Learning Six Sigma does not require a student to be a student of management. People who are experienced in working with reputed companies can also opt for Six Sigma. There are numerous institutes and universities that offer complete course on Six Sigma. There are several levels of learning Six Sigma, which are green belts, black belts and master black belts. These short time courses include the practical sessions and theoretical courses.

Six Sigma steps are quite simple to be implemented but needs a lot of analysis. It is desirous to employ well qualified Six Sigma professionals having good deal of experience in the field. There are numerous organizations that have followed the stepwise process of Six Sigma and received genuine benefits in terms of quality and profits.

Six Sigma online training has become an easy mode of acquiring Six Sigma certification course, in comparatively lesser rates. Six Sigma online training provides the students an option to begin and end the training according to their own schedules. Six Sigma certification can be achieved according to the level of course being acquired.

DMAIC is an abbreviation, which stands for “Design-Measure-Analyze-Implement-Verify”.  The Six Sigma DMAIC methodology is a process improvement methodology, which aims at reducing the number of possible defects in an organization, by letting the process operate at a 99.9997% efficiency level. The DMAIC methodology brings about melioration in the process of any firm and thereby defines its outcome.

Process perfection would be the right introduction to Six Sigma. It is statistic-based process melioration methodology used in business firms. It aims at making the process more effective and reliable by limiting the possibility of number of defects to less than 3.4 defects per million opportunities by banking heavily on statistical techniques. Six Sigma is a quality control mechanism, based totally on data and facts rather than relying on assumptions.

Six Sigma has proved itself the best quality control program, available in the market. Six Sigma is now increasingly used in many fields and sectors and is proving itself as a quality control improvement program. Six Sigma provides a statistical approach for solving any problem and thereby improves the quality level of the product as well as the company.

Six Sigma handbook is a worldwide popular, comprehensive reference for the Six Sigma course. It offers the main information, direction and the statistical tools one demands to execute any Six Sigma process. Six Sigma handbook covers all the concepts, which are necessary for the effective progress of any process.

Six Sigma education has become the most recent topic for discussion nowadays. Six Sigma education is aimed at imparting knowledge to the students about all respects of Six Sigma. Six Sigma education, based on the Six Sigma process improvement methodology, is meant for creating excellence in the field of academics.

Sigma Level                  DFMO (Defects-Per-Million-Opportunities)
1 Sigma                                              690,000.00
2 Sigma                                              380,000.00
3 Sigma                                                66,800.00
4 Sigma                                                   6210.00
5 Sigma                                                     230.00
6 Sigma                                                         3.40

• The increase in the corporate waste in the organizations decreased the profit margin because of which there was a demand of a process, which could fight the existing problem and reduce the corporate waste.
• Old process like TQM proved to be unsuccessful or unsatisfactory for many organizations because of which organizations needed a methodology, which is more than just a process improvement program.
• For better consumer satisfaction, companies demanded a methodology, which could improve the quality of their product.
• Companies demanded a methodology, which would lower the number of defects and thereby save the overhead cost incurred while resolving the defects.
• With the increased number of competitors in the market, companies were in need of a process, which would improve their market value and provide a better job satisfaction to its employees.

• Define the process and its requirements.
• Measure the performance of the process after it is executed.
• Analyze the difference in the current performance and the requirement and thereby identifying the factors responsible for it.
• Improve the process by re-developing it, to eradicate the occurred problems.
• Control the performance by implementing the new effective process under a controlled plan.

DMADV is also known as DFSS i.e. Design for Six Sigma and is used for creating new products and its design. It states the following points:

• Define process design and its goals.
• Measure the various factors involved with the design, such as consumer satisfaction, corporate waste, risks etc.
• Analyze the capability of the design.
• Design its details and plan for its verification.
• Verify the design and thereby send it to the process owner for its implementation.

Effects of Six Sigma Implementation:

• The quality improves by reduction in the number of defects.
• The outcome of any process depends on collective data and facts rather than assumptions.
• It increases the profit-level of the company.
• It provides more structured and disciplined approach to solve the existing problem.
• Rather than adopting the conventional cost cutting method, it prefers eradicating costs that provide no value to the consumers.
• The net operational cost reduces.
• By reducing the number of defects, it provides the company a hope for higher expectations.
• It aims at understanding the need and expectations of the consumers and providing them the same with a better quality product.
• The internal communication between the department increases, because of which the employees tend to be more aware of the techniques and strategies used for solving a particular problem.
• It leads to a greater job satisfaction for employees. As a result of which, the internal communication within the organization increases.
• The time consumed in the production reduces; thereby the delivery of the service is fast.
• The organization is more productive; as a result, its market position improves.

Six Sigma has proved itself the best existing methodology in the market, to provide the companies a new dynamic approach to solve the problems and thus leading them to the pinnacles of success. The success story of many big and small companies who adopted the Six Sigma methodology has become a guiding plane for other companies, irrespective of their fields, to replace their old methodology by the same, to achieve the acme of success. For instance, DuPont, No. 1 Innovator in Chemical Industry and No. 1 in Biotech Patents [Source: The Patent Board(TM) and Nature Biotechnology] have acknowledged Six Sigma for their success. [Source: DuPont Annual Report]. Analogously, General Electrics, ranked 2nd in the ‘Global 2000’ list of companies [Source: Forbes website], has also credited Six Sigma for its success. Jack Welch said, “We found that Six Sigma isn’t only for engineers…Regional sales managers can use it to improve forecast reliability, pricing strategies, or pricing variation.”

Critical to Quality (CTQ) includes within its scope, the physical dimensions of height, width, depth and weight. Even the electrical characteristics of a product such as impedance, are also included within the scope of CTQ. Critical to quality study gives a vivid description regarding the requirements of quality in general terms but have deficiency in the specificity to be measurable. Nonetheless, they can be computed through the addition of customer-defined specifications.

Critical to Process (CTP) are the key process input variables. These are the process parameters which influences other critical approaches - Critical to Quality (CTQ), Critical to Delivery (CTD) and / or Critical to Cost (CTC). To illustrate CTP in terms of process, we must mention it as the critical x’s in the function -> y = f(x). It is essential to know what the x’s are - for example, temperature, pressure, humidity, but not essentially their definite setting or level.

Critical to Delivery (CTD) characteristics are services to manufactured goods, and/or transactional characteristics that significantly influence one or more CTSs in terms of Delivery. It represents the customers who have stated needs in relation to delivery. It is of late delivery. However, early delivery might create problem for some of the customers as it may invite excess account requiring payment before the need for such inventory arises. CTDs are transformed into critical requirements of the customer through the quantification of these impact areas.

Critical to Cost (CTC) analysis is the input to the Quality Function Deployment activity designed for the satisfaction of customers’ requirements. This is the process of analyzing the inputs and outputs and find out the path that influence the cost of process outputs. CTC are similar to CTQ but the former deals entirely with the impact of cost on the customer. This is the way to compute numbers and an overall project.

A critical to quality (CTQ) is the flowchart process of identifying quality features or characteristics in regard to the customer and to identify the problems. This is the process of analyzing the inputs and outputs and find out the path that influence the standard or quality of process outputs. CTQ analysis consists of the physical measurement of height, width, depth and weight. They depict the necessities of quality but have deficiency in the specificity to be measurable.

CPM (Critical Path Method) is considered as an important project management technique that regulates the existing projects, plans, schedules and undertakes new and complex projects for various industrial processes. The technique helps management in controlling the work of the project. CPM has twofold streams, one for industrial process and the other military.

The CPM (Critical Path Method) or the Critical Path Analysis is a popular mathematic based algorithm considered to schedule a set of project activities. Scholars of six sigma tag this as a vital tool for efficient project management. CPM was developed by the DuPont Corporation in 1950’s. Currently, it is applied to all forms of projects such as plant maintenance, engineering, product development, research projects, software development etc.

Cpk
Process Capability Index (Cpk) measures the process potential and performance of processes. Process capability evaluates the productivity of an in-control process to the requirement limits by using capability indices. It can be applied only when the output response displays a normal distribution.

Process Capability (Cp) is the indices used to measure how closely and consistently the process can reach the optimum level of satisfaction of customers. Six sigma is the vast commercial way to drive away errors which are resulted by all processes at levels of performance. It takes in all the possible elements and tools including Cp, needed for assuring improved quality products and services.

Correlation
Correlation has a significant place in six sigma. Correlation measures relation between two or more variables. It investigates the relationship between two quantitative and continuous variables. If the value of one variable increases when the value of the other also increases, they are said to be positively correlated. If the value of one variable decreases when the value of other variable is increasing, it is said to be negatively correlated. If one variable does not affect the other, they are not correlated.

A Cost of Quality (COQ) constructs a chart displaying prevention, appraisal, and failure costs over time in order to demonstrate the cost of poor quality. The Cost of Quality can be categorized into two divisions: The Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ), and The Cost of Good Quality (COGQ). The cost of poor quality looks over the entire internal as well as the external costs which is the outcome of the product imperfection. Alternatively, the cost of good quality is the prevention costs that are used in prevention and assessment such as, quality planning, error proofing, quality education, Six Sigma training etc.

Convenience sampling is understood as a method of sampling units on the basis of easy availability. Its objective is to evaluate the features of a population using comparatively small sample taken from the population.

Control plan process is meant to control the features of product and the connected process variables to guarantee capability and stability of the manufactured goods over time. It is a management device to make out and to check the activity which is mandatory for controlling the critical inputs or key outputs for a process in order that the process will continually meet its product or service goals.

Control chart for given values is used when the process is fixed and the mean and standard deviation are known. The control chart, also known as the Shewhart Chart, is a statistical tool for monitoring a business or manufacturing process in order to maintain or improve quality. It is one of the vital methods of Statistical Process Control (SPC), which assures the business process to be in a state of statistical stability.

A control chart is a significant tool applied to monitor and improve quality. It is one of the effective seven basic statistical tools often applied in Six Sigma along with scatter diagram, flowchart, pareto chart, cause-and-effect diagram, check sheet and histogram. All the tools are used to evaluate business or manufacturing process in an effective way.

Continuous distribution is a distribution of random variables which may assume any value in the number line whether integer or not. It is also known as continuous probability distributions and applied in six sigma to evaluate the processes in an improved manner. It is applied when the characteristic being examined are found to be a continuous variable.

Continuous data refers to data that can be measured on a measurement scale with other data. It is also known as variable data and can be subdivided into smaller measurements limited by the recording or measurement system. It can have any numeric value and can be divided into precision.

Contingency tables are used in the application of the chi-square test that is implemented to evaluate the connection between two variables. This table provides an effective way of arranging attribute data while permitting us to eagerly find out relative probabilities. To quote an example, contingency tables can be made to use in place of the fraction out of the ordinary control chart to analyze a group of preliminary samples for not having enough of control.

Consumer risk or consumer's risk is a potent risk that can be found in all consumer-oriented commodities or product that the commodities might fail to meet the standards of quality. It might also pass undetected through the manufacture’s system of quality control and enter the marketplace for consumers. It is the risk that a consumer will recognize as a lot of inferior quality in comparison with the Limiting Quality Level.

Consensus criteria method is one of the several tools used in improving process by prioritizing items and portraying them in terms of weighted criteria. This process is made to use by combining a tree and matrix diagramming methods to carry out a pair-wise assessment of items resulting to narrowing down to a most preferred or most effectual priority wise sequence of events.

Confounding is a statistical tool that is also known as confounding factor, lurking variable, confound or confounder. Extensive experiments of statistics and the studies of six sigma feature this topic and practical discussions on it.

Confidence interval is one of the common concepts used in statistical studies. There are quite a number of cases where this concept yields great results. This is used to obtain a value which is almost equal to the universal value of any given mathematical problem.

Completely Randomized Design
Completely randomized design is one of the most competent statistical tools which are widely used in solving the statistical as well as management problems. This design is perfect in analyzing and calculating the experimental designs without fail. The hands on experience help the professionals to use these designs for problem solving and also in improving the current infrastructural problems.

Complementary Probability
Complementary probability is a popular concept mainly used in statistics. This is derived from the basics of probability theory. The principle of complementary probability is that a set of two complementary events cannot happen at the same time. The concept is studied by not only the students of statistics but also the six sigma professionals as probability is included in their green belt certification courses.

Comparing proportions is the statistical method to find out if one proportion is truly different from another. This comparison of proportion from two or more samples is carried out by implementing the chi-square statistics. The comparison is made by contrasting the experimental proportions to the proportion which are estimated to find out whether there are any variations between the samples. If the experimental result is larger than the estimated result, it is said that there is a considerable difference in the sample proportions.

Six Sigma statistics is a compilation of the time-tested management strategies, which has always proved to be beneficial for the overall improvements of the companies. There are certain tools which are widely used to reduce the number of defects from a system.

Six Sigma is a data-driven methodical approach applied to the running processes in a company for improvement in the performance and the overall quality of services and goods. It is a tactic adopted towards perfection, or almost perfection that helps in the company’s competence in the market. Many companies like Motorola, Allied Signal, Xerox, and General Electric have used it and have experienced drastic improvements in the level of customer satisfaction and market value of the shares. This is obviously a good thing since it places the company in a good position to avail of further opportunities. No doubt, Six Sigma statistics is the best set of management tools that is available in the market at the moment.

• Definition of Six Sigma Statistics: The statistical approach of Six Sigma can be defined as a quality objective that is to be achieved by successfully implementing a Six Sigma project. It judges in a quantitative manner, if the products manufactured by a company are meeting the customer’s demands or not. The model that is followed universally in the Six Sigma statistics is the DMAIC model. It stands for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control. In short, define the problem, measure the scopes and probable effects of the project, analyze various aspects of the problem, improve the system in a systematic manner and control the standard of the process. This is how the Six Sigma works. But for the model to work properly, a number of statistical tools and methodologies are used. These include all the tactics that are generally used in other quality management projects. But they are incorporated in the DMAIC model which accounts for its effectiveness.
• Significance of the Statistical Methods: The statistical methods used in the Six Sigma process are not like the tailor-made stilted programs of any statistical training institute. They are specific to a company and its problems. The Six Sigma statistics help maintaining the goals and objectives of the company. Some manufacturing organizations may include lean thinking to the program while this is not normal in regular training institutes. Six sSigma statistics basically reinforce the use of observational and experimental attitude in the problem situations. Two levels of factorial experimentation are followed along with extensive use of graphical methods and technologies keeping an eye on the experiments done. They check the scopes of an experiment done, facilitating the understanding of the statisticians.
• Benefits of the Six Sigma Statistics: Not going to the mathematical details of it, to precisely put it across, Six Sigma statistics mean Six standard deviations from the arithmetic mean, taking a lower specification limit and an upper specification limit. Standard deviation is the quantification of the variation existing from the mean, depending on the placing of the data points. If it takes up a lot of space, then variation is large, if it takes up little space, then the variation is negligible. Now, if a large portion of the variation extends out of the specification limit, then it makes a low Sigma score. But when it extends a little from the mean and doesn’t extend much out of the specification limit, it makes a high Sigma score. When we are talking of Six Sigma statistics, we are actually talking of this score. The standard variation is around 3.4 defects per million opportunities.  It statistically ensures that out of 100, 99.997 products would meet the target quality.

Hence, Six Sigma statistics is by far the most effective management strategy that evolved from the time tested rules and techniques.

Six Sigma Calculation is an important part of the system when it comes to evaluating the current and future situation of a system. There are various types of calculators that are used as a tool to perform the Six Sigma calculations without fail. The number of defects occurring in the set up is calculated first and then the expected yields from the strategies are chalked out efficiently. Some of the frequently used Six Sigma calculators are “Process Sigma calculators”, “Sample Size Calculators” and “Sigma Level Calculators”. The Six Sigma calculations can provide excellent yields in terms of customer satisfaction or great product quality.

There are various types of matrices which are used in the Six Sigma methodologies in order to make the calculations without any sort of error in it. Though simple, Six Sigma calculations are not good enough when it comes to attaining the perfect condition, but they are helpful in assessing the number of defects present in the existing system. Moreover, the organizations can use the Six Sigma calculations in all departments so that they can attain supreme quality when it comes to developing products or providing services to the customers. In short, Six Sigma calculation is a tool that aids in identifying the defects in a system and also evaluating the quality of the services obtained from the existing set-up. There are certain situations where the Six Sigma calculations are used which are as follows:

DPO: This is also known as the “Defects per Opportunity”. The Six Sigma calculation is used to make an estimate of the total count of defects in a particular system or unit of the organization. The three important data required to make this Six Sigma calculation are; the number of errors, number of opportunities and units. Here, the total number of defects is divided by the multiplication result of units and opportunities.

CTQ: CTQ is also known as “Critical to Quality”. The CTQ is generally used by the companies to assess the current situation and defect level of the particular department which needs improvement. In fact, this is the Six Sigma calculation which helps a company understand what are the needs and expectations of their customers and also aids in achieving it without fail.
Six Sigma calculations can be performed with the help of various types of calculators which are:

• Process Sigma Calculators: The process Sigma calculators are helpful in calculating the yields and defects in terms of percentages, number of opportunities and units and DPMO.
• Sigma Level Calculators: Sigma level calculators are further categorized into three types: 1) Sigma level calculators for the Non-centered processes, 2) Sigma level calculators for the quality of yields and 3) Sigma level from the DPMO. These calculators are frequently used by the Six Sigma specialists in order to evaluate the recent situation of an organization.
• Sample Size Calculators: This is the simplest way to do the Six Sigma calculations. It is a spreadsheet that determines the sample size or the number of points. This is very helpful for its effectiveness and simplicity.

Generally the Six Sigma calculations are performed in terms of percentages. The defects, opportunities, yields and units are all used by the Six Sigma consultants to work out the existing and future requirements of the division. Now, the calculations are obviously an indispensable part of Six Sigma, which enhances the output significantly. Sometimes the organizations also modify the calculations keeping the basic principles intact so that they can resolve the issues which are strictly company specific. The customization is surely helpful in achieving more benefits out of the Six Sigma methodologies.

Six sigma tools are very effective in improving the products and customer services. Six sigma is not just a couple of strategies to manage the organizations and their departments. These quality management tools are extremely useful for all levels of six sigma project. These are discussed in the six sigma training courses. Contract management software, brainstorm, affinity diagrams, QFD, fishbone diagrams, Pareto charts, run charts etc are some of the popular six sigma tools.

Monte Carlo simulation is an important application used in six sigma projects. The consultants use this particular approach to tally the collected data with the hypothetical results to be obtained. In the regular DMAIC projects Monte Carlo simulation is used to analyze the collected data and also make related improvements in required fields. The results are prepared on the basis of the given variable inputs. The curves drawn from the analysis can take different shapes and sizes which are used to estimate the result and success level of the six sigma projects.

Pareto chart is one of the most important tools used by the six sigma consultants during the implementation of the projects. It was described by Vilfredo Pareto who was a renowned Italian economist. Categorization of the data is important for creating the Pareto charts correctly. The results are obtained in the form of graphs. This, unlike bar graphs, shows the output as frequency points.

ANOVA in six sigma stands for analysis of variation in six sigma courses. Six sigma is an aid for the organizations that need improvements in various departments and this is why, all the time-tested strategies of management are included in the methodologies of six sigma. The black belts and master black belts are coached thoroughly on this particular topic as this involves the statistical analysis of the data fluctuations. The consultants should understand the concept of ANOVA by heart in order to become successful in six sigma project implementations.