Six Sigma was first used in the business world beginning in the mid 1980s by engineers at Mororola. Their goal was to improve product quality by implementing a common method of counting defects. They developed a historical measurement of the current process output that could be used as a comparison to customer expectations. This was called the baseline. However, they found improvements hard to sustain because of organizational homeostasis. This problem has been overcome with a system of third-party accreditation.
The International Association for Six Sigma Certification (http://iassc.org/ ) represent themselves as the only independent third-party certification association in the Lean Six Sigma industry providing Professional Credentialing. They offer credentials at the yellow, green and black belt levels for the six sigma body of knowledge.
Their credentialing process is as follows.
- Step 1. The applicant purchases a Black Belt, Green Belt or Yellow Belt Exam Voucher, which never expire and can be used it whenever the candidate is ready.
- Step 2. The candidate completes an IASSC Member Profile.
- Step 3. The candidate arranges for and sits for the national standard exam.
Six Sigma Belt Certification
Six Sigma certification is represented on a model of belts, such as yellow, green and black belts. Those who first applied this rhetoric must have envisaged that the Six Sigma process could be presented as analogous to the work of a warrior, and at the same time to that of a tradesman with his or her tool belt. These rhetorical devices were persuasive to those staff embedded within organizational layers. They hid the real nature of Six Sigma as nothing more than a statistical method of sustaining business growth in commercial transactions.
For example, the accepted Lean Six Sigma body of knowledge for black belts is characterised in the following five feedback control loop phases.
- Define Phase
- Measure Phase
- Analyze Phase
- Improve Phase
- Control Phase
The Essence of 6 Sigma Certification
The approach to 6 Sigma certification is derived from the fact that 6 Sigma is embedded within a layer system of management. It may be broken up into three elements.
- Deployment of a management initiative, which includes breakthrough improvement, a systematic and focussed approach, getting the right people, communication, a recognition and reward plan and management reviews of the Six Sigma initiative.
- Improvement projects, which infer the right projects, project management and review, methods for sustaining the gains, getting the right results and project tracking & reporting.
- A set of methods and tools, which is the application of process thinking to deal with facts, figures and other data.
Six Sigma Courses for Staff within Management Layers
Organizational homeostasis means that any gains in business growth from the deployment of a Six Sigma system will be opposed by the staff. This process of homeostasis is an unconscious group process related to the group’s natural negative therapeutic reaction, a concept originally derived from Freudian analysis and applied to managed groups.
Freud described the negative therapeutic reaction in The Ego and the Id (1923b) as an "inverted" reaction, the patient preferring to suffer than be cured: He noted that the need for illness had the upper hand in them over the desire for recovery. For Freud this was the expression of a feeling of guilt that found its satisfaction in the state of illness and sought punishment through suffering. This feeling of guilt is difficult to bring to light, because it remains "silent" for the patient, who does not feel guilty, but rather ill. It manifests itself in a resistance to being treated and Freud regarded it as very difficult to overcome.
The problem has been addressed by the contemporary idea of Customer Value Creation (CVC). CVC is a business philosophy that combines customer value analysis and operational excellence, the fundamental principle being that to grow profitably, a business must focus on creating and exchanging value with customers. This is no more than forcing the various levels of the business to focus on the fact that they are involved in commercial transactions.
The Reason for Six Sigma Certification
Six Sigma is an old and well-established statistical method that was difficult to introduce into organizations with deep management layers, because of the presence of reactive homeostasis. In those layers of management, staff lost track of the commercial transaction essence of the business, and instead, focussed on their individual positioning vis-a-vis the spontaneous day-to-day instructions from their superiors.
Readers will enjoy reviewing Organizational Leadership, Change Management, Dependent Authority.
Sources:
- Andrew Sleeper, Design for Six Sigma Statistics, McGraw Hill, New York, 2006.
- Ronald Snee & Roger Hoerl, Six Sigma Beyond the Factory Floor, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 2005.
- Gary Plaster & Jerry Alderman, Beyond Six Sigma, Wiley, New Jersey, 2006.
- Marsha Shapiro & Anthony Weeks, The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Six Sigma, Alpha, New York, 2005.
- S. Freud, The Ego and the Id (1923b)
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