Quality and Six Sigma Quality Initiative Essay -- Six Sigma TQM Total

Quality and Six Sigma Quality Initiative Sigma - ï  ³ is most common known as a Greek letter which is used in statistics as a measure of variation, or change. Most of the people, however, don’t know that ï  ³ is not only a symbol but it is also a method of quality. 6ï  ³ Quality (Six Sigma Quality) is a management philosophy which has to lead to better employee performance and therefore completely satisfy the customer. Six Sigma Quality, or in the abbreviation 6SQ was first introduced in 1986, when Dr. Mikel J.Harry tried the first project in the Motorola Company. However, the idea if it is not new. The same, or a very similar concepts are known under different names such as Total Quality Management (TQM) or Zero-Mistake-Production. Nowadays, many companies adopted the Six Sigma Quality Philosophy, among them are General Electric (GE), BMW – car producers in Germany, Navistar or Thermoking. Six Sigma involves all the employees, from the basic ones, to the top management. 6SQ requires not only training, but also the cooperation from the employees. If a company achieves ï  ³ 1, it will have a yield of 31% that means the business operations will be error free in 31%. Sigma on the stage two means error freeness in 69.2%, number 3 - 93.32%. All this seems to be a big improvement, but as we will see later on, it is not enough to work on the level 3, or 4, even though both of them have a very high percentage of error-freeness. Sigma step number 4 in the real numbers means 99.37% error free operations. Most of the companies, which are working under 6SQ are operating somewhere between Sigma 3 and Sigma 4. Sigma 5 means almost perfect result. 99.97% error freeness, and this seems to be a dream for most of the compa... ...es is the common sense. Alone the General Electrics Company (GE) is going to invest $550 M only in the year 1999 for the Six Sigma Program. (Manager Magazine, October 1999). Since GE had 293.000 employees in the year 1998, the cost for each employee comes up to $ 1.706. Since we have to consider that not all the employees are willing to take part on the seminar. Some of the people view that the Six Sigma Quality is forcing people to do lots of seminars on what is the common sense saying. Simply it is sometimes viewed as a pure waste of time, because the participation on these seminars takes a lot of time. The other disadvantages include another stress for the employees who are running the quality program and also for the employees who have to be in the program. Very often the idea is not bad at all, but the employees simply do not have time to complete the tasks.