Overview of Six Sigma

??????? Process - set of activities done to convert the inputs into outputs.

??????? Process problems? can be solved by analyzing problems in inputs and process

??????? Process Approach – The basic Principle of Six Sigma says “Control the inputs, Control the Process, and Output will automatically be consistent”

Let us look at a small story from Mahabharata, one of the greatest epics in India. Dhronacharya, the coach for teaching the war-related skills to the princes wanted to assess how far his disciples had learnt the art of archery. One day, he called them to a river bank, planted a bird made of clay on a branch of a tree, and told his disciples that they should hit the bird in one attempt.

When the first disciple came and started aiming, the guru asked him, What are you seeing? He said that I was seeing the bird. The guru asked him what else you are seeing. He replied that I was seeing the tree behind, the river behind, the mountain behind, and so on. The Guru was not satisfied and ordered him to quit without taking a shot. Like this One by one all his disciples came for their attempts. The guru asked similar questions to them and the disciples gave similar answers and the Guru asked them to quit. Last came the chance of Arjuna, his favorite disciple.

The Guru asked him What you are seeing. Arjuna told him I am seeing the bird. The Guru asked him what else you are seeing. He replied I am seeing the eye of the bird. The Guru again asked him what else you are seeing. He replied I am seeing the eyeball of the bird. The Guru checked the material of his bow and the arrow, his process of holding the bow, his process of aiming at the bird, whether he was taking care of the breeze passing over while aiming, etc. Once he was satisfied with the inputs and the process, he was sure that Arjuna would be able to hit the target. He approved Arjuna to shoot the arrow and the arrow hit the bird bang on the eyeball. Even though the story was written a few thousand years ago, the moral of the story, the Process Approach holds good even in these modern days. Let us see what the Process Approach is.

A Process is a set of activities that converts inputs into outputs. If the inputs and the process are not right, we will not get the required outputs. Like in the above story, the guru was ensuring that the inputs and the process were right and the process focus was there. Once he found that these were right with Arjuna, he approved shooting and Arjuna was able to hit the target on his first attempt. Similarly in our day-to-day life, we are looking to achieve some outputs/results – in terms of Productivity / Defect rate / Turn turnaround time, etc. While we are working hard to achieve these results, we encounter problems. Without realizing that the problems in the inputs and the process need to be solved to get the required output, we always run behind the results without any success. The process approach says – Control the inputs, Control the process, the output will automatically be controlled and you will always get consistent results.

This process approach is the basic principle of Six Sigma