Customer Reviews

What Is Six Sigma?

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Of the Six Sigma books I've read, this is the one I'd recommend most highly. It will give you the basic "tools" of Six Sigma in a compact, useable form. I feel that this would be an excellent text for corporate training on Six Sigma, certainly for an introductory course.

A quick read of the reviews on Amazon will give you a feel for why people are skeptical of 6 Sigma: the feel-good tone of most writing on 6 Sigma and the insistence that it "is not a flavor-of-the-month management trend" make many of us suspect that 6 Sigma is not much more than hollow jargon and acronyms.

Lets accept that these criticisms are valid and further that many "practitioners" are just self-aggrandizing or worse. But that still leaves us with the essential difficulties of positive change in any organization: you need to overcome assumptions that your organization's subculture may not even realize it has. What a corporation does by accepting Six Sigma is that it empowers people to gather data to challenge what "everybody knows". Most importantly, it sets a very high quality standard, which reinforces the sanctioning of data-driven change.

The authors of "What is Six Sigma" put it very well early on: "proactive management means making habits out of what are, too often, neglected business practices: defining ambitious goals and reviewing them frequently, setting clear priorities, focusing on problem prevention rather than firefighting, and questioning why we do things instead of blindly defending them."

I feel that the greatest flaw in Six Sigma is that many practitioners and even the books permit the basics to be lost in the shuffle. If one listens to people talk about Six Sigma, its easy to forget that a critical part of Six Sigma is that the data comes first, not the solution. I often hear co-workers say "we need to finish this project to improve our six sigmas" or "if we could get rid of this server we'll all get our green belts".

The term Six Sigma is derived from statistics and many books gloss over the statistics and move right on to basic project management techniques or how to overcome objections to Six Sigma. This book gives a clear and brief explanation of how to calculate standard deviations and includes a handy table to help with determine "sigma levels". Every Six Sigma book should respond to the challenge raised by this book and also include this information in the first 10 pages.

Finally, I recommend this book because it is concise and to-the-point. I feel that the fluff and/or Machiavellian advice in many of the other books just feed into people's healthy skepticism and distract people from the beauty of Six Sigma: the challenge to strive for near-perfect quality and the sanction to use statistics to cut through the inertia in our work lives.

I would also recommend Michael Lewis' "Moneyball" (ISBN 0393057658) as a companion book. Lewis (author of "Liar's Poker") uses Wall Street trading as an analogy to explain why the Oakland As baseball team is one of the successful teams with much less money than most. But I also see an analogy relevant to the topic of Six Sigma. "Moneyball" shows how one can achieve superior results by testing what everyone thinks they know with fact gathering and rigorous analyses. Moneyball and "What is Six Sigma" may prove to be an inspiring combination.

If you are looking for a book to take you from no knowledge of Six Sigma to a very elementary level of knowledge, this could be useful. I found myself feeling like I was reading a company brochure for Six Sigma that was too long. The book falls into a middle ground of not having enough information to be useful in implementing Six Sigma yet might have too much for the average person.
I originally thought this would be a great book to give to people that congratulate me on being a Six Sigma Black Belt, that they once took Karate but never got that far, to understand Six Sigma. After thinking about the level of knowledge of many people regarding basic statistics I think as simple as this book is it may be over the general person's comfort level. I'm afraid it might cause people to shut down from feeling overwhelmed. If they have basic statistical skills, they should have no problem understanding this though.
Maybe the book is perfect for people being asked to participate in Six Sigma initiatives or working with a company that is implementing Six Sigma. I would be uncomfortable giving this to somebody with no Six Sigma knowledge and not being available to discuss it with them, hold their hand through it. If you have a real interest in Six Sigma, pick up one of the "heavier" books, including The Six Sigma Way by the same author. You can skim through it and get this same information. If you want more information it will be there, no need to buy another book.

I had heard often of Six Sigma, but knew next to nothing about it (and suspected an overdose of trendy nonsense because of the silly sounding terms borrowed from karate). This slim volume seemed the right starting place, since I did not wish to invest in a tome of material if Six Sigma turned out to uninteresting for my company.

This is, indeed, an excellent overview. It tells in global terms what to expect. The statistical methods are described in non-mathematicians' intuitive terms (a pity, I would have liked a little more detail) but for my needs it served it purpose admirably.

As a result of reading this book I am moving on to a more technical account of Six Sigma. I need to know what the operational definitions are and how the statistics are used. I am not yet certain if Six Sigma is suitable - in software development we have established methods for tracking bugs and improving interface usability. Nevertheless, my interest has been whetted.

This short but insightful guide is the perfect reading assignment prior to a Six Sigma implementation. The book provides a brief overview of what Six Sigma is, who does what and how the most successful companies have implemented Six Sigma using the DMAIC process (Define, Measure, Analyze, Input, and Control)
If you are thinking of implementing Six Sigma. Keep this little book on your desk or in your back pocket for immediate reference. We use a copy at my office to gain an organizational understanding of Six Sigma. In the future we will implement Six Sigma, using some of the basic principles outlined here.

This book is an excellenct introduction for those who just need to 'catch up' with eveyone else talking Six Sigma. It is an easy-read, well-written synopsis of Six Sigma and Six Sigma implementation. It is not an indepth look at statisitcs, SPC or implementation--there are plenty of books out there for that, several by the same author, but it is a very helpful book that I will keep in my library and have already worn the cover by lending it to colleagues.

Before your boss sneaks Six Sigma into your vocabulary, or you're looking to rub elbows with the executive team, read this book. Without getting into a whole lot of theory, the authors explain numbers, acronyms, responsibilites and benefits of this popular business initiative. It's a great summary and a quick read. There are plenty of books you will need to study and review as you delve deeper into the Six Sigma processes, but this book is definitely your starting point.

At last! A short, easy-to-read and effortlessly understandable explanation of Six Sigma. In keeping with the brevity and conciseness of this book, we'll keep this review short: If you want to know what Six Sigma is, what it can accomplish, why it matters to you and how to implement a program of your own, we from getAbstract strongly recommend that you start with this book.

Most companies that have implemented Six Sigma initiatives have seen themselves pushed into a higher orbit of business excellence. Six Sigma can be a Business Transformation, Strategic Improvement or a narrowly focussed problem solving technique. But it involves deep commitment from top to bottom with a clearly defined agenda for results. New initiatives that have profound effects across the Organization are bound to meet with resistance and skepticism either due to the natural inertia for change or due to the fear of the unknown and the resulting insecurity. It is important to seed the concepts in a simple and comprehensive manner in the minds of all employees and energize them before any initiative is planned. Care should be taken not to immerse the participants into high sounding jargon and make it appear as yet another gimmick from consultants. This book meets this requirement very well.

Six Sigma is clearly explained as a customer focussed initiative, driving down defects, cycle time and costs. Various analytical methodologies and statistical techniques are listed and demystified for those who are otherwise allergic to these techniques. For readers scared of Six Sigma on the presumption that it is a form of martial art, it would be heartening to note that wearing a " black belt" is a professionally rewarding experience and worth pursuing assignment.

There are plenty of charts and illustrations that make things easier to assimilate.

This book is recommended distribution to all employees even if the company has no immediate plans on Six Sigma. Plant the seed and let it germinate.

We have used this book as a good basic introduction to Six Sigma.
It doe a good job in vocabulary and fundamental concepts. We give this book to all employees starting six sigma or hike training programs.

An informative, well written book. It is easy to understand for someone with no basic knowledge of six sigma.