Six Sigma and Total Quality Management: Concepts and Applications

Introduction

Today's economic agents are under increasing pressure to deliver high-quality products and services at extremely competitive prices. This challenge has been driven by a multitude of factors, two of the most important being the growing forces of globalization and the incremental, ever-changing demands of the customer base. In order to meet this challenge, organizational leaders develop and implement a wide range of strategies. They invest more and more in their human resources, which are considered the most valuable asset — this is especially true within the services industry, where staff members directly determine the levels of customer satisfaction. Aside from employee motivation and development, however, contemporary managers also focus on the technologies used throughout the operational process, the techniques and means of delivering products, and so on.

All the efforts mentioned above, together with others, are organized under the generic term of Total Quality Management — a modern approach to business in which organizational leaders focus on introducing quality efforts at all stages of organizational processes. Six Sigma is similar in that it also focuses on improved levels of quality, but its applications are somewhat different and arguably more novel and innovative. The aim of this report is to present the two concepts as they are depicted in the specialized literature and to reveal the practical applications of those findings. Before doing so, however, it is necessary to clearly understand the two ideologies of Six Sigma and TQM.

The TQM and Six Sigma Concepts

The specialized literature presents a wide variety of definitions of Total Quality Management; despite differences in formulation, however, the essence of the various explanations remains the same. J. M. Juran, for instance, argues that "Total Quality Management (TQM) is the set of management processes and systems that create delighted customers through empowered employees, leading to higher revenue and lower cost." Joel Ross and Susan Perry, on the other hand, argue that TQM is "the integration of all functions and processes within an organization in order to achieve continuous improvement of the quality of goods and services. The goal is customer satisfaction" (Ross and Perry, 1999). The concept of TQM is extremely broad, referring to improvements that can be made at all organizational levels, with the ultimate purpose of enhancing product quality and customer satisfaction. TQM is therefore a modern tool available to managers by which they can respond to the challenges of incremental customer demands.

The Six Sigma concept is more specific than TQM in that it does not refer to such broad applications, but to particular actions that organizational leaders can take to enhance the satisfaction of the final customer. The Six Sigma approach is built on numerous business models, most of which are traditional and long-established. Six Sigma thus incorporates various ideas on how to improve customer satisfaction and product quality, meaning that it is also constructed on the premises of total quality management. D. H. Stamatis (2004) goes as far as to "define Six Sigma as 'TQM on steroids.'" The core principle behind the Six Sigma ideology is that of delivering products in full accordance with the specifications of the customer. The requirement is for any process to register no more than 3.4 defects per one million opportunities; a defect is understood as any deviation from the initial desires of the customer.

The Six Sigma approach is generally achieved through two separate processes — DMAIC and DMADV — where:

DMAIC stands for: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control.
DMADV stands for: Define, Measure, Analyze, Design, and Verify.

DMAIC is generically applied to already existing processes that are performing below desired levels and for which the organization seeks improvement. DMADV, on the other hand, is developed and implemented for new processes being introduced within the organization, which aim to perform at superior quality levels from the outset. Both DMAIC and DMADV are implemented by Six Sigma specialists — Green Belts and Black Belts — and overseen by Master Black Belts (iSixSigma, 2009).

The Six Sigma ideology is notable for the roles it assigns to various members within organizations. Models developed before Six Sigma would typically assign quality control and improvement roles exclusively to staff within the manufacturing department. The new model, however, states that these roles are assumed by people at all levels of organizational operations. Notably, it assigns martial arts terminology to these roles. The first category is represented by Yellow Belts — individuals trained to work with quality improvement. Then come Green Belts, who are regular employees that also focus on quality improvement under the supervision of Black Belts, who are in charge of Six Sigma implementation on specific projects and report directly to Master Black Belts. Master Black Belts play the generic role of coaches and, like Black Belts, devote all of their time and energy to Six Sigma endeavors. The final link is provided by champions and executive leaders, who oversee the integrated and universal application of Six Sigma across the entire organization (Harry and Schroeder, 2000).

References

Gabor, A. (2001). Quality revival, part 2: Ford embraces Six Sigma. The New York Times.

Hahn, G. J., Hill, W. J., Hoerl, R. W., & Zinkgraf, S. A. (1999). The impact of Six Sigma improvement — A glimpse into the future of statistics. The American Statistician, 53(3).

Harry, M., & Schroeder, R. (2000). Six Sigma. Random House. ISBN 0-385-49437-8.

Kanji, G. K. (2002). Business excellence: Make it happen. Total Quality Management, 13(8).

Ross, J. R., & Perry, S. (1999). Total quality management: Text, cases and readings (3rd ed.). CRC Press. ISBN 157444266X.

Stamatis, D. H. (2004). Six Sigma fundamentals: A complete guide to the system, methods and tools. Productivity Press. ISBN 9781563272929.

Victor, B., Boynton, A., & Stephens-Jang, T. (2000). The effective design of work under total quality management. Organization Science, 11(1).

Vora, M. K. (2002). Business excellence through quality management. Total Quality Management, 13(8).

iSixSigma. (2009). Six Sigma — What is Six Sigma? Retrieved December 9, 2009, from