History of Six Sigma

General History

The history of Six Sigma traces its roots and terminology to Bill Smith at Motorola in the late 1980s, who first used the term as a quality management methodology. As the "Father of Six Sigma”, Bill forged the path for Six Sigma through Motorola's CEO Bob Galvin, who strongly supported Bill's passion and efforts.

Beginning in the late 1980s, Motorola extensively applied Six Sigma as a process management discipline across the company, leveraging Motorola University. In 1988, Motorola was recognized with the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for its achievement in quality improvement.

Shortly thereafter, General Electric implemented the Six Sigma methodology under the leadership of Jack Welch in the 1990s. GE extended Six Sigma by linking it to results and executive compensation. GE also published financial benefits from Six Sigma in its annual reports. Six Sigma quickly became a widely adopted corporate practice and was implemented internally by many Fortune 500 companies as an effective way of improving business performance.

History and Timeline

Lean and Six Sigma

Most Six Sigma programs also cover the aspects, tools, and topics of Lean or Lean Manufacturing. Six Sigma and Lean are complementary and work hand in hand, drawing on each other’s strengths and together offering substantial benefits to those who follow these disciplined approaches. Six Sigma places greater emphasis on analytics and focuses on minimizing process variability, shifting the process mean, and delivering within customer specification limits.

Lean takes a fundamentally sound, practical approach to eliminating waste and increasing efficiency. Lean, and its own popularity relative to the history of Six Sigma, began to crest and gain significant traction in the mid-1960s with the Toyota initiative "TPS” or Toyota Production System. The concepts and methodology of Lean, however, were fundamentally applied much earlier by both Ford and Boeing in the early 1900s.

Because both Six Sigma and the revitalization of Lean have occurred within the last 30-50 years, Lean Six Sigma and its history continue to be written with each new deployment and with each company or organization striving to improve its business performance.