What the heck is Six Sigma?

[Kontiki]

Black belts are reserved for those that can find images of random, bizzare sex acts on a moment's notice.

[Q Classic]

I'd link to them, but I think my message would be baleeted by the mods.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by mactbone
See, all that you just wrote, it doesn't make sense.

DMAIC? Manufacturing process? I work in an office, as do all the people that this message is intended for.

What are all these belts and why use all of this newspeak for simple concepts that have been used in business for ages? It seems like it was all made up by some middle-aged men with hardons for military/agressive terminology.

A lot of it is just cultish buzzwords (green belts, black belts, etc.) to make it sound unique (and thereby create a whole consultancy industry). It was invented as such, IIRC, by Motorola, and borrows a lot of concepts from different QA and project management theories, mishmashed into new terms, much the same way Scientology borrows concepts from Freud and Jung and gives them new names and just enough paraphrasing to be "new!" "unique!" and to "really work!"

Generically, it's a bunch of techniques and communications/management/review processes to achieve a defect rate less than or equal to 34 failures in a million, in whatever process (manufacturing, customer service, engineering, supply chain, health care administration - any process in which quality can be measured) to which you apply Six Sigma as a quality toolset.

There's nothing inherently wrong with it, and it can be useful, but the buzzwords and cottage industry of "Black Belt" consultants makes it seem a lot cheesier. There are now some variants where they dodge the Amway-Scientology type of buzzword BS, to make it more credible for a professional audience.

[loinburger]

We had an idiot general who was in love with Six Sigma and a whole bunch of other buzzwordy crap. Nobody was sad to see him lose his command to somebody who was less interested in playing God with the lab facilities and more interested in seeing the lab continue to function.

Not that there's anything inherently wrong with Six Sigma and other assorted buzzwordy crap, but it's a big problem when people adopt the process for the buzzwords.

F'rinstance, we sent a couple of guys to one of Hammer's BPR seminars to figure out why our general was in love with the guy. Turns out that Hammer is a very persuasive speaker who could easily sell you swamp land in Florida, but when our guys objectively analyzed BPR at the end of the seminar it became obvious that the swamp land was not right for us. It's frustrating that we had to de-buzzword the crap our general was foisting on us rather than being able to just ask him for a de-buzzworded version of it.

[Provost Harrison]

Where I work is buzzword crazy to the point of driving most of the staff up the wall...I think the management are trying to compensate for their uselessness by "talking the talk".

[Urban Ranger]

Buzzwords go with the territory. You know, l33tsp34k and such.

[Provost Harrison]

My management go mad with these tools and other such things, but I think they really need to look at the basics. They are haemorrhaging staff due to poor conditions and I'm about ready to leave given the first opportunity under the circumstances...

[Japher]

My boss' boss at my last job was overly concerned with benchmarks and numbers derived from statistical process control. It was the only way upper management was even able to understand manufacturing and production. Unfortunately, they didn't understand that if you didn't make anything, and didn't sell anything, you could still have a nice Line Item Fill Rate and Days of Supply... Yet, it wouldn't mean crap!