a) What conclusion would you draw regarding the use of Six Sigma if you were to introduce it to your company?
b) What would you learn from this as it applies to introducing a new technology to your company?
Six Sigma is a quality-improvement process engineered to produce error-free products 99.9997% of the time. After reading the two articles, it is of my opinion that Six Sigma, while extremely helpful and beneficial in certain industries, can be stifling when it comes to innovation.
Six Sigma has been successful at Motorola over the years, helping the company achieve a 22.4% market share in the highly competitive cell phone industry. Motorola has been successful using Six Sigma because they have cracked the code on how to use it in the innovation process without letting it control the entire innovation process. The Motorola Razr, a very popular and successful cell phone, is the perfect example of this. The Six Sigma process was applied specifically to the antenna of the phone, a common problem area for cell phones in general. By focusing their Six Sigma efforts, Motorola was able to produce a highly innovative, slim phone, and eliminate errors in a generally high-error zone, the antenna. This illustrates the perfect balance between innovation and quality control. Motorola didn’t allow Six Sigma to control the entire innovation process, but instead, focused it in a very specific area of the new product.
This process differs from the way other companies, i.e. 3M, use the Six Sigma process. In some innovation processes at certain companies, employees are forced to integrate Six Sigma into each phase of the innovative process. This requires precise, detailed documentation during such times where a creative guru would rather let his brainstorming skil ...