Where did the concept of Six Sigma come from?
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Six Sigma is a methodology to manage process variations that cause defects and to systematically work towards managing variation to eliminate those defects. Defects are defined as unacceptable deviation from the mean or target. The objective of Six Sigma is to deliver high performance, reliability, and value to the end customer.\n\nThe roots of Six Sigma as a measurement standard can be traced back to Carl Frederick Gauss (1777-1855) who introduced the concept of the normal curve. Six Sigma as a measurement standard in product variation can be traced back to the 1920's when Walter Shewhart showed that three sigma from the mean is the point where a process requires correction. Many measurement standards (Cpk, Zero Defects, etc.) later came on the scene but credit for coining the term "Six Sigma" goes to a Motorola engineer named Bill Smith. (Incidentally, "Six Sigma" is a federally registered trademark of Motorola).\n\nIn the early and mid-1980s with Chairman Bob Galvin at the helm, Motorola engineers decided that the traditional quality levels -- measuring defects in thousands of opportunities -- didn't provide enough granularity. Instead, they wanted to measure the defects per million opportunities. The process was pioneered by Bill Smith at Motorola in 1986 and was originally defined as a metric for measuring defects and improving quality, and a methodology to reduce defect levels below 3.4 Defects Per (one) Million Opportunities (DPMO), or put another way, a methodology of controlling a process to the point of ± six sigma (standard deviations) from a centerline. Motorola developed this new standard and created the methodology and needed cultural change associated with it. Six Sigma helped Motorola realize powerful bottom-line results in their organization - in fact, they documented more than $16 Billion in savings as a result of Six Sigma efforts. Six Sigma has now grown beyond defect control and is a registered service mark and trademark of Motorola, Inc. Motorola has reported over US$17 billion in savings from Six Sigma to date.\n\nIn addition to the Motorola, companies which also adopted six sigma methodologies early-on and continue to practice it today, are Honeywell International (previously know as Allied Signal) and General Electric (introduced by Jack Welch). The two companies have reported to have saved literally billions of dollars thanks to the aggressive implementation and daily practice of six sigma methodologies.\n\nSince then, hundreds of companies around the world have adopted Six Sigma as a way of doing business. This is a direct result of many of America's leaders openly praising the benefits of Six Sigma. Leaders such as Larry Bossidy of Allied Signal (now Honeywell), and Jack Welch of General Electric Company. Rumor has it that Larry and Jack were playing golf one day and Jack bet Larry that he could implement Six Sigma faster and with greater results at GE than Larry did at Allied Signal. The results speak for themselves.\n\nSix Sigma has evolved over time. It's more than just a quality system like TQM or ISO. It's a way of doing business. As Geoff Tennant describes in his book Six Sigma: SPC and TQM in Manufacturing and Services: "Six Sigma is many things, and it would perhaps be easier to list all the things that Six Sigma quality is not. Six Sigma can be seen as: a vision; a philosophy; a symbol; a metric; a goal; a methodology."
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The term Business Process Management (or BPM) refers to activities performed by businesses to optimize and adapt their processes.\n\nAlthough it can be said that organizations have always been using BPM, a new impetus based on the advent of software tools (business process management systems or BPMS) which allow for the direct execution of the business processes without a costly and time intensive development of the required software. In addition, these tools can also monitor the execution of the business processes, providing managers of an organization with the means to analyze their performance and make changes to the original processes in real-time. Using a BPMS the modified process can then be merged into the current business process atmosphere.\n\nWhere Business Process Reengineering (popular in the 1990s) dealt with one-off changes to the organization, Business Process Management deals with the continuity and embedding of process orientation in the organization. Business Process Management has evolved as technology has caught up with management processes to the point that technology should no longer be the limiting factor in BPM.\n\nBusiness Process Management encompasses other process elements, such as Total Quality Management (TQM), Six Sigma, Performance Management, etc..\n\n\nBusiness process management activities:\nThe activities which constitute business process management can be grouped into three categories: design, execution and monitoring.\n\n\nProcess design:\nThis encompasses either the design or capture of existing processes. In addition the processes may be simulated in order to test them. The software support for these activities consists of graphical editors to document the processes and repositories to store the process models.\n\nAn emphasis on getting the design of the process right will logically lead to better results as the flow on effect of problems at the design stage logically affects a large number of parts in an integrated system.\n\nEvolution of business processes requires a change to the process design to flow on into the live system. Integrating business process is also a current research area. Integration of software for process design to be used both for creating graphical representations of workflows and implementing and maintaining these workflows makes evolution of business processes less stressful, given that requirements are not as static as information systems.\n\n\nProcess execution:\nThe traditional way to achieve the automatic execution of processes is that an application is developed or purchased which executes the steps required. However, in practice, these applications only execute a portion of the overall process. Execution of a complete business process can also be achieved by using a patchwork of interfacing software with human intervention needed where applications are not able to automatically interface. In addition, certain process steps can only be accomplished with human intervention (for example, deciding on a major credit application). Due to the complexity that this approach engenders, changing a process is costly and an overview of the processes and their state is difficult to obtain.\n\nAs a response to these problems, the Business Process Management System (BPMS) category of software has evolved. BPMS allows the full business process (as developed in the process design activity) to be defined in a computer language which can be directly executed by the computer (see Business Process Management standards). The BPMS will either use services in connected applications to perform business operations (e.g. calculating a repayment plan for a loan) or will send messages to human workers requesting they perform certain tasks which necessitate a human attribute such as intuition as opposed to automated processes. As the process definition is directly executable, changes in the process can be (in comparison to the traditional approach of application development or maintenanc
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I know of a website which offers a Six Sigma manual and Question bank among many other things. Try visiting it and see if it suits your needs.\nwww.treqna.com
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Do you mean Six Sigma? Go here:\n\nhttp://www.isixsigma.com/
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"To take just one example, ISO standards for such seemingly humble items as bolts, nuts, screws, pins and rivets literally help stop much in the world around us from falling apart - but you're not likely to come across references to them in the business and economic press, nor see companies proudly advertising that they implement them."  \n\nTry the link below and take "The Magical Demystifying Tour of ISO 9000 "
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I don't think that answer can be done on a Yahoo board.  ISO 14000 like all quality assurance techniques is changing the way people think, not getting people to conform to the minimum.  Therefore the answer is firm dependent.  I will give you an idea on why.\n\nThere are three governing principles in organizational structures.  All organizations are driven by them.  They are autonomy, control and cooperation.  Autonomy driven corporations have to completely internalize the ideas in the work world because management must of necessity be weaker than in control oriented organizations which must completely reorganize and reprocess their firms to accomplish the same thing.  I don't know which one is more difficult.  This is an assessment issue and not a Yahoo Answers issue.
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Just in case you didn't catch it when 6 people said the same thing before, the answer to your question is:\n\nthe origin
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It is where they do time tests, cleaning, sorting, and changing things around to get better results out of less people doing a job.  The company I work for has been doing this for the last year and a half almost two years.  The clean all areas affecting, sorting out all of the stuff you dont need to do a job and get rid of it, they may change machinary or the way you do your job and then time test everything to make it run faster.  This is just what I know from my experience with lean manufacturing.
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A Six Sigma black belt is someone with extensive experience and training in the implementation of Six Sigma at a high level within the organization.
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This is part of what is now called lean manufacturing. It is the idea of manufacturing in an efficient way. No wasted time, material etc...
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Lean thinking is a powerful model of the competitive organisation that is based on a common sense approach to management, combining processes of continuous improvement and the integration of entire supply chains.\n\nIn the setting of a hospital this would include,\n\nsimple solutions to problems, improving communication through the hospital so that all can improve, and integration of supply chains (eg drugs from suppliers to hospital floors)
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There are many different methods and programs that are used for managing project quality, Six Sigma is one that comes to mind, my company changes methods about every 18 months.\n\nstart here  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management\n\ngoole showed 367 million hits on the question
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Are you asking how to calculate the probability that a sample will be more that 1.5 sigma from the mean?  If so, the one-sided (i.e. the sample will be more than 1.5 sigma right of the mean) is the Q function.\n\nIt is defined as Q(k)= [1/sqrt(2*pi)]* integral k->infinity e^(-lamda^2/2) dlamda\n\nSubstitute k=1.5\n\nThe integration is a bear and is most often performed numerically or you just look up the value in a table.  From table look up, Q(1.5)=0.06681\n\n\n===============\nAdded:\n\nA ha!  I figured out what you are asking. It's a six sigma question  -- not a statistics question.\n\nExperience has shown that there is a 1.5 sigma difference between short term variability and long term variability in a manufacturing process.  Therefore, if you calculate a sigma score for a process based on short term data, your estimate of the long term score should be 1.5 sigma worse.  I.e. if short term data shows that your process is 5 sigma, your estimate of long term sigma would be 3.5 sigam.
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There is no certification process for 6 Sigma.  It is not a contractual standard like ISO 9000 for which certification is possible.
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Go to ASQ.org\n\nThis is the most economical way.  If you have completed a project using six sigma principles, you can get a signed statement for evidence, then take the ASQ six sigma certification exam.  It is cheaper to join ASQ and get the member rate for the exam.  You can study for the exam by getting the Indiana Council primers from the Indiana Council of Quality.  The questions of the ASQ exam will not be as difficult as those the primer.
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It's kind of a phased approach where one item follows another. It's general to software methodologies and not really specific to BI. There's a good diagram and some discussion in the link below.
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Michael E. Porters "Five Forces" has been the de facto standard since the 80's for approaching business strategy:\n\nhttp://www.quickmba.com/strategy/porter.shtml\n\nSubsequent approachs have been adaptations or partial rejections of this approach.  Regardless, if you are going to learn business strategy and analyze opponents well, you should start here.  It will give you context for subsequent learning.