1. What is Six Sigma? There is a business notion that is related to this aspect in quality

Six Sigma is a methodology used to improve business processes by utilizing statistical analysis rather than guesswork. This proven approach has been implemented within a myriad of industries to achieve hard and soft money savings, while increasing customer satisfaction. 6Sigma.us is at the forefront of Six Sigma certification and consulting services.

Six sigma is a methodology, discipline and a set of techniques used to improve a process by eliminating defects. In addition, it is also considered a management philosophy. The core of this philosophy is to develop future leaders and display strategies on how to conduct a business effectively. Six Sigma creates common language throughout an organization and serves as a method to transform culture. At its highest level possible, six sigma is there to improve both efficiency and effectiveness. Efficiency includes time, costs, and labor values; amounts of resources consumed, whereas effectiveness measures the degree to which the customer?s needs are met.

Background to Six Sigma The contemporary business environment is rapidly evolving. With the increased impetus toward globalization, organizations are undergoing continuous and rapid change driven by increased consumer expectations, the advent of new technologies, and the very real prospect of global competition (Bendell, 2005). This has resulted in a dramatically different business environment in which the modern business, in order to survive and prosper, is forced to evolve and regularly revise their internal and external business processes. One of the tools that was developed to aid in this change process was Six Sigma.

Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects (errors) and minimizing variability in manufacturing and business processes. It uses a set of quality management methods, including statistical methods, and creates a special infrastructure of people within the organization ("Black Belts", "Green Belts", etc.) who are experts in these methods. Each Six Sigma project carried out within an organization follows a defined sequence of steps and has quantified targets. These targets can be financial (cost reduction or profit increase) or whatever is critical to the customer of that process (cycle time, safety, delivery, etc.).

Six Sigma is one of those words that most individuals don’t use in their everyday vocabulary. What is Six Sigma you may ask? Maybe it is some kind of product, a slogan or maybe it 's a company. If you thought it was any of these things, you 're wrong. Six Sigma is actually a management philosophy. It was developed by engineer Bill Smith (while working at Motorola in 1985). Six Sigma sets extremely high objectives, collects data, and analyzes results which reduces defects in products and services.

What is lean Six Sigma? Lean Six Sigma is the values defect prevention over defect detection which is a face-based, date-driven philosophy of improvement. Reducing variation, waste, and cycle time to drive customer satisfaction and bottom line result. A competitive advantage is created while promoting the use of work standardization and flow. So that every employees of a company should be involved to apply anywhere variation and waste exist to improve the performance. The demarcation is blurred between Six Sigma and lean. To attain positive results it requires aspects of both approaches of the improvement process so that “Lean Six Sigma” the term is with greater frequency that we are hearing about. Reducing process variation and enhancing process

Founded by Motorola, USA in 1986, Six Sigma is a strategy that optimizes the process of outputting products and services by getting rid of errors so that results are always constant and always growing. The term Six Sigma is one that comes from the manufacturing sector, in particular statistical modeling of processes involved in manufacturing. A sigma rating is used to indicate the yield of a

Originally, Six Sigma was designed for control of defects and was part of total quality management (TQM) (Gupta, 2003). Since its creation, however, it has gone well beyond what it was originally. It is much more of a methodology now, and used to address and handle the variations that are seen in processes. These variations can cause defects, and that makes them unacceptable deviations that stray too far from the mean. When the variations can be managed systematically, the defects will be largely eliminated from any product (Gupta, 2003; Whalen, 2002; Witt, 2002). Because of that, the Six Sigma objective is to provide performance, value, and reliability to every end user or customer on a level that is world-class. Through the years it has gotten much better at meeting that objective, and more companies have began adopting it. One such company is Cessna. The company makes airplanes and airplane parts, and its name is almost synonymous with small, personal aircraft.

Six Sigma main purposes were to enhance performance and value. The use of Six Sigma in organization can upgrade communication among employees, customers, and shareholders. An organization which applies Six Sigma within their establishment is taking on a commitment to motivate and instruct their employees on the various principles. In essence, the Six Sigma is has become a way that companies can protect themselves from accountability. “ If a company produces a product that is low in quality or can harm its user, the organization can use the defense that quality is at the forefront in order to be viewed positively” (http://www.tech-faq.com/).

This paper explores eight published books about Six Sigma and Total Quality Management. This paper will compare, contrast, analyze, discover, balance and provide excellent understanding of both quality methods.

The Six Sigma improvement method is problem-focused and its main objectives are decreasing scrap, earning income and creating value (Saghaei et al, 2012). Motorola developed this concept in 1986. There were three meanings of six sigma provided by Brue (2006). It is the level of quality that a process assures, it is a problem solving methodology and lastly it is a management philosophy. Alternatively it is also said to be a project driven approach to process and product quality improvement (Ray and Das, 2010). This approach ensures the process to be 99.9996% defect free. The performance level of a project can be obtained by subtracting the average of readings of errors in a process from the given specification

Six sigma is a highly disciplined process that focuses on developing and delivering near perfect products and services consistently Six sigma is also a management strategy to use statistical tools and project work to achieve

This paper is an analysis of the three published journals on Six Sigma model. This literature review discusses about the different parameters which are used in implementing a successful Six Sigma methodology. Kamran Moosaa* and Ali Sajidb (2010) made a study on critical analysis of Six Sigma implementation. Six Sigma is known as a method, metric or a programme. It follows a DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improvement, and Control) process. The other articles state that how teamwork and process management are beneficial for Six Sigma implementation in an organization. Hence, this literature review evaluates that Six Sigma is better in pursuing continuous improvement in customer satisfaction, increasing profits, and in overall business strategy when compared to other Total Quality Management tools.

Six Sigma at Wipro simply means a measure of quality that strives for near perfection. It is an umbrella initiative covering all business units and divisions so that it could transform itself in a world class organization. At Wipro, it means:

The company has demonstrated that Six Sigma could lead to higher quality output, increased productivity, and energised employees. Today, records available in the public domain indicate that more than 30,000 employees have been trained in Six Sigma, with plans to complete GreenBelt training for all salaried employees. Globally, over 11,000 projects have closed and more than 12,000 projects are currently underway. Apart from implementing Six Sigma within the organization, 3M has demonstrated the need to assist their customers in developing creative solutions for their business and manufacturing challenges. Hundreds of 3M industrial business-customer Six Sigma projects have been accomplished. Here, three examples are given of a major automotive manufacturer, a well-known food producer, and a leading manufacturer who had quality problems. The automotive manufacturer had a significant challenge with its largest-selling vehicles. 3M assisted in using Six Sigma to provide a cost effective solution in a short time frame. The well-known food producer needed to keep track of the product that its makes and ships. In the event of a product recall, it needed to locate every food item shipped, right down to the hour it left the production line. With the assistance of the 3M Six Sigma project, 3M-developed