Six Sigma and the Cost of(Poor) Quality

Any organization's Six Sigma program may be at high risk without heeding the lessons learned from the past and that tries to operate without a robust business foundation. A foundation that preferably should consist of stepping-stones such as a 5-S house-keeping program, an effective Integrated Management System (IMS), which includes a strong focus on planning for quality to fully capture the Voice of the Customer (VOC), and an organization-wide training scheme, as well as a reliable Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ) system. That's the best advise I can give to any organization that wishes to embark on a Six Sigma improvement program and hope to be successful. The paper will elaborate on the above issues and provide suggested solutions based on the review of published historical information and the experiences encountered over the last four decades by the author, as a quality practitioner and consultant, in industries that produced safety-critical product. This author maintains that few fundamentally new or useful things have been created in the field of Quality during the last couple of decades. Nevertheless, this paper deliberates on a number of relatively “newer” issues including the concept of “three types of customers”, the CTC, “Critical To Customer” term, the eight Quality Management Principles of the new ISO 9000 family, the growth of industry-specific standards, the adoption of Integrated Management Systems, the rebirth of AS2561 COQ standard, the spread of Six Sigma as well as related ASQ certification and the need for a robust business foundation to ensure Six Sigma survival.