The importance of quality has now been recognized by businesses for decades. However, there are many philosophies and programs that have been proposed and used in the elusive quest for increased quality. One of the more recent (and more successful) attempts at formalizing the approach to quality improvement is the Six Sigma initiative that was developed at Motorola (and later adopted in many other companies).
Identify a company that uses the Six Sigma quality improvement program other than the ones discussed in the textbook or the lecture pages (also, do not use the same company that you analyzed in W1 project, and that you will be discussing again in W3 project). For this company, answer the following questions:
What element of the organization’s activities did they use Six Sigma to improve?
What caused the company to undertake the Six Sigma initiative?
What were the positive results caused by the implementation of Six Sigma improvement processes?
Were there any problems associated with attempting to implement Six Sigma within the organization (this does not occur in every organization)?
Based on your research about this company and the readings for this week, would you say that Six Sigma is an important area of quality management? If so, why? If not, why not?
