Six Sigma and Deming

["Paul Hollingworth" <PH@4gm.com>]

I came across this article today: 
"General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt is willing to face what most CEOs are
still hiding from: Efficiency has come at the expense of the customer. The
business press continues to cover G.E.'s efforts to find growth through
innovation. The company once known for absolute efficiency (Six Sigma--based
processes) has finally discovered that having a good product is simply not
enough these days. Tightly designed, efficient processes and methods alone
just don't seem to catch a customer's eye."
http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=5169

It looks like the Six Sigma world may be waking up to what Deming & Kano
have been telling us all along: that improvement is necessary, but
insufficient.
Deming talked of 'four prongs' for sustainable business-
	1) Innovation of product or service
	2) Innovation of process
	3) Improvement of product or service
	4) Improvement of process.

He said there was a fifth prong, being the responsibility of management to
create the environment to enable the above.
The order of importance according to WED is 1 to 4. The sequence, however,
goes 5 to 1.

Paul Hollingworth    PH@4GM.com