1
Functional Area Paper
School of Business, Liberty University
BUSI701: Current Topics in Business Administration (B02)
Ryan Ladner
26 September 2021
2
Functional Area Paper
Introduction
Six Sigma is defined as a problem-solving or continuous improvement strategy that seeks
to find and eliminate the sources of error or the causes of customer-defined mistakes or defects.
Six Sigma has proven to be successful at driving out wastes in business processes, and reducing
process variation, thereby improving the efficiency and effectiveness of organizational
operations. The utilization of Six Sigma strives to reach a level of 3.4 defects per million
opportunities using data gathering and statistical analysis in organizations. (Niñerola et al., 2019,
p. 960). Six Sigma is a business process management strategy first introduced in 1987 by Bill
Smith (Schroeder et al., 2007). Bill Smith was an engineer at Motorola who introduced the
concept of Six Sigma to combat the growing competition developing in Japan. The popularity of
Six Sigma soured after Motorola received the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for its
Six Sigma implementation in 1988 (Niñerola et al., 2019). The most noteworthy corporation to
implement Six Sigma was General Electric in 1995 (Schroeder et al., 2007). General Electric
further expanded upon Six Sigma by creating DMAIC, which has become the most influential
Six Sigma methodology in the present day. DMAIC stands for design, measure, analyze,
improve, and control (Niñerola et al., 2019). The design phase is where cross-functional teams
are developed and given the basis for sustainable projects to execute. The measure phase is when
data collection methods are created to measure site-wide metrics that will help to achieve
sustainable efforts. The analysis phase is where the data collection methods are analyzed, and
