Six Sigma is a quality management method that is used to decrease variation in a process to cut defect opportunities for occurrence to a level of 3.4 per million (Jacobs & Chase, 2008). The Six Sigma process was originally developed by Motorola in the late 1980s to improve manufacturing processes, and in the three years following the initial implementation Motorola realized over $2.2 billion in savings from improvements (Antony, 2004). Since its maturity in the early 21 st century, Six Sigma has been effectively applied in myriad industries by following Six Sigma best practices – the most important of which are the buy-in of upper level management and integration of the method into corporate culture. There have been successful implementations in healthcare, services, and software development.

A small Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) practice used Six Sigma to increase its patient throughput and increase revenue by over $100k (J. Yanci, personal communication, October 31, 2008). A U.S. based utility company reduced service costs by $1.7M (Antony, 2006). Software companies applying Six Sigma have seen an average of $180k in savings per project (Antony & Fergusson, 2004).