Design for Sigma Sex
The Six Sigma Way by Peter Pande
Go ahead, ask the question: What is a Music/English/Humanities/Paralegal major doing reading a book like this? Lynn, you've said over and over again that you can't balance your checkbook on your head...this is STATISTICS for goodness sakes!
Well, over the last couple of years, in my quest for trying to figure out what I'm going to do when (if) I grow up, I've gotten sucked into the Six Sigma revolution at the corporate giant where I work. And in being one of the guinea-pig Green Belts here, I've been forced to digest a number of books, videos, classes, et cetera, et cetera...
While the really heavy stats work is still beyond my capability, I do understand the basics, and have a very good understanding of the business concepts behind Six Sigma. For the most part, I was not involved in project work, but rather the daunting task of educating and communicating the concept and practices to a very large (and diverse) corporate population.
I'm not here to teach you all about Six Sigma. You can buy the book for that.
However, if I were to describe Six Sigma in a couple of sentences to the average person on the street, it would go something like this.
In a nutshell, it's all about money. "Bottom line", profits, whatever you want to call them. The potential for errors is eliminated — you strive to a sigma measurement of six, which is equivalent to 3.4 defects for every million opportunities that the defect could occur. Business-wise, it's as close to perfection as you can get.
The Peter Pande book, The Six Sigma Way, was one I found on Amazon, and ordered on my own before it was even available. The pre-reviews looked good, they touted the basic language and examples that would appeal to "commoners" like myself. I had already plowed through Mikel Harry and Richard Schroeder's Six Sigma: The Breakthrough Management Strategy, highlighting and earmarking the most important parts (actually, the most engaging thing about this book is a typo on page 293 in the Index..."Design for Six Sigma" is listed as "Design for Sigma Sex". I'll bet old Mikel had a fit over that one!). I figured one more Six Sigma book couldn't hurt.
From the first paragraph, I was greeted by a writing style that was conversational and easy flowing. This was no dry text book — it was full of examples, both real life and made up, and asides from the authors that kept me engaged in actually reading the book. I read through the entire volume (382 pages) once, and then again, with my trusty highlighter and a supply of sticky notes in hand.
Sections that were particularly well-written and interesting to me were a matrix comparing Six Sigma and TQM, essential themes of Six Sigma, and a road map of how to implement a Six Sigma strategy.
Included in the end of the book are a very good appendix with sample job aids and worksheets that are well organized. I found these examples to be quite useful when I needed a quick "helper" document to explain Sigma calculations. The glossary is adequate (I actually found the one in Harry's book to be more detailed), and the index doesn't have any sex that I can find : )
If your business is contemplating the implementation of Six Sigma in it's business strategy, I would recommend that leaders read this book. It will help in determining: a) If the strategy is RIGHT for your business (it's not for everyone!), b) some customizable methods of implementing Six Sigma, c) some tools and methodologies that can be used. While The Six Sigma Way is not an all-encompassing book to implement the strategy, it is a good introduction and addition to the corporate library.
