SIX SIGMA – SUMMARY

The foundations of modern Quality were laid over the past century by a group of
brilliant statisticians: Dr Shewhart, Professor Deming, Professor Chambers, Dr
Taguchi and Dr Wheeler. Professor Deming focused on management with his “14
points for management”. He used Dr Shewhart’s control charts to show businesses
how to predict good quality into the future. By educating management, he rescued
Ford from bankruptcy in 1982.

MR SMITH

An obscure uni dropout and Motorola employee, named Mr Bill Smith, advocated
Professor Deming’s 14 points as a way to “move organizations to prosperity”.
However Smith bungled Deming’s lessons in a moulding process upon which he
worked. He tampered with his process, resulting in a quality disaster with a process
mean that shifted “as much as 1.5 sigma”.

HARRY

Mr Smith’s buddy, high school teacher Harry, was clueless about quality but saw
the potential for a mammoth fraud. He “proved” that all processes in the world
were just like his buddy’s. Harry based his “proof” on the height of a stack of discs!
He dressed his nonsense up in a book of 138 pages of intentional obfuscation.
Smith’s 1.5 sigma shift became goodness. It became what Harry called “the pillar”
of Six Sigma.

Harry was a clever rug salesman. He padded his Six Sigma out with Statistics 101,
despite Deming, a professor in statistics, having warned this was irrelevant to
quality. Harry added his “Logic Filters” that became known as DMAIC. He marketed
his junk with colored belts. Buy the first one cheaply, then milk gullible victims with
increasingly expensive ones. It was like kindergarten kids collecting gold stars.
JACK

Utter trash like Six Sigma would not have gone anywhere, if Harry had not realized
he needed buy-in from a top CEO who was as clueless about quality as he was.
Neutron Jack was the perfect victim. Jack described Harry was “a madman” and
said no one in the room had any clue what Harry was talking about ... but Jack
handed over $1,000,000,000 anyway. A scam was born.

Every consultant on the planet crawled out from under their rocks for a slice of the
lucrative pie. Companies looking for magic bullets, followed blindly, like lambs to
the slaughter.

Companies such as Minitab walked hand in hand with the Six Sigma Scam, profiting
from the ignorance of Six Sigma victims.

Harry was later to admit: "Six Sigma Champions are con men". “All you have is
smoke and mirrors”. "Six Sigma is a snow job".

The results were inevitable. 91% of Six Sigma companies failed (Qualpro).
Companies like Ford claimed “success” with their long term average of 1 in 5 parts
defective after “improvement”, over hundreds of Six Sigma projects. Boeing was
“successful” with Six Sigma helping to cut costs and killing hundreds of people.

VICTIMS

Hundreds of managers have fallen victim to fraudsters peddling the Six Sigma
Scam. After paying many thousands of dollars for their certificates of ignorance,
few managers have the strength of character to admit they were scammed.
Instead, most prop up their empires by hiring other believers, perpetuating Harry’s
farce.

SUMMARY

Six Sigma is built on a self-confessed con man’s fraud. Every aspect is the opposite
of quality laid down by the giants. Six Sigma is a road to destruction.