Motorola

Motorola Six Sigma

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• In 1988, Motorola Corp. became one of the first companies to receive the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. • The award strives to identify those excellent firms that are worthy role models for other businesses. • One of Motorola's innovations that attracted a great deal of attention was its Six Sigma program. 2

Six Sigma - Process Quality Goal. • As such, it falls into the category of a process capability (Cp) technique. • The traditional quality paradigm defined a process as capable if the process's natural spread, plus and minus three sigma, was less than the engineering tolerance. • Under the assumption of normality, this translates to a process yield of 99.73 percent. 3

• A later refinement considered the process location as well as its spread and tightened the minimum acceptable so that the process was at least four sigma from the nearest engineering requirement. • Motorola's Six Sigma asks that processes operate such that the nearest engineering requirement is at least plus or minus six sigma from the process mean. 4

• One of Motorola's most significant contributions was to change the discussion of quality from one where quality levels were measured in percentages (parts per hundred) to a discussion of parts per million or even parts per billion. • Motorola correctly pointed out that modern technology was so complex that old ideas about acceptable quality levels were no longer acceptable. 5

• One puzzling aspect of the "official" Six Sigma literature is that it states that a process operating at Six Sigma levels will produce 3.4 parts-permillion non conformances. • However, if a normal distribution table is consulted (very few go out to six sigma), one finds that the expected non conformances are 0.002 parts per million (two parts per billion).

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• "Motorola reduced manufacturing costs by $1.4 billion from 1987-1994."

• "Six Sigma reportedly saved Motorola $15 billion over the last 11 years."

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• "Companies of all types and sizes are in the midst of a quality revolution. GE saved $12 billion over five years and added $1 to its earnings per share. • Honeywell (AlliedSignal) recorded more than $800 million in savings." • "GE produces annual benefits of over $2.5 billion across the organization from Six Sigma."

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