Six Sigma Beyond the Factory Floor: Deployment Strategies for Financial Services, Health Care, and the Rest of the Real Economy

Chapter 2. Addressing the Fundamental Barrier: “We’re Different!”

	“When we began our quality journey back in 2001, there were skeptics—some of them inside the company—who wondered whether we could use disciplines, methods, and tools from the factory floor and apply them at a large financial services company.”
	--Ken Case, CEO Bank of America

Now that we have made a case for deploying Six Sigma across all business segments and functions in Chapter 1, we want to address the major barrier that has limited deployment in many organizations. This barrier is the common perception that “we’re different,” a perception that often leads to the conclusion that “Six Sigma doesn’t apply to us.” Of course, there is a kernel of truth in the first statement; for ...