Quality Improvement: Six Sigma
Individual Paper, Unit 6 Revised Research Paper
Shelli Cornwell scornwell@capellauniversity.edu BUS3004
Developing a Business Perspective
12/18/2011

Introduction The primary focus of this paper is to introduce ways to incorporate quality improvement within an organization. Quality matters when servicing members, providers, employees, groups, brokers, etc. Ultimately, customers do not care about great productivity rates when on the receiving end of quality errors. Measuring quality throughout an organization should be the number one focus. There are many quality management tools available to an organization; however; Six Sigma is a strategy that many world class organizations have implemented to improve quality, service and customer satisfaction. The word Sigma is a statistical term that measures how far a given process deviates from perfection. An organization as a hole needs to embrace feedback on errors and determine solutions to these areas for improvement. And above all, there must be a better balance between productivity and quality. “Six Sigma improves production quality by removing variables that can cause defects” (Brinlee, n.d.). When a customer has to continuously spend time on the phone or in writing to have an issue resolved, this becomes frustrating to customers. When an organization has displeased customers due to defects in the quality of service, this can ultimately have an enormous impact on the reputation of an organization, and have a downstream affect such as contracting with a provider, renewing group contracts, increasing membership, etc.

What is Six Sigma? The six sigma methodology is much more than a tool to eliminate a defect within a process, it is a comprehensive system improvement approach aimed at serving customers and reducing waste, which results in overall profitability across