Six Sigma Projects

pCards and ePayables

Fire Department - Elimination of Non-essential Calls for Service

What is Six Sigma?

Six Sigma is a business improvement methodology. The main objective of Six Sigma is to implement vigorous processes to systematically eliminate defects and inefficiencies. It was developed originally by Motorola in the 1980’s and has become extremely popular in both corporate and small businesses.

The statistical representation of Six Sigma describes quantitatively how a process is performing. The goal is to produce products or services which do not produce more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities. A defect is defined as anything outside of customer specifications, and an opportunity is the total quantity of chances for a defect to occur.

City of Punta Gorda employees have been challenged with brainstorming ways to increase revenues for the City, improve efficiencies and processes by reducing costs, waste and non-value added activities.

The phases of Six Sigma are known as DMAIC; Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. When an idea for improvement is put through the Six Sigma process, teams are formed and a plan is developed. Team members create a Charter Statement where they identify and define both the problem and the anticipated goal. Next, the team members gather information about the problem, flowchart processes, compile and analyze the data, then present suggestions for improvement. After improvements are deployed, the team will create new process maps to depict the new procedures and on a scheduled basis audit the project to make sure that the new procedures are working properly.