To achieve Six Sigma quality, a process must produce no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities. An "opportunity" is defined as a chance for nonconformance, or not meeting the required specifications. This means we need to be nearly flawless in executing our key processes. Six Sigma is a vision we strive toward and a philosophy that is part of our business culture.

Key Concepts of Six Sigma

At its core, Six Sigma revolves around a few key concepts.

Critical to Quality:	Attributes most important to the customer
Defect:	Failing to deliver what the customer wants
Process Capability:	What your process can deliver
Variation:	What the customer sees and feels
Stable Operations:	Ensuring consistent, predictable processes to improve what the customer sees and feels
Design for Six Sigma:	Designing to meet customer needs and process capability

Our Customers Feel the Variance, Not the Mean

Often, our inside-out view of the business is based on average or mean-based measures of our recent past. Customers don't judge us on averages, they feel the variance in each transaction, each product we ship. Six Sigma focuses first on reducing process variation and then on improving the process capability.

Customers value consistent, predictable business processes that deliver world-class levels of quality. This is what Six Sigma strives to produce.