Six Sigma® Simplified

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Title:

Six Sigma® Simplified - (2001)

Author:

Jay Arthur

Review Date:

2003

Reviewer:

Shari L. Cartwright, CFPS, Director of Product Development & Services at Quality Plus Technologies

DESCRIPTION:

The subtitle of this book "Quantum Improvement Made Easy" is quite apropo. Six Sigma Simplified is basically an introduction to Six Sigma and the Quantum Improvement (QI) philosophy. It starts off with a story of a King and Queen puzzling over why their efforts to improve the lives of their people, seemed to produce little progress. They remember that Robin Hood has continually improved the lives of his people and his lands consistently performed better than many in the kingdom. So they go to visit Robin Hood and he proceeds to explain to them the basics of Quantum Improvement and it's benefits.

Cute story aside, the book continues with an overview of Six Sigma and how QI can benefit an organization quicker than Total Quality Management's (TQM) Continuous Improvement. Then the author starts us on the "Improvement Journey", beginning with the simple process of Focus, Improve, Sustain, and Honor (FISH).

FISH STEP ACTIVITY

FOCUS 1 Focus the improvement effort

IMPROVE 2 Reduce delay, defects, and costs

SUSTAIN 3 Stablize and sustain the improvement

HONOR 4 Recognize, review and refocus efforts

He describes the uses of the many charts, diagram, and graphs used in Six Sigma - which charts to use during each step in the process and gives good, simple examples that we all can identify with.

REVIEW:

I really appreciated a book on this level. I only knew a little about Six Sigma and when I was looking for an introductory book, I found this one which had a review comment comparing it to the Dummies series of books, calling it the "Six Sigma for Dummies". I thought -- Perfect!

I found the discussion on quantum improvement versus continuous improvement very interesting and I also took interested note of the discussion on the Pareto 80/20 Rule and QI's 50/1 philosophy. Instead of looking at the 20% of your effort delivering 80% of the results, look at the 4% of the effort (20% of the 20%) yielding 64% of the results (80% of the 80%). You then narrow it even more to 1% of the effort delivers 50% of the results. Think of the impact improvement of the 1% can have!

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to get good, high-level information on Six Sigma. Now I feel more prepared to delve into more detailed books on Six Sigma.