ABSTRACT
Since the 1920s the word sigma has been used by mathematicians and engineers as a symbol for a unit of measurement in product quality variation. In the mid-1980s, engineers at Motorola, Inc. in the United States used Six Sigma as an informal name for an in-house initiative for reducing defects in production processes, because it represented a suitably high level of quality. Certain engineers felt that measuring defects in terms of thousands was an insufficiently rigorous standard. A typical Six Sigma implementation is much like an organization’s introduction to Lean. Given the significant investment made to this point, organizations certainly intend for those efforts to be sustained over time; to embed Six Sigma into their culture.
