21st Century Quality
STANLEY A. MARASH

 I hear more and more about the information age, the post-industrial age, the service age. Indeed, the trends that the developed world has experienced for the past few decades will undoubtedly migrate to the emerging economies during the next century. Hence, as manufacturing technologies become more automated and product quality becomes expected as a matter of course, the market discriminator will be service.

Take, for example, the rapidly growing and highly competitive telecommunications industry. The major service providers are using the same telephone lines, cables, fiber-optic networks and airwaves, as well as hardware and software developed and produced by the same cadre of suppliers. Moreover, the reliability and quality of these products are extremely high. Why, then, does a customer select one cellular phone service, long-distance carrier, Internet provider or paging network over another? Cost is an obvious factor. But the costs of all these services continue to drop as the competition gets more intense, and the pricing structures often show very little difference.

In the final analysis, the key discriminator is becoming service quality. This distinction is a synthesis of the hardware, software and service reliability and accessibility--in short, its user-friendliness, its ability to satisfy and delight the customer. But how do we measure service quality? Six Sigma--the quality philosophy developed by Motorola and adopted by many other organizations (notably General Electric)--offers a set of tools that apply equally to design, production and service.

In my 38 years in the quality profession, I have been exposed to at least 40 programs that have purported to be the answer to industry's process management problems. They include zero defects, management by objectives, quality circles, total quality management and reengineering. These "programs du jour" are usually met with smug indifference by middle management and staff, who remain confident that, given time, the program will simply fade away. What makes Six Sigma different?

First, Six Sigma is a quality philosophy based on setting attainable short-term goals while striving for long-range objectives. It uses customer-focused goals and measurements to drive continuous improvement at all levels in any enterprise. The long-term objective is to develop and implement processes so robust that defects are measured at levels of only a few per million opportunities.

Second, Six Sigma provides a measure that applies to both product and service activities: defects per million opportunities (DPMO). Historically (dating back to the 1920s), we discussed the capabilities of a business process in statistical terms as meeting three sigma. This refers to a process in which the average (mean) is fixed and the variability (sigma), when multiplied by plus and minus three sigma, encompasses 99.73 percent of the operations. Thus, three sigma process capability would contain about 0.27 percent defects. Assuming that the mean will shift by one-and-one-half sigma, the measure would be 66,807 DPMO. A process of four sigma, which is about where many companies are today, would contain 6,210 DPMO, and a six sigma process would contain 3.4 DPMO.

Some readers may remember the so-called zero defects programs of the 1960s. What makes Six Sigma any different? For one thing, Six Sigma focuses on defining customer satisfaction measures and using teams to continuously reduce the DPMO on each measure. The number (3.4 DPMO) is so small that it is perceived as "virtual perfection." The fact that it is not zero allows people to buy into Six Sigma intellectually. They will probably be willing to strive for three parts per million because it is finite. If executive staff, middle managers and others can believe this goal is possible and communicate that belief, then this approach has a good chance for success.

A major thrust in Six Sigma organizations has been creating highly trained experts who are assigned full-time (for a designated period of time) to organize teams to work on improvement projects. The question of where Six Sigma will be 20 or 50 years from now depends greatly on senior executives understanding that just creating teams is insufficient, unless the organization changes the way it adapts to the new targets and methodologies.

These highly skilled and trained experts lead project teams that produce measurable cost savings. They also act as change agents. The most skilled have mastered the tools of Six Sigma and have successfully applied them to a number of projects. Projects are defined in terms of real problems--causing measurable cycle time, quality or cost impacts--and capable of being resolved in a four-to-six-month time period.

Hopefully, organizations will look at the holistic nature of Six Sigma and not just concentrate on training a lot of people. I predict that, even if it's called something else, the drive toward defining operations that affect service quality, providing metrics for these operations and then striving to improve them in the same way we drive product quality, will be one of the most significant aspects of the quality movement in the next century.

About the author

Stanley A. Marash, Ph.D., is chairman and CEO of STAT-A-MATRIX/The SAM Group. He can be reached at telephone (732) 548-0600 or e-mail smarash@qualitydigest.com . For information about STAT-A-MATRIX, call (800) 472-6477 or visit www.thesamgroup.com . © 1999 STAT-A-MATRIX.