Six Sigma is a business process that allows companies to drastically improve their bottom line by designing and monitoring everyday business activities in ways that minimize variation and resources while increasing customer satisfaction. DMAIC has 5 phases that are Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, & Control.

Six Sigma principles apply to any business of any size. It applies to far more than just industrial processes; it applies to engineering, product design, and any commercial process, from processing mortgage applications, to credit card transactions, to customer service call centers. By attacking “variation” during the design of products and services, it’s possible for any organization to achieve unprecedented profitability.

Six Sigma is not about quality in the usual sense; the objectives look beyond to profitability, sustainability, and long-term growth by helping organizations make more money by improving customer value and efficiency. Since there is a direct correlation between quality levels and sigma levels, Six Sigma focuses on customer requirements, reducing waste, defect prevention, cycle time reduction and cost savings by helping organizations produce products and services better, faster, and cheaper. The benefits go straight to the bottom line by identifying and eliminating costs which provide no value to customers (waste costs).

Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) is a systematic approach used for designing new products and/ or processes. DFSS embeds the principles of Six Sigma as early as possible into the design and development process. Traditional Six Sigma is applied to processes and products that are currently in existence. DFSS has 5 phases that are Define, Measure, Analyze, Develop, & Validate.

Unfortunately, the cost to make changes later in the product life cycle steadily increases leading to large losses of return on investment for businesses. Across all industries, only 60% of new products launched are successful while only 45% of all resources allocated to new product development are spent on products that fail to provide an adequate return. Product failures are typically attributed to three areas; market research mistakes, design/ production problems, and bad timing.