Educating The Business Process Managers Of The Future: The Six Sigma Techniques

Six Sigma is a strategy designed to improve efficiency in manufacturing and business processes. Its basic focus is to decrease defect, improve overall quality, reduce cost and increase profit in production. Modern operations managers recognize the tremendous advantage of applying innovative and advanced techniques that would increase productivity and customer satisfaction. Tomorrow’s managers are being educated at universities today. Implementing business processes analysis and improvement methodologies should be considered an important component of this education. Six Sigma methodology offers a comprehensive body of knowledge to aid with such process improvements. This paper suggests a road map for implementation of a graduate course in Six Sigma. Students would start by acquiring the basic cognitive skills and mastering the necessary underlying concepts and theories. These theories are then put into practice through a project selection and execution. Finally, students would be prepared to offer recommendations and suggestions for the selected business on manufacturing processes. As with any instructional and curriculum material, a course in Six Sigma methodology should also provide a means of assessing outcomes and student learning. This paper will present and discuss these issues and should be of great interest to those educators who wish to offer instructions on this topic. P ge 11508.2