Apr-Jun.12 - the Nitie

causes of mistakes or defects in business processes
by focusing on process outputs that are of critical
importance to customers (Snee, 2004). Linderman et
improvement and new product development by stating
that Six Sigma is an organised and systematic method
for strategic process improvement and new product and
service development that relies on statistical methods
Snee (2004), by putting thrust on customer driven aspects
of Six Sigma, says that it is a business improvement
mistakes or defects in business processes by focusing
on process outputs that are of critical importance to
customers. While as per Antony et al. (2005) Six sigma
provides business leaders and executives with the
strategy, methods, tools and techniques to change the
culture of organizations.
Six Sigma is a holistic approach to achieving near
perfection, expressed in terms of no more than 3.4 errors
per million opportunities. This near perfection appears
to many to be overkill or to some, an impossible ideal.
Nonetheless, Six Sigma has been adopted by many
for manufacturing industries and increasingly, in
service industries (Wright and Basu, 2008).
Some of the recent literatures provide further detailed
view of Six Sigma, for example, as per Tang et al (2007)
Six sigma is a systematic, highly disciplined, customer-
business improvement initiative that is based on a
rigorous process focused and data-driven methodology.
While as per Desai (2008) Six Sigma methodology
addresses the major root causes and guarantees the
targeted results, both in terms of improvements desired
approach and methodology for eliminating defects in
any process – from manufacturing to transactional, from
products to services. This breakthrough improvement
and quality improvements based on its highly effective
approach. It drives customer satisfaction and bottomline
results by systematically reducing variation
in processes and thereby promoting a competitive
advantage (Antony and Desai, 2009).
Six sigma as a philosophy seeks to measure current
performance and determine how desired or optimum
performance can be achieved. Any deviation in the
performance of any critical-to-quality characteristic
may be considered a defect (Eckes, 2001). Technically,
sigma is a statistical measure of the quality
consistency for a particular process/product. The
technical concept of Six Sigma is to measure current
performance and to determine how many sigmas
exist that can be measured from the current average
until customer dissatisfaction occur. When customer
dissatisfaction occurs, a defect results (Eckes, 2001).
2.2 Six Sigma and Indian industries
Before and after industrial reforms, Indian industries
have undergone many waves of transformation.
Initially, the focus was on large-scale public and private
sectors, mainly in the core infrastructural production.
The main thrust was on productivity based on Taylor’s
major area of concern. Along with productivity, quality
also emerged as major area of concern after industrial
reforms, that is, globalizations and liberalization. For
competing in the global market, overall operational
excellence becomes the necessity for the Indian
industries to remain globally competitive. Indian
industries are becoming more competitive. There has
in manufacturing, Information Technology (IT) and ITenabled
services. The manufacturing sector has been
evincing a keen interest in improving productivity and
customer responsiveness through a number of initiatives
(More et al., 2008). Six Sigma is the benchmark of
world-class organization. Many Indian industries have
successfully exploited this breakthrough business
the penetration Six Sigma in Indian industries is not as
encouraging as it should be (Desai, 2006a).
Nothing comprehensive is published regarding status
of Six Sigma among Indian industries as a whole so far.
Khanna et al. (2002) highlighted the survey results and
analysis of TQM status and quality tools being followed
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