Inside Small Business

Small Business and Six Sigma: a Powerful Combination

Inside Small Business | November 1st, 2007

Marcelo Cazado, New Entrepreneur

Small Business and Six Sigma: a Powerful Combination

Six Sigma is a well structured project methodology that aims to reduce variation in business processes. It is currently used in most of the major corporations worldwide. From a Six Sigma perspective, variation is evil. For instance, let’s assume you have an average of 80% customer satisfaction with your products. Depending on the business, this figure may be fair. However when you start analyzing it and breaking down the data you may find out that while sometimes your customer is 100% satisfied, for many times your customer satisfaction level is around 60%, which is pretty bad. Ideally all business indicators should exceed the customers’ expectations and also they should not present large variations. Six Sigma’s motto is “show me the data”, so it prevents a lot of unproductive discussions based on personal opinions.

For countless times I have been asked if Six Sigma is applied to small business. Some time ago, I was not quite sure if and how a small company could engage in a Six Sigma implementation. But not anymore.

Actually these days I do recommend Six Sigma as a strong and disciplined methodology which brings positive outcomes to any business, whatever size. Although Six Sigma is not the last panacea that solves all business problems, it may be applied to processes where their outcomes are expected to reach a minimum level and where their variation is not desirable.

There are many consultancies companies in the market that could help out small businesses implementing a Six Sigma mindset between entrepreneurs and their teams.

From my previous experience, I consider it a journey worth taking. Certainly quantifiable benefits will exceed the investment on training.

My name is Marcelo Cazado and I am a new entrepreneur. My business is a management consultancy company called Andoha and I may be reached through e-mail at mcazado@andoha.com.