Business & Professional

E XECU T VE TIPS

Six Sigma Thinking

I

t would be unrealis-
tic and naive for me
to recommend you
take on such a large and
expensive project as the
SIX SIGMA effort. Yet, in
the core structure of SIX
SIGMA are many pearls of
business success.
Globalization and
instant access to informa-
tion, products and ser-
vices continue to change
the way our customers conduct
business. This idea is true from the
dry cleaner, to the drugstore owner,
to the local deli to the multimillion-
dollar business. Today, our custom-
ers have unparalleled access and
also options at their fingertips via a
cell phone or computer.
Today's competitive environment
leaves no room for error. We must
delight our customers so we relent-
lessly look for new ways to exceed
their expectations. This is why Six
Sigma Quality has become a part of
our culture.
First, What is Six Sigma? Think in
terms of simplifying what this is to
your business.
First, it is not a secret society, a
slogan or a cliche. Six Sigma is a
highly disciplined process that helps
focus on developing and delivering
near-perfect products and services.
Why Sigma? The word is a statis-
tical term that measures how far a
given process deviates from perfec-
tion. The central idea behind Six
Sigma is that if you can measure
how many defects you have in a

process, you can system-
atically figure out how to
eliminate them and get
as close to zero defects as
possible.
To achieve Six Sigma
Quality, a process must
produce no more than 3.4
defects per million oppor-
tunities. An opportunity
is defined as a chance
for nonconformance, or
not meeting the required
specifications. This means we need
to be nearly flawless in executing
our key processes.
So in the regular world, this means
if we had 1,000 customers, we look at
what they did not like or where they
were unhappy with our product or
our services — and how would one
eliminate that from occurring?
My food was cold when it was
delivered; I had to wait in line to
checkout more than 30 to 45 sec-
onds; the dry cleaner said Tuesday
but really meant Tuesday AFTER 5
P.M., etc. — simple issues that make
us all sit back and say how could
we prevent these from happening?
Never allow more than three people
in a line; if so, all team members
were told to call for registers to open
or mark on the receipts and tell
people after 5 p.m. for pick up or a
simple, "May we text you while you
are in the store to let you know your
prescription is ready?" II

F: Kevin Browett is chief operating officer
of Jewish Renaissance Media, parent com-

pany of the Detroit Jewish News.

Key Concepts

At its core, Six Sigma revolves around a few key concepts:

• Critical to Quality: Attributes most important to the customer;
• Defect: Failing to deliver what the customer wants;
• Process capability: What your process can deliver;
• Variation: What the customer sees and feels;
• Stable Operations: Ensuring consistent, predictable processes to
improve what the customer sees and feels;
• Design: Designing to meet customer needs and process capability.
Step back and think in terms of your own business and how these large,
expansive processes apply to you, then how can you put them in place
to help you better serve your customer.
• Excite and Delight: the big delight for the customer is when you do
something more for them to make their life easy. Pretty simple – but so
important.

October 15 • 2009

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