Contents

1.0 1.1 2.0 2.1 3.0 3.1 4.0 5.0 5.1 5.2 6.0 6.1 Total Quality Management (TQM) .................................................................................................. 2 Principles of Total Quality Management (TQM) ........................................................................... 3 The Six Sigma of Motorola ................................................................................................................ 4 Levels of Six Sigma in Motorola .................................................................................................... 4 The Six Sigma of General Electric (GE) .............................................................................................. 6 General Electrics Concepts of Six Sigma ...................................................................................... 7 How Motorola differentiates between Six Sigma and TQM ............................................................. 8 Comparisons of Six Sigma Programmes at Motorola and General Electric (GE) ............................ 10 Similarities ................................................................................................................................... 10 Differences .................................................................................................................................. 10 Brief Overview of the Six Sigma Concepts for Motorola, General Electric and SkyMark ............... 11 How Motorola, General Electric and SkyMark Implement the Six Sigma................................... 11 Summary of Implementation of Six Sigma for Motorola, General Electric and SkyMark ... 14

6.1.1 7.0 8.0

What Six Sigma Means in Statistical Terms .................................................................................... 15 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................... 18

1.0

Total Quality Management (TQM)

The concept of Total Quality Management (TQM) originated in the 1950s and has steadily become more popular since the early 1980s. TQM is a management philosophy, a paradigm, a continuous improvement approach to doing business through a new management model. The TQM philosophy evolved from the continuous improvement philosophy with a focus on quality as the main dimension of business. Under TQM, emphasizing the quality of the product or service predominates. TQM expands beyond statistical process control to embrace a wider scope of management activities of how we manage people and organizations by focusing on the entire process, not just simple measurements. TQM is a comprehensive management system which: Focuses on meeting owners/customers needs by providing quality services at a cost that provides value to the owners/customers Is driven by the quest for continuous improvement in all operations Recognizes that everyone in the organization has owners/customers who are either internal or external Views an organization as an internal system with a common aim rather than as individual departments acting to maximize their own performances Focuses on the way tasks are accomplished rather than simply what tasks are accomplished Emphasizes teamwork and a high level of participation by all employees

TQM believes in: Owner/customer satisfaction is the measure of quality Everyone has owners/customers; everyone is an owner/customer Quality improvement must be continuous Analyzing the processes used to create products and services is key to quality improvement

Measurement, a skilled use of analytical tools, and employee involvement are critical sources of quality improvement ideas and innovations Sustained total quality management is not possible without active, visible, consistent, and enabling leadership by managers at all levels If we do not continuously improve the quality of products and services that we provide our owners/customers, someone else will

1.1 Principles of Total Quality Management (TQM) There are a number of principles that are embedded in TQM to improve quality.
To focus on work processes

Since the quality of products and services depends most of all on the processes by which they are designed and produced. It is not adequate to only provide clear direction about hoped-for-outcomes, rather the management must train and coach employees to assess, analyze, and improve work processes.
Analysis of variability

For uncontrolled variance in processes or outcomes is the primary cause of quality problems and must be analyzed and controlled by those who perform an organizations front-line work. Only when the root causes of variability have been identified are employees in a position to take appropriate steps to improve work processes. In addition, the central problem of management is to understand better the meaning of variation, and to extract the information contained in variation.
Management by fact

For the process of Total Quality Management calls for the use of systematically collected data at every point in a problem-solving cycle, beginning from determining high-priority problems, through analyzing their causes, to selecting and testing solutions. This qualityimprovement program is based on collecting data, using statistics, and testing solutions through experiment.

Learning and continuous improvement

For the long-term health of an enterprise depends on treating quality improvement as a lifetime quest. Opportunities to develop better methods for carrying out work always exist, and a commitment to continuous improvement measures that people will never stop learning about the work they do.

2.0

The Six Sigma of Motorola

In 1986, Bill Smith, a senior engineer and scientist within Motorolas Communications Division, introduced the concept of Six Sigma in response to the increasing complaints from the field sales force about warranty claims. It was a new method for standardizing the way defects are counted, with Six Sigma being near perfection. Smith crafted the original statistics and formulas that were the beginnings of Motorolas Six Sigma methodology. He took his ideas to CEO Bob Galvin, who was struck by Smiths passion and came to recognize the approach as key to addressing quality concerns. The Six Sigma became central to Motorolas strategy of delivering products that were fit for use by customers. In definition, Six Sigma means a measure of quality that strives for near perfection, a disciplined, data-driven approach and methodology for eliminating defects in any process, from manufacturing to transactional and from product to service. In addition, the statistical representation of Six Sigma describes quantitatively how a process is performing, and to achieve this, a process must not produce more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities, where a Six Sigma defect is defined as anything outside of customer specifications. A Six Sigma opportunity is then the total quantity of chances for a defect.

2.1

Levels of Six Sigma in Motorola

Motorola categorizes Six Sigma into three levels, which are metric, methodology and management system:
Six Sigma as a Metric The term "Sigma" is often used as a scale for levels of "goodness" or quality. Using this scale, "Six Sigma" equates to 3.4 defects per one million opportunities (DPMO). Therefore, Six Sigma started as

a defect reduction effort in manufacturing and was then applied to other business processes for the same purpose. Six Sigma as a Methodology As Six Sigma has evolved, there has been less emphasis on the literal definition of 3.4 DPMO, or counting defects in products and processes. The Six Sigma is a business improvement methodology that focuses an organization on:

Understanding and managing customer requirements Aligning key business processes to achieve those requirements Utilizing rigorous data analysis to minimize variation in those processes Driving rapid and sustainable improvement to business processes

At the heart of the methodology is the DMAIC model for process improvement. DMAIC is commonly used by Six Sigma project teams and is an acronym for: Defining opportunity Measuring performance Analysing opportunity Improving performance Controlling performance

Six Sigma Management System

Through experience, Motorola has learned that disciplined use of metrics and application of the methodology is still not enough to drive desired breakthrough improvements and results that are sustainable over time. For greatest impact, Motorola ensures that process metrics and structured methodology are applied to improvement opportunities that are directly linked to the organizational strategy. Nowadays, Motorola has learnt that Six Sigma goes far beyond counting defects in a process or product. The next generation Six Sigma is an overall high performance system that executes business strategy. Motorola developed these following four steps for implementing the new Six Sigma. 1) Align executives to the right business strategy for critical improvement efforts

2) Mobilize improvement teams to attack high impact projects 3) Accelerate improved business results 4) Govern efforts to ensure improvements are sustained The strategic Six Sigma principles and practices help Motorola to: formulate, integrate, and execute new and existing business strategies and missions deal with constantly changing and increasingly complex customer requirements accelerate innovation, globalization, and global integration efforts facilitate mergers and acquisitions ensure effective implementation of e-business ventures with their associated strategies and infrastructure drive revenue growth and systemic, sustainable culture change enhance and condense the corporate learning cycle, or the time it takes to translate market intelligence and competitive data into new business practices

3.0

The Six Sigma of General Electric (GE)

Electric wants to delight their customers and relentlessly look for new ways to exceed customers expectations. Thus, General Electric practices Sig Sigma as a highly disciplined process that helps them to focus on developing and delivering near-perfect products and services. The Sigma could be interpreted as a statistical term that measure how far a process deviates from its perfection. The true idea of Six Sigma is to measure how many defects in a process, then using systematic approach to eliminate them and get as close to zero defects as possible. As a Six Sigma Quality, a process must produce no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities. This means General Electric is aim to be nearly flawless in executing their key processes.

3.1

General Electrics Concepts of Six Sigma

Critical to Quality: Defect: Process Capability: Variation:

Attributes most important to the customer Failing to deliver what e customer wants What your process can deliver What the customer sees and feels Ensuring consistent, predictable processes to improve what the customer sees and feels Designing to meet customer needs and process capability
Table 1 Six Sigma Concepts of General Electric (GE)

Stable Operations:

Design for Six Sigma:

Furthermore, General Electric has defined the key element of quality, customer, process and employee. They have created these key elements in order to ease them to implement Six Sigma in their key element to hit the target. Starts with the customer, they take customers as the centre of GEs universe because GE thinks that the quality is defined by customers. Therefore they have to present the performance, reliability, competitive prices, on-time delivery, services, clear and correct transaction processing in a sense to delight their customer. Second is the process. The standard of quality is not from the view of GE but from the customers perspective. Hence, GE takes the view of quality from the outside-in, because they believe by understanding the transaction lifecycle from the customers needs and processes they could identify the area of improvement that does best for the customer. The third key element is the leadership commitment. People create results. All employees is essential to GEs quality approach. GE provides opportunities and incentives for employees to

focus their talents and energies on satisfying customers. Thus, all employees are trained in the strategy, statistical tools and techniques of Six Sigma quality. The training course includes: a) Quality Overview Seminars: basic Six Sigma awareness b) Team Training: basic tool introduction to equip employees to participate on Six Sigma teams c) Master Black Belt, Black Belt and Green Belt Training: in-depth quality training that includes high-level statistical tools, basic quality control tools, Change Acceleration Process and Flow technology tools d) Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) Training: prepares teams for the use of statistical tools to design it right the first time

4.0

How Motorola differentiates between Six Sigma and TQM

The comparison between the Six Sigma concept and Total Quality Management (TQM) for Motorola is shown in the table below: Six Sigma of Motorola 1. Executive ownership 2. Business strategy execution system 3. Truly cross-functional 1. 2. 3. Total Quality Management (TQM) Self-directed work teams Quality initiative Largely within a single function No mass training in statistics and quality Return on investment Quality oriented

4. Focused training with verifiable return on 4. investment 5. Business results oriented 5. 6.

Table 2 Comparison of Motorola's Six Sigma and Total Quality Management

While Six Sigma was originally created as a continuous quality improvement technique, today it is significantly different than the total quality management (TQM) approach of the 1980s (Barney, 2002). The table above shows how Motorola contrasts its Six Sigma approach with TQM. Motorolas Six Sigma is used as a process improvement program that focuses on continuous quality improvements for achieving world class performance by restricting the

number of possible defects to less than 3.4 defects per million. It is developed by Motorolas top management team to make their businesses as successful as possible, hence it is more business oriented than TQM which is created by quality personnel. It focuses in reducing operational costs by focusing on defect reduction, cycle time reduction and cost savings. On the other hand, TQM in the eye of Motorola is a broad set of philosophical guidelines which are not able to prove that the company has accomplished their quality goals. TQM is more quality oriented and focuses on achieving standard quality performance such as ISO 9000. TQM emphasizes minimum acceptance requirement and standards, rather than striving for ever increasing of performance. In Motorolas point of view, implementing TQM means only focusing on improving quality but at the same time ignored other critical business issues. Quality department will only develop targets and goals based on quality criteria and assume that what is good for quality is good for the company. Following quality departments target blindly will cause a company to dump overly huge amount of resources into improving product quality only. In contrast, Six Sigma discards the majority of the quality toolkit in TQM. It keeps a subset of tools and techniques and focuses training on clearly defined frameworks to achieve tangible business results. Moreover, Six Sigma integrates business goals of Motorola together with quality issue as a whole to improve the company. Six Sigma creates top-level oversight to assure that the interests of the entire organization are considered. In addition, Motorolas Six Sigma creates an infrastructure of change agents who are not employed in the quality department. For example, Black Belts do not make careers in Six Sigma, instead they focus on Six Sigma for two years, then continue their careers elsewhere. Six Sigma belts are not certified unless they can demonstrate that they have effectively used the approach to benefit customers, shareholders and employees. In contrast, Motorola sees TQM as a permanent career path which will create quality professionals lacking skills in other areas of the company. Motorola believes that functionally specialized organization with clear division of labour will not succeed to improved quality beyond a certain level.

5.0

Comparisons of Six Sigma Programmes at Motorola and General Electric (GE)

5.1

Similarities

There are some similarities of implementation of Six Sigma. The General Electric is implies the same thing as in quality to satisfy the customer, the consistency process to improve, and the reduction of defects. The main motive of Six Sigma is the same as Motorolas Six Sigma. The main difference is the in-depth of Six Sigma in the corporation. Motorola implies Six Sigma almost all of the operation of its organization.

5.2

Differences

Referring to Table 1, although General Electric implements Six Sigma into their organization operation with the six key concepts, its implementation was not as in-depth like Motorola. As we know, Motorola is the pioneer of the Six Sigma. Motorola introduced this concept in respond to the rising tide of complaints from field sales force about warranty claims which is a new method for standardizing the defects are counted. Unlike General Electric, Motorola not just implement Six Sigma into those key concepts but pushing the Six Sigma towards more detailed of implies. For instances, Motorola categorizes Six Sigma into three levels, which are metric, methodology and management system. Metric stands for scale for levels of quality. Methodology is the about the approach to improve the process to meet requirement of customer. Management System is the new Six Sigma approach to maintain the high performance of the system which leads to the development a set of strategies in the management system.

6.0

Brief Overview of the Six Sigma Concepts for Motorola, General Electric and SkyMark

Motorola

Motorola defines Six Sigma as a measure of quality that strives for near perfection, a disciplined, data-driven approach and methodology for eliminating defects in any process, from manufacturing to transactional and from product to service.
General Electric

General Electric defines Six Sigma as a highly discipline process that help them focus on developing and delivering near-perfect products and services.
SkyMark

SkyMark define Six Sigma Quality as a movement that inherits directly from TQM, or Total Quality Management. It uses much the same toolset and the same concepts.

6.1

How Motorola, General Electric and SkyMark Implement the Six Sigma
Generally, Motorola, General Electric and SkyMark possesses different industry field.

Hence, they have similar and different perception in terms of implementing the Six Sigma.
Motorola

Motorola categorizes Six Sigma into three stages, which are metric, methodology and management system. Motorola implement Six Sigma as a metric to reduce defect in manufacturing. It recommended the defects should be at 3.4 defects per one million opportunities (DPMO).As Six Sigma has developed, Motorola thinks that Six Sigma is a business improvement methodology that focuses an organization on: Understanding and managing customer requirements Aligning key business processes to achieve those requirements Utilizing meticulous data analysis to minimize discrepancy in those processes Driving rapid and sustainable improvement to business processes

In the last stage, Motorola make sure that process metrics and structured methodology are applied to improvement opportunities that are directly linked to the organizational strategy.
General Electric (GE)

General Electric Companys evolution towards quality began from focusing on product qualities in the 1980s to Six Sigma quality. GE believes the significance of Six Sigma in defining how they work and set a stage for making their customer feel Six Sigma.

Figure 1 GE's Evolution Towards Quality

GE applied the Six Sigma Strategy by firstly identify the key elements of quality. The key elements of quality are: 1. The Customer: GE thinks that customers are the center of GE's universe, delighting their customers is a necessity 2. The Process: GE thinks that outside-in thinking is important as understanding the transaction lifecycle from the customer's needs and processes; they can recognize areas where they can add improve their product.

3. The Employee: GE thinks that leadership commitment is essential as quality is the responsibility of every employee. Every employee must be involved, motivated and knowledgeable if need to be succeed. Hence, GE developed and implemented six key concept of Six Sigma based on the three key elements of quality as shown in Table 1. General Electric greatly believes that customers do not judge them on averages; they feel the variance in each transaction. Thus, Six Sigma is implemented to focus first to reducing processes variation and then on improving the process capability.
SkyMark

SkyMark is a leading software company that assist people help their organisations to perform better. SkyMark search for the best management tools and concepts, and encapsulate them in user-friendly software. SkyMarks software products are PathMaker, i pathmaker and THESEUS. SkyMark provides consultation by using the Six Sigma concept. SkyMark uses the companys most leading software (PathMaker) for problem-solvings and process improvements. It combines elements of statistical quality control (Six Sigma Quality), breakthrough thinking, and management science (all valuable, powerful disciplines). Hence, it has three main advantages which are: The software understands what the customer needs. Providing consultations for results: The company is expert in quality management, strategic planning, and software development. They do provide the opportunities to the consulting company and bring back new ideas that can then feed back into the software development cycle. Quality-based custom development: The company will improve the software development practices, to the point that can rapidly deliver high-quality products at low cost. Besides, the company also delivers custom solutions to the customer to deal with their problems.

With the help of latest software technology, SkyMark is confident that ones company process cycle time could be reduces by 25%-50%. It is a good tool to assist manager to make decisions.
6.1.1 Summary of Implementation of Six Sigma for Motorola, General Electric and SkyMark

The table below shows the different companies with different perceptions of Six Sigma and the differences in implementing it:

Definition of Six Sigma GE A highly discipline process. Developing and delivering nearperfect product and services

Implementation Metric Methodology Management system Critical to Quality Defect Process Capability Variation Stable Operation Design for Six Sigma

Motorola

A measure of quality to eliminate defects in any process.

Provides Consultation & Solution by using software: A movement that inherits directly from TQM PathMaker ipathmaker THESEUS.

SkyMark

Table 3 Comparison of Implementation of Six Sigma for Motorola, General Electric and SkyMark

7.0

What Six Sigma Means in Statistical Terms

terms, it is more referred to the definition of Six Sigma as a metric and emphasize on mathematical theory of calculations. The word Sigma itself is a statistical term that measures how far a given process deviates from perfection. If it is viewed in statistical terms, reaching Six Sigma means that the process or product will perform with almost no defects. The idea based on this idea is that if defects can be measured in a process, it can be eliminated by systematically solving the problem by digging into the root of the problem and get as close to zero defects as possible. According to Motorola (HA International, 2009), the term sigma is often used as a scale of levels of quality. Six Sigma equates to 3.4 defects per one million opportunities (DPMO). In mathematical theory, if one has six standard deviations between the process mean and the nearest specification limit, as shown in the graph, practically no items will fail to meet specifications. This is based on the calculation method employed in process capability studies. The upper and lower specification limits (USL ,LSL) are at distance of 6 from the mean. It is unlikely that values will be lying that far away, thus the idea of six sigma is to have processes where the mean is at least 6 away from the nearest specification limit.

Figure 2 Graph of the normal distribution, which underlies the statistical assumptions of the Six Sigma model

In actual process, standard deviations shifts by time. It is know that there is some variation in the output of every process. Even if the process is exactly centered over the target value, there will be times when the process produces output that is above the target value and other times when the output is below the target value. If samples of the output are then calculate for the average for these samples, they also will not all be exactly on the targeted value. (Adams, 1999) According to this idea, a process that fits 6-Sigma between the process mean and the nearest specification limit in a short-term study will in the long term only fit 4.5-Sigma. The 3.4 DPMO of a six sigma process in fact corresponds to 4.5-Sigma, namely 6-Sigma minus the 1.5-Sigma shift which is introduced to account for long-term variation. It is said that many ordinary businesses actually operate at between three and two and sigma performance. This equates to between approximately 66,800 and 308,500 defects per million operations, (which incidentally is also generally considered to be an unsustainable level of customer satisfaction - ie., the business is likely to be in decline, or about to head that way). (Chapman, 2011) A measurement of 4-Sigma equates to approximately 6,200 DPMO, around 99.4% perfection, while measurement of 5-Sigma equates to 223 defects per million opportunities, equivalent to a 99.8% perfection rate, and acceptable to many business, although not good enough for the aircraft industry. (Chapman, 2011) Below is a simplified one-to-six sigma conversion scale: 'Long Term Yield' (basically the percentage of successful outputs or operations) % 99.99966 99.98 3.4 233 6 5 Defects Per Million Opportunities (DPMO) 'Processs Sigma'

99.4 93.3 69.1 30.9

6,210 66,807 308,538 691,462

4 3 2 1

Initially, Motorola Six Sigma was purely a quality metric that was used to reduce defects in the production of electronic components. It was emphasized as a defect reduction effort in manufacturing in the early stage but was then applied to other business processes for the same purpose. In a nut shell, to achieve Six Sigma quality a process must produce no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities.

8.0

Bibliography
http://www.ge.com/sixsigma/sixsigstrategy.html

The Six Sigma Strategy, General Electric. (n.d.). Retrieved August 20, 2011, from General Electric:

Adams, C. W. (1999). Why Does Six Sigma allow a 1.5 SD shift? Retrieved August 19, 2011, from Adams Six Sigma: http://www.adamssixsigma.com/aboutus.htm Chapman, A. (2011). Six Sigma. Retrieved August 2011, 2011, from Businessballs web site. HA International. (2009). 6 Sigma. Retrieved August 19, 2011, from HA international LLC Web Site: http://www.ha-international.com/content/innovations/six_sigma.aspx