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Six Sigma and Project Management

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Six Sigma and Project Management

Project Management in Business and Technology, Section 02
Introduction
“Sigma” is a symbol for a unit of measure which measures how much a process deviates from perfection. With the increase in demand for quality products/services, several organizations look for ways to improve their performance to meet customer’s expectations. Six Sigma is considered to be an approach which blends the components of quality management and business process re-engineering. Six Sigma’s aim is to increase the efficiency and remove waste, thereby increasing the customer satisfaction. There are many myths about Six Sigma:
a) It’s only concerned with reducing defects
b) It is a process for production
c) It can’t be applied to engineering activities
d) It is just a training process
e) It is a new concept
History of Six Sigma
Since 1920’s the term ‘sigma’ is used by mathematician’s measurement unit in product quality measurement. In mid-1980’s, engineers at Motorola Inc. coined the term Six Sigma which they used it informally as an in-house initiative to increase the quality for reducing the defects in the production process. Initially the engineers measured the defects in terms of thousands which gradually increased to ‘defects per million’. This prompted the use of ‘Six Sigma’ technology and idea of branding Six Sigma. A company is Six Sigma certified if it could limit its flaws up to 3.4 defects per million.
In 1991, Motorola introduced his first

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