Responding to Genna's Question: Are attacks at Six Sigma (being ineffective) justified?

There are two ways to respond to Genna's question. (Genna is Senior Editor of www.sixsigmaiq.com.)

The YES part: The culprit in this scenario is the elitist Six Sigma practitioner who wants to add mystique to the process and subliminally wants to alienate the masses. This is the individual that things that the statistics part of Six Sigma is the distinctive feature to the methodology. And, to those folks, please be aware, Stat 101 can be learned in a few classes. In fact, they offer those classes in high school sometimes.

When the Six Sigma methodology is practiced in this manner, without the essence of the methodology, it becomes bureaucratic. It loses touch with the value it provides for business. It becomes a mumbo-jumbo of numbers that most people think applies only to the academicians. Hence, the attacks.

The NO part, my answer: When Six Sigma is not practiced with the right intent, that is, in keeping with the original premise (that the intention of the statistics is to provide a vehicle to identify a tangible that illustrates a problem), then it fails. When this is the case, it is not Six Sigma that failed, but the arrogance of the practitioner who thinks that they are above everyone else.

First, some people have responded that Motorola and GE would have failed bigger if not for Six Sigma. I suspect that even if that were true, that it was the preponderance of the elitist set that Six Sigma unfairly gets a bad rap.