Six Sigma

Motorola Six Sigma

Motorola has always been recognized as a pioneer in Cellular technology providing technical Wireless and Wired telecommunication solutions and products to its customers. In 1988, Motorola took the world by storm by its quality initiatives. So significant were its quality initiatives that apart from receiving the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, it also laid the foundation for the Six Sigma set of practices which later was to be adopted as the pioneering technique aimed at improving process efficiencies.

What is Motorola Six Sigma?

Motorola Six Sigma as it was known then, changed the perception of measuring quality. Quality which was till then measured in percentages received a statistical perception to it. Motorola defined Quality to be measured as defects per million transactions thus eliminating the percentage factor from the whole equation. Motorola Six Sigma attributes Six Sigma process mean to every process and lays down the standard that processes operating in Six Sigma level can have process shifts of plus or minus six sigma from the mean.

An example would be, if the process mean for a process is 5 and the sigma level is 0.4, if data for the process oscillates between 3.8 and 5.2, the process is in control and operating in the Six Sigma level. This could be better expressed by means of a normal distribution curve but translated to pure numbers, this equates to 3.4 per defects per million opportunities on an outer bound. Motorola's change of measuring Quality in terms of defects per million opportunities was fueled by the thought process that modern technology may not accept the old way and ideas of measuring quality and it may need newer practices of measuring quality.

Motorola Six Sigma - Puzzling facts?

Motorola said that if a process is operating at and under 3.4 defects per million opportunities, it is a Six Sigma process. Standard working of a Normal Distribution Table would signify that the non-adherence or defects would be 0.002 defects per million opportunities. Motorola countered this by explaining that process sigma can deviate on the range of 1.5 sigma shifts from the process mean.

The graphical area beyond the area signified by the 4.5 sigma shifts from the process mean indicates that the process is operating at 3.4 defects per million opportunities and hence it conforms to the Six Sigma requirements.

Motorola Six Sigma revolutionized and transformed the way how quality was perceived and measured. Till then , it was a case of conformance of up to 99.73% on manufacturing and developing products. Motorola changed all of that and signified the fact that anything less than 99.9998% would mean that it does not meet engineering tolerance standards.