These days, the struggle to survive is becoming increasingly intense for businesses of all sizes. Special strategies need to be adopted in order to improve the functioning of a company in order to allow it to keep up with the intensity of today’s marketplace. For this reason, many businesses have chosen to seek the advice of experts who can better the overall functioning of their organizations to ensure that they are reaching their highest potentials.

Among the strategies being recently and successfully implemented is the DMAIC Model, which stands for Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control. Experts, including Six Sigma Black Belts, swear by this model for overall business success though quality control, problem management, and common sense. It works as follows:

• Define – this refers to defining the goals of any given improvement effort. Top level improvement goals may include strategic efforts such as increasing the ROI or market share. Closer to the operations level, an organization’s goal may involve bettering the output of a given department. On the projects level, the goals may involve decreasing defects and increasing production. Data mining methods are applied here for identifying prospective opportunities for enhancement.

• Measure – this refers to measuring the current process. Reliable and valid metrics need to be established so that the different steps towards achieving the goal can be defined. This starts with the definition of the current baseline. Exploratory and descriptive data analysis are applied here for assisting with the understanding of the data.

• Analyze – this refers to the analysis of the system in order to recognize the disparity between the current system performance and the goal. Statistical tools are applied here for guiding the analysis.

• Improve – this refers to the improvements made to the system. Creativity must be employed in order to discover fresh ways of doing things cheaper, faster, and better. Project management and other management and planning tools are used here in order to facilitate the implementation of the new methodology. Statistical methods are also used in order to validate improvements that have been made.

• Control – this refers to controlling the new system. The enhanced system must be institutionalized through the modification of compensation and incentive programs, policies, MRP, procedures, operating instructions, budgets, and other systems of management. You can choose to use such systems as ISO 9000 in order to ensure accuracy of the documentation.

Though the DMAIC model does involve a reworking of the mindset of a business, strategies such as Six Sigma have seen tremendous, dynamic results upon its application.

Craig Setter is a certified Master Black Belt for Aveta Solutions – Six Sigma Online. Six Sigma Online offers online six sigma training and certification classes for 6 sigma black belt, green belt, yellow belt, lean and DFSS courses. They have an extensive customer list including such companies as Pfizer, Microsoft, UPS, Bank of America, and State/Federal Governments. For additional information in regards to Six Sigma or to see how Aveta Solutions Six Sigma Online can help you, please visit us at http://www.sixsigmaonline.org

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