Six Sigma: The Breakthrough Management Strategy Revolutionizing the World’s Top Corporations

by Mikel Harry and Richard Schroeder

Six Sigma: The Breakthrough Management Strategy Revolutionizing the World’s Top Corporations shows how Six Sigma is working at companies such as General Electric, Polaroid, and Allied Signal.  The authors helped pioneer Six Sigma while working at Motorola in the 1980s.

At the heart of Six Sigma is the notion that improving quality saves money.  The book states that for most companies “the cost of quality is roughly 25 to 40 percent of sales revenue” and “at six sigma the cost of quality declines to less than one percent of sales revenue.”

The book provides insight to what Six Sigma is all about – a change strategy that relentlessly drives defects out of products, processes, and services to increase profitability.

Several case studies are presented that provide valuable insight on implementing Six Sigma.  Four case studies are presented.  The first case study discusses how GE adopted and embraced the Six Sigma philosophy.  Two case studies are presented on how Polaroid utilized Six Sigma to improve sensitometry and strobe exposure variation.  The authors return to GE and present a case study on improving a high-speed computed tomography scanner.  Finally, AlliedSignal’s journey to Six Sigma is discussed along with the lessons learned during in the implementation process.

The contents of the book include:

  1. Why Six Sigma?
  2. The Yellow Brick Road
  3. Being Better is Cheaper
    • Case Study: One Company’s Experience: General Electric 2000
  4. Benchmarking: Discovering Who is Really Best
  5. Changing What Companies Measure: A Six Sigma Credo
  6. Unmasking the Hidden Factor
    • Case Study: One Companies Experience: Polaroid Flashes Back
  7. The Breakthrough Strategy
  8. Measuring Performance on the Sigma Scale
    • Case Study: One Company’s Experience: How General Electric Used Six Sigma to Design a Multimillion-Dollar Product
  9. Implementation and Deployment
  10. The Six Sigma Players: Champions, Master Black Belts, Black Belts, and Green Belts
  11. Six Sigma Black Belts
    • Case Study: One Company’s Experience: AlliedSignal’s Journey to Six Sigma
  12. Six Sigma and the Service Industry
  13. Project Selection Guidelines
  14. The Psychology of Six Sigma
  15. Preparing an Organization for Six Sigma

Six Sigma: The Breakthrough Management Strategy Revolutionizing the World’s Top Corporations is a very easy to read and follow book.  The history of Six Sigma, Six Sigma concepts and several case studies are presented in a non-technical manner so that a new practitioner of Six Sigma can easily follow.  The book provides a great introduction for investors, managers and those new to Six Sigma.

Buy It Now!
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