Management support of employees attempting to implement six sigma is critical for the process to work effectively.

There is no point of employees investing time in collecting, measuring and analyzing data for six sigma implementation, just to have management block the efforts because they don't believe them. Management should be both supportive and enthusiastic about an employees efforts to use six sigma to improve the processes of the company. Your commitment to the process should be clear and easy to understand for several reasons.

First, if you have others working in a team that will implement the process or you plan on passing the process on the someone else to continue. The plan for how to do the process, what you are currently doing, the end result, why we are doing it and costs savings associated with it should be easy enough to understand so that anyone can pick up where one left off.

Six sigma process will use statistical measurement to improve the process and its common used with the business has a high amount of output of end products, such as a mass manufacturing of a product. The end result of six sigma is to keep defect levels below 3.4 defects per million opportunities for a defect to occur.

Every process, every person, tool, system involved is effected in manufacturing the end product. If any one part of the process is left out, six sigma will not be as effective as it should be. As you learn how to implement six sigma, you will notice that you will want to look at a long term plan of six sigma working in your process.

This is difficult for some to comprehend because when you first start the six sigma process, the results will be based on short term results. But over time, various factors can start to effect your process which you did not originally plan for. We will use a sigma shift to plan for changes in the process which are out of our control. The sigma shift is designed to add cushion so the process doesn't go over or under performance.