Six Sigma Pricing: Improving Pricing Operations to Increase Profits

12Improve and Control Phases

We improve ourselves by victories over ourself.—Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)

12.1 Introduction

During the Analyze phase, it should be clear to the project team which solutions it can recommend to control variation in the output of the process in question or otherwise improve its effectiveness. However, we need a formal process of listing and prioritizing solutions before presenting to the Steering Committee. This is the purpose of the Improve phase.

For a typical Six Sigma project, the project team identifies possible improvements and prioritizes these for presentation to the Steering Committee. The Improve phase is followed by the Control phase during which the team designs controls to ensure improvements are implemented ...