Six Sigma-How much can you save?

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Well there are not bench marks as to how much a company is going to save upon the successful implementation of Six Sigma. Neither is there any bench mark of the costs involved in implementation of Six Sigma techniques and methodologies. Before zeroing in on the decision of going for Six Sigma the management needs to understand the financial commitments required for Six Sigma and what financial gains would accrue out of such implementation. It is just like any other project planning where the cost benefit analysis is done by experts and the project is undertaken only if found financially viable.
It has been reported on the Internet and the news papers that most of the companies which implemented the Six Sigma quality controls have added significantly to their bottom lines. General Electric reportedly saved over $12 billion in the last five years while Honeywell declared a savings of over $800 million. Motorola reported a savings of $1.4 billing in manufacturing cost alone during the period of 1987-1994 and in totality Motorola has reportedly saved over $15 billion in the last decade of using Six Sigma.
No doubt the reports are pretty encouraging for any new company to jump into the Six Sigma bandwagon, but stop! these companies never mentioned how much they actually spent on implementation of the Six Sigma processes. That is the catch. Not a single company has specified how it has quantified the savings and what were the costs involved in achieving the savings.

With the reporting disasters like Enron and WorldCom, how much faith can you have on such report? You to need to decide before you jump on the Six Sigma bandwagon however we need to work with the assumption that the Six Sigma companies work with integrity and have reported the financial savings after deduction all the cost involved and the savings so reported are the net gains to the companies as a direct result of implementing Six Sigma.John Nash writes on topics such as Six Sigma, DMAIC and DMAIC Visit Six Sigma-How much can you save?.