University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
Getting Started in Six Sigma
Book

Getting Started in Six Sigma

Comprehensive Coverage: A Practical Working Guide

Michael C. Thomsett
Wiley, 2004
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

Books on Six Sigma often read like ancient testaments from which you must blow the dust before you crack them open. Full of half-explained jargon and abstruse terms, they tend to shed more confusion than illumination. Eventually, you throw up your hands and decide you’ll just have to hire a consultant if you are ever to understand this stuff, even though most of those books are - surprise! - written by consultants. This offering by Michael C. Thomsett is a welcome exception. A champion financial writer, Thomsett ventures into heady consultant territory and emerges with an unnervingly comprehensible book about launching a straightforward Six Sigma quality control program. getAbstract.com advises you not to let this book’s brevity fool you. It will tell you everything you always wanted to know about starting in Six Sigma, but were afraid to ask a consultant. Comprehensive as well as comprehensible, it lives up to the description on its cover: "A Practical Working Guide."

Summary

Let Nothing Slip Away

The author once spied a fisherman mending the tears in a large net, which he had spread across the breadth of an entire dock. Methodically, he examined every square centimeter of the net and stopped to fix even the slightest tear.

"Why do you have to fix all the tears, even the little ones?" the author asked.

"It only takes one small tear for all the fish to escape," the fisherman replied.

Just as even one small defect could put the fisherman’s entire catch at risk, in today’s competitive businesses environment, one slip can cost you multitudes of customers. Your manufacturing or customer-service operation will never reach zero defects. That’s not realistic. Still, you can accomplish a lot. The key is paying attention to every detail, just like the fisherman.

"Six Sigma" Defined

Sigma is the Greek letter that scientists and engineers use to represent the idea of standard deviation: the periodic variation in quality that is part of any process. With the Six Sigma approach, you strive to push the quality of your product or service as close as possible to perfection. Adopting Six Sigma means that your company has decided...

About the Author

Michael C. Thomsett is a former accountant who has written 500-plus articles and more than 60 books on assorted business topics, including real estate, investing and management.

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