Leading Holistic Improvement with Lean Six Sigma 2.0, Second edition

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A New Paradigm Is Needed

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”

—Albert Einstein

The history of Six Sigma goes back to Motorola in about the year 1987 (Harry and Schroeder, 2000). Motorola was facing stiff foreign competition in the pager market and desperately needed to both improve quality and lower costs to stay in business. By applying Six Sigma, the company was able to do both. Other electronics manufacturing companies, including Honeywell and AlliedSignal, saw Motorola’s success and soon launched their own initiatives. In late 1995, GE CEO Jack Welch publicly announced that Six Sigma would be the biggest initiative in GE’s history—and would be his own personal ...