ABSTRACT
Any husband who has ever felt the pressure of moving a large piece of nice furniture through a narrow doorway under the watchful eye of a wife admonishing him to be sure not to scratch either the furniture or the door frame understands the basic concept of Six Sigma only too well. The originators of the concept at Motorola back in their heady, Baldrige Award-winning days when Six Sigma burst onto the manufacturing scene used a similar analogy-that of a car and a garage door. Either way, the wider the door, the less likely you are to fail. If you try to drive a 7-foot-wide car through an 8-foot-wide garage door or you try to move a 30-inch-wide armoire through a 32-inch-wide door, there is not much room to stray from the centerline before you hit something and find yourself in a lot of trouble.
