Six Sigma Handbook by Pyzdek, Thomas

We all might have heard that. Things such as “the quality of this product is superior” these products have a lot of “quality in them”. If anyone stops to think for a second, will find out that the concept of quality is very relative. To one, it might be related to the robustness, to some the manufacturing process, to others for how long the product will last.

All of those things mentioned previously, are consequences of quality. Whenever a company uses Principles of Quality (be in their production, marketing, sales, etc.) the direct consequence is having better products.

But after all, what is quality? And what are principles of quality?

In Brazil, I worked as a Quality Management trainee twice, and in both times (even though different companies) the job was very similar. My main task was to standardize processes in the corporation. That means identify actions, and make sure they were performed equally. For example: whenever someone called the company, the person answering the phone would always say the same thing:

“X corporation, how can I help you?”.

Or whenever someone in the company purchased something, they would use a specific payment method. Or whenever the company would sell something, they would use a certain pitch. And that goes on with every single process throughout the company.

In this time working there, I have realized that I should consider some kind of reliable methodology to be implemented there. This is the moment I discovered six-sigma. Which was basically a trustable and efficient way of implementing quality management principles.

I have been using this since. While at jumble, we have decided to do international sales consulting, and while doing it, we have used principles of quality management in almost everything. Our pitch standardization, our sales approach, the way of organizing our clients list and so on. The main strategy is presented as follows:

A book such as the six-sigma handbook, might have a “engineering” like approach and look very formal, but it is an essential tool into understanding how can we improve basically anything.  Doing things good is not enough, we must do it consistently good, because after all, Quality is everything!