individual pieces aggregates to form the whole

arrow Introducing the sigma scale of quality

You make judgments on what is and what isn’t good quality all the time. For example, you recognize when you eat a lousy sandwich or when your cellphone provider has bad service. But in the world of Six Sigma, quality is a deeper topic. To understand quality in Six Sigma terms, you need a transformational definition of what quality actually is; you can then use that definition to guide and gauge your work activities. In the end, how closely you adopt this definition of quality largely determines the viability of your improvement efforts.

In this chapter, we cover quality: how customers drive it and ask for it, what it looks like, and how to rate it. The discussions here give you a good grasp on why quality matters so much and prepare you to strive for the best.

Specifications: Listening to the Voice of the ...

Get Six Sigma For Dummies, 2nd Edition 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.