Does Six Sigma stifle creativity? What is it about Six Sigma, everyone seems to hate these days? Having delivered famous results for most of the Fortune 500 and beyond over the past decade it seems to have become the victim of increasing numbers of slights and accusations in recent times. Six Sigma's heavy reliance on data massaged the minds of many a statistician however frustrated and annoyed those who were far more hands on, focused on the act of doing. The stats at the heart of the successful application of six sigma may seem a pain Six Sigma has often been shrouded in mystery and the language of black belts and green belts along with the carrying out tough acts such as headcount reduction and embedding a change mindset have often ruffled the feathers of those preferring the status quo. Successful Six Sigma deployments however have always had voice of customer (VOC) at their heart. At the heart of this practice of Six Sigma is the opportunity to listen to the voices of both end-users and your internal customers. Whilst a heavy reliance on data at one end of the spectrum may be seen as stifling to creativity surely the act of extracting ideas and methods of countering problems and issues combined with interacting with focus groups and customers can generate means by which we can harness both internally generated ideas from the ‘shop-floor’ and from the external customers – listening and changing our business to more of an outside in model – absorbing ideas from the customer whomever this may be and using those to harness creativity be that in problem solving or product or service innovation..
Six Sigma roles and six sigma jobs are still very much a part of modern business life as companies seek to keep costs down to a minimum and drive out waste.