Review Paper: Quality Improvement through Six Sigma DMAIC Methodology

This paper is an attempt to review and present how the DMAIC methodology has been studied and researched by various researchers. Globalization, advanced technology, and increased sophisticated customer demands change the way of conducting business. Old business models no longer work in new economy. Defects rate of product plays an important role for the improvement of yield and financial conditions of any company. Business performance excellence is the competitive edge for commercial firms to survive in highly competitive markets. Among the many business improvement approaches available, the Six-Sigma approach has been recognized as one of the most effective methods. Organizations are increasingly adopting Six Sigma in a bid to improve the quality of their processes and products, and thus achieve competitive advantage. Six Sigma is a smarter way to manage business or department. It is a vision of quality that equates with only 3.4 defects for million opportunities for each product or service transactions, Strives for perfection. Ultimate objectives of the methodology to solve problems, improve the quality, profitability and customers satisfaction. Six Sigma is the tool through which we can improve the Quality and profitability by removing the cause of defects and variability in manufacturing and business processes. Six Sigma has been on an incredible run for over 14 years, producing significant savings to the bottom-line of many large and small organizations. Six sigma take the users away from ‘intuition-based’ decisions to ‘fact-based’ decisions. The objective of this paper is to present an overview of six sigma. The DMAIC Methodology (Define, Measure, Analyses, Innovation, Improve and Control) the problem solving steps used for six sigma projects are also reviewed in detail in this paper.