Six Sigma – A Management Philosophy

Executive Summary I chose this topic because it was something that I’ve heard a great deal about, but have very little experience with. At my company, MetLife, there has been some recent investigation into Six Sigma and how it can help improve our Financial Reporting processes. While Six Sigma can involve some very complex statistical theory, especially in the world of manufacturing, I wanted to concentrate more on the Management philosophy and how it can implemented in a service type organization.

Introduction
History
After World War II, the Japanese were left to rebuild their destroyed economy. They had to figure out a way to rebuild with very little resources other than human capital. Japanese leaders realized that to compete in the world market they must make drastic changes to quality management. (Kumar, 2006) Throughout the 50’s and 60’s, with the help of quality gurus like Deming and Juran, the Japanese made rapid improvements in quality of the production of goods and services. Meanwhile, the United States did very little to change their methods of operation. At the time, the United States was the main source for goods and services in the western world. There was very little incentive to concentrate on expensive quality improvement projects that would hurt the short-term bottom line. Instead, the focus was on production and performance. (Kumar, 2006). By the early 80’s, Japan had solidified it’s place as a competitor in the world market. The US was rapidly losing market share in the automotive and electronics industry. (Kumar, 2006) As a result, US business began embarking on their own quality initiatives and reinventing the view of how valuable quality is when producing goods and services. The concept of Six Sigma was put into action by Motorola during the mid1980’s.