Accuracy

 

In 1990 I moved from NC to TN because I left my job at a community college in NC to work for a community college in TN because the President wanted me to start a Center for Quality and Productivity Training in his service area.  My main focus was TQM or Total Quality Management and specifically Team Oriented Problem Solving using SPC or Statistical Process Control.

The TQM movement was started in Ohio and revolved around the teachings of Dr. Edwards W. Deming, a statistician who taught this same program to the Japanese in 1950 because their economy had been totally destroyed during WWII and he was sent there by our government to help them rebuild it.

Executives from the Ford Motor Company saw an NBC White Paper entitled:  IF JAPAN CAN WHY CAN'T WE.  So, it was Ford that brought Deming's teachings back to the US and I was one of a select few who had been trained by Drs.  Deming and Joiner in the late 1980s.

During my SPC training, I became aware of SIX SIGMA versus THREE SIGMA.  See chart below for a comparison.

Comparing 99.7% Accuracy to Six Sigma

Category	99.7% Accuracy (3 Sigma)	Six Sigma (6 Sigma)
Babies	12 given to wrong parents daily	1 baby given to wrong parents every 230 years.
Mail	20,000 lost pieces per hour	35 lost pieces per year.
Airlines	2 unsafe landings daily (O'Hare)	1 unsafe landing every 10 years.
Prescriptions	20,000 wrong drugs per year	1 wrong drug every 25 years.
Checks	22,000 wrong deductions per hour	1.3 wrong deductions per year.
Electricity	7 hours of outages per month	2 minutes of outages per year.
Surgery	500 incorrect surgeries per week	1 incorrect surgery every 20 years.

You can clearly see the impact of moving from 3 sigma to 6 sigma and yet many of our major companies refused to do this because of the money it would cost to get there...  Go Figure?