This article uses excerpts and paraphrased statements from the following book to describe the Six Sigma approach for approving performance. This review serves to highlight the provisions for CM and/or CMII.

"Six Sigma - The Breakthrough Management Strategy Revolutionizing the World's Top Corporations" by CEO Mikel Harry and President Richard Schroeder of the Six Sigma Academy, 300 pages, ©2000 ($27.50 for Hardback at Barnes and Nobel)

Products and services "talk" in the form of data. Without data, products and services are mute and companies are deaf. But data, properly assembled and summarized with the aid of statistics, creates a "tool" for understanding defects. (p71)

All products and services are the results of processes. (p74) Per Jack Welch of GE, Six Sigma means fixing processes so they are nearly perfect and then controlling them so they stay fixed. The common objective in virtually all Six Sigma projects is the elimination of variance. (p55)

It is the simplicity of statistics that allow us to measure, improve and monitor the processes within our organizations. Statistics allow companies to collect data, translate that data into information, and then interpret the information so that decisions can be made on fact, rather than intuition or past experience. (p24 - 25)

Six Sigma means that the opportunity for a defect in a critical-to-quality characteristic is only 3.4 defects per million opportunities. (p13)

The higher the sigma level, the fewer the number of defects per unit. (p8) The typical corporation produces products and services between a 3.5 and 4 sigma level, which means that the cost of quality is typically around 20 to 30 percent of each sales dollar. (p29) Companies below three sigma usually don't survive. (p15)

Pareto's law tells us that 80 percent of defects will be traceable to 20 percent of the different types of defects that can occur. By focusing on the "vital few" and avoiding those with lesser impact, companies can leverage this information to produce maximum results. (p141)

A company that cannot express how a process is performing in the form of a measurement does not understand its processes nor the capability of the business. (p131)

Almost every organization can be broken down into three basic levels. The highest level, the umbrella of a corporation, is the business level. The second is the operations level. The third is the process level. Six Sigma needs to be understood and integrated at every level of the organization. (p108)

To diminish resistance to change, executive leadership must first fold new or improved systems into the strategic plan of the business. Regardless of the methods used, Six Sigma must be incorporated into the strategic planning framework to ensure that accountability is well established and the resources required to promote change are allocated in a timely fashion. (p122)

Each business needs to identify best practices, judge when to standardize a particular policy, practice, and/or process, and then disseminate the new standard throughout relevant parts of the organization. (p114) Practices become institutionalized when interwoven into operating policies and procedures and then reinforced through reward and recognition systems. Standards must be established and consistently met. (p128)

Black belts discover what methods correct problems, then standardize those methods to ensure that those problems don't reoccur. Once these methods become established procedures, they are shared throughout the operation. (p129) Lessons learned can be standardized and incorporated into management's thinking and the organization's intellectual capital. (p137)

Corporations in Europe and the US that operated at 3.5 to 4 sigma thirty years ago are still operating at that level today. (p8-9) Companies that are in the process of implementing multisystems, such as Oracle, SAP, and Bahn, should put these programs on hold until Six Sigma is firmly rooted in the company. There is no leveraged benefit in systemizing a three or four sigma company. (p175-176)

Past definitions of quality focused on conformance to standards, as companies strived to create products and services that fell within certain specification limits. Such definitions of quality assumed that the standards were correct regardless of how those standards were met. (p6)

New definition of quality: A state in which value entitlement is realized for the customer and producer in every aspect of the business relationship. (p6)

Numerous studies have shown that 70% of a product's total cost is determined by its design. Some management consultants estimate as high as 80%. In fact, companies implementing Six Sigma find that the overwhelming majority of defects (80%) are created during the design process. (p36)

Per Howard Worzel of Polaroid: "the person who takes over my job may not know what the problem is, much less how to fix it, because the process was never documented. Six Sigma first corrects the process, and then documents the process so that anyone with the "cookbook" can keep the process under control." (p100)