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ARE you `striving for perfection in an imperfect world'? That's an elusive exercise, but the goal is enviable, writes Michael C. Thomsett in Getting Started in Six Sigma, from Wiley (www.wiley.com).

"The concept of perfection helps everyone in the corporation to develop a working model to maximise excellent service at every level."

Isn't Six Sigma the same thing as quality control? No, it is something beyond the traditional approach "in which internal teams are created to reduce production defects, solve problems within one department, and address problems in isolation."

Six Sigma reorganises the entire approach to work, explains Thomsett, and impacts "productivity, communication, involvement at every level, and external service."

In school and college, you've seen sigma, the statistical measure of variation, while studying standard deviation. "With six standard deviations, we arrive at 3.4 defects per million opportunities, or 99.9997 per cent," informs the book.

Translated to real-life, if an airline were at Six Sigma, "it would lose only three pieces of luggage for every one million that it handles." Or, only three unsatisfied customers for every million!

"The purpose of evaluating defects is not to eliminate them entirely, but to strive for improvement to the highest possible level that we can achieve."

Interestingly, defect is defined down-to-earth, as "any outcome that does not satisfy the needs of the customer."

Only when defining customer, you'd find that many people in your organisation will realise "that everyone is in the customer service business — even the clerk who never gets out of the windowless basement office." So, it is not that "marketing employees bring in the profits while non-marketing people merely shuffle paper."

Credit for Six Sigma goes to Mikel Harry, an engineer at Motorola who, in the 1980s, thought of this concept, when analysing his company's internal procedures.

Unlike other quality systems that measured performance, Harry's idea was to take action by changing procedures "so that overall performance could be improved permanently."

Starting point is BPM or Business Process Management model — to understand how work moves from step to step through the organisation.

A horizontal flowchart helps, and you can add a timeline, and also indicate reports/documents generated at different stages.

Thomsett explains the two different views of customer service. The first is a cynical view — that it is aimed at keeping customers happy, improving profits, and minimising complaints.

The second is `a more enlightened point of view': recognising that "service is an approach to work, an attitude we bring with us each morning, a philosophical and cultural point of view." Which is yours?

Take a fresh look at internal problems, urges the author. Many suffer from the thinking that problems are to be fixed by this department or the other, "without realising the involvement" of other departments for solution.

"Not understanding a problem is bad enough, but it is far worse when employees do not even know the problem exists — because they have not looked at their own interactions critically."

In his Budget Speech, the Finance Minister dedicated para 100 to `Outlays versus Outcomes' and said: "I must caution that outlays do not necessarily mean outcomes." Six Sigma too focuses on outcomes. "An effective outcome is one that meets the customer's requirements," writes Thomsett, and adds:

"We cannot have an effective outcome without an efficient process." Look not only at the procedural aspects of the process but also examine how the customer feels about your procedures.

Trash all this if you believe that you make a great product and so customer's voice is irrelevant. Such a passive attitude towards customer service will also have an outcome: Loss of customers, even as a more responsive competitor finds on his platter your market share!

A book worth giving a try, for the concept that Thomsett talks about can change your attitude to work.

ManageMentor@TheHindu.co.in

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