Should we do better than Six Sigma levels of quality?

Should we do better than Six Sigma levels of quality?

Ninety percent - that is what the World Health Organization currently estimates for a safe patient journey in the developed countries. The remaining ten percent, which is a measure of imperfection, is what enterprises reduce to a low specific level called six sigma.

The Six Sigma methodology is a legacy of Motorola, back in the early days of Madonna and The Cure, when the company's product quality was undeniably poor. "Our quality stinks", sales executive Art Sundry famously spoke out to the CEO during the annual officers meeting. It was April,1979. Bob Galvin heard him loud and clear, and he heard it again when he followed up with Motorola's customers.

Bob Galvin set out a new vision for the organization. That vision was the six sigma level, and it was ambitious for its time: 0.00034 percent imperfection. It's an inversion of scale - the lower the imperfection, the higher the sigma level. Six is an easy number to remember.

In services, where the customer participates in the value creation, we study journeys such as patients in a healthcare setting, or passengers in an aviation setting. Global aviation accident rates (IATA) are near six sigma today.

Why stop there?

We remember the last pillar of lean thinking, to pursue perfection. Perfection is not six sigma - it's much better. Perfection is infinite sigma, zero unsafe journeys.

If you hunt for six sigma tables on the internet you'll find unsurprisingly that they halt at six sigma, the legacy horizon. But with small effort, you can create a whole new table for yourself with simple functions available in off-the-shelf applications. I'm going out a few more sigma levels to illustrate the point, roughly:

6 sigma is 3 unsafe journeys per million.

7.5 sigma is 1 unsafe journey per billion.

8 sigma is less than 1 unsafe journey per 11 billion.

By 2100, our world population is expected to reach 11 billion. This means there will be multiple billions of life enhancing devices and service interactions. It won't be long in historical terms before 3 parts per million becomes identically 3000 parts per billion in the collective mind of the consumer.

And when that happens, six sigma will pass from aspiration to memory, a historic metric replaced by an even greater vision for the future.

In Memory of Dr. David W. Bacon, who departed April 2014 after an influential and impactful life dedicated to quality and productivity improvement. He taught with warmth, wisdom, and love of learning. He was a great teacher and I miss him greatly.