Six sigma team is actually a powerful quality system approach, that may help to increase the quality as well as efficiency of the processes. Usually, management needs to apply basic six sigma principles to optimize business processes, reducing defects at production lines, as well as making a culture of continuous improvement through it.

In the increasingly competitive market environment, providing products or services with perfect quality is the focus of the current management work. The continuous improvement of quality is a necessary condition for the survival of the company. Among the many quality management strategies. The Six Sigma management method that has emerged in recent years is one of the important ones…

In the increasingly competitive market environment, providing products or services with perfect quality is the focus of the current management’s work. The continuous improvement of quality is a necessary condition for the company’s survival.

Among the many quality management strategies. The Six Sigma management method, which has emerged in recent years, is one of the important ones. Six Sigma management activities originated from Motorola Corporation of the United States. Which began to implement the “Quality Promotion Plan” in 1980. Which included accelerating product development, greatly improving production quality, and reducing costs by adjusting the production process Competitiveness.

Since then, many famous companies such as General Electric, Ericsson, IBM, Sony, etc. have also followed suit. Which has had an important impact on contemporary quality management. Today’s Six Sigma approach is seen as an integrated management system and development strategy for business success and maximizing business performance.

The Six Sigma management

The lowercase Greek letter “σ” (sigma) stands for “standard deviation” in statistics, indicating how dispersed the data are relative to the mean. 6σ means that the pass rate of the product is 99.99966%.

However, Six Sigma management has developed to today, and has become a complete set of systematic Quality management theory and practical methods. The essence of Six Sigma management is the continuous improvement of the process. It is a continuous improvement methodology, as well it is to improve customer satisfaction while reducing operating costs and cycle of the process innovation method. It by improving the quality of the core process of the organization, and then enhance the profitability of the company.

So that the enterprise in the new economic environment to obtain competitiveness and sustainable development ability.

Its connotations are as follows:

1. Customer-centric principle. Today’s market is changing rapidly, and companies have limited ability and measures to respond, and focusing limited energy on customers first is the foundation of business survival.
2. Decision-making methods based on facts. The basic idea is to use data as the basis, reveal the problem through the data, and introduce the revealed problem into the statistical concept. And use statistical methods to propose solutions to the problem.
3. Pay attention to, manage and improve the process. It starts with the operation of existing processes, analyzes to identify problems, and makes improvements, emphasizing the process approach.
4. Advocate active management and focus on prevention.
5. Desire boundless cooperation and pursue mutually beneficial supplier relationship.
6. The pursuit is the desire for perfection and tolerance for failure. Which measures the quality level of a product or service in terms of σ value.
7. It embodies the corporate culture of continuous improvement and advocating learning. It provides leaders with the ability to organize, motivate, manage and diagnose mathematical statistics, who form the core of the organization’s ability to adapt to change and competition, and listen to the voice of customers to improve their work.

In short, Six Sigma management is a flexible and integrated system approach. Which is based on the understanding of customer needs, statistical analysis of factual data. Attention to managing, improving, and re-engineering business processes. Using scientific methods to improve efficiency, reduce costs, increase market share, retain customers and change corporate culture. So as to optimize the entire process and ultimately meet customer needs.

The formation of the Six sigma team and its significance

Team theory is a hot spot in Western management theory. And team has also become an important organizational form of modern enterprises. With the increasing competition in the market, many managers are aware that team spirit is an important part of today’s enterprise spirit. Which is the spiritual force to continuously enhance the consistency and competitiveness of enterprises.

Every organization encourages employees to participate in organizational activities. Teams are widely adopted because of their contribution to organizational effectiveness, as reflected in:

1. Six sigma team flexibility: The team is characteristic by its member composition, sense of responsibility and honor, motivated work attitude, and identification with the team, integrating resources according to the needs of the environment and customers, and making immediate, rapid and quality responses to key points.
2. Team members have a strong sense of belonging. Team goals and work design are involved, designed and implemented by the members themselves, and employees are respected for their high efforts and committed to it.
3. Teams increase productivity. The team model simplifies the organizational structure, facilitates internal coordination, and allows the decision-making level of the enterprise to focus on formulating the correct development strategy, and looking for good market opportunities, as well as development space.
4. The team can enhance the skills of employees, improve the quality of employees, and fully reflect the human-oriented management.
5. The team can optimize the internal environment of the enterprise. Which is conducive to communication and coordination, and enhances cohesion. Team members integrate and sublimate individual goals into common team goals and establish a common value system.

Feasibility and steps of Six Sigma management application in team building

Herein we are going to proposed five elements of cultivation in “The Fifth Cultivation”, namely, self-transcendence, improvement of mental models, establishment of a common vision, team learning, and systems thinking. In which team learning is not only the problem of how to carry out team learning. But also, the problem of team building in organizational cultivation.

Hence the concept of team building, it refers to the ongoing process of organizing team members with special missions into specific patterns and aligning them to achieve desired goals.

Team building is the common responsibility of team leaders and members, and an open and confident atmosphere should be created during the construction process. So that all team members have a sense of unity and mission. Team leaders should ensure that team members maintain communication with each other and create conditions for promoting socialization among members. Team members should also take the initiative to create conditions to strengthen communication and integration.

Through team building:

• First of all, it is necessary to enable team members to establish clear common goals.
• Enhance attractiveness.
• Appeal and combat effectiveness. And secondly achieve a reasonable division of labor and cooperation.

So that each member can clarify their role, power, tasks and responsibilities, as well as the relationship between each other. And then cultivate a high degree of cohesion, so that team members actively and enthusiastically pay the necessary time and effort for the successful completion of the task.  As well as strengthen mutual trust between members, promote mutual care and mutual recognition among members.

In addition, it is necessary to achieve effective communication among members and form an open and frank communication atmosphere.

(1) The feasibility of applying Six Sigma management in team building

1. Team building has a clear customer orientation. In the process of team building, from the selection of team members, to the clarification of tasks, process design, etc., the completion of team goals is always considered as the primary factor. Each department should provide the required members for the team organization plan to meet its personnel needs.
2. Team building takes place on a fact-based basis. In the whole process of the team, there is a large amount of data information, which can be achieved by setting up a series of indicators and evaluating the quality of work and personnel by setting up a series of indicators and statistical analysis of data and information.
3. Team building follows a clear workflow. Whether in the selection of members or in the process of completing tasks, there are written or customary workflows and methods, and the process is concise and effective.
4. Team building focuses on active communication and cooperation between members, timely communication is conducive to clarifying tasks, discovering problems, and laying the foundation for achieving the goals of the team.
5. In the process of team building, according to the personality differences of individuals, cultivate the value orientation of members and the sense of identity and belonging to the organization, so as to lay the foundation for the establishment of corporate culture.

(2) Application steps of Six Sigma management in team building

The typical steps of Six Sigma management include definition, measurement, analysis, improvement, control (DMAIC) –

• The breakthrough strategy of Six Sigma management.
• The essence is the DMAIC performance improvement model.
• A set of analysis and problem-solving methods, which constitutes the basis of Six Sigma management theory.
• All processes and activities are closely around DMAIC.

DMAIC is data-based and used to improve existing products or processes to achieve Six Sigma goals. These five steps can also be applied to team building, and the operation of these five steps can eliminate the causes of defects in team building and improve the quality of work.

1. Decide

The stage is to solve some basic questions for the follow-up, such as what product or service are we going to provide? Who are the customers? What are the needs of customers? How is the work usually carried out? Discuss answering these questions to develop a DMAIC plan. This stage mainly includes two parts in team building: creating a team description and determining the process and specifications.

2. Measurement

The purpose of measurement mainly includes the selection of quality characteristics. The definition of performance standards, and the analysis of measurement systems. (1) Quality characteristics are selected to identify key quality factors that have a greater impact on key customers. (2) Performance criteria are defined to determine the lower acceptable limits for each critical quality factor. (3) Measurement system analysis is the determination of how key quality factors are measured and the accuracy of the measurement system. In this phase of team building, the gap between the actual and ideal teams is assessed with facts and figures through measurement.

3. Analysis

Analysis is the use of statistical tools to analyze the entire system and identify gaps and solutions between the performance of existing systems and processes and the stated goals. This stage is mainly used in team building to analyze the reasons for the gap between the actual and ideal teams and reasonable measures to eliminate the gap.

4. Improvement

Improvement is a core process of Six Sigma management. Through extensive analysis, solutions to eradicate and prevent deficiencies are found, and statistical methods are used to measure the impact of improvement. For defects caused by objective factors, corresponding measures can be taken to improve them according to the cause. This phase is also the most important step in team building, gradually bringing team performance closer to the goal through improvement.

5. Control

The goal of the control phase is, to ensure that process improvements can be maintains once they are complete without returning to the previous state. The focus is on long-term control of key factors and measures to maintain improvement results. This stage in the process of team building is mainly to monitor the improvement activities to ensure that they do not deviate from the goal.

Six Sigma Management Thought Application Model in Team Building

Based on the above views, the application model of Six Sigma management ideas in team building is given.

The team building process runs through the entire team management process. Starting from creating a team description, to determining the process and specifications, forming (correcting) team membership. Then evaluating the gap between the actual and ideal team. Taking measures to eliminate the gap and monitoring the entire team activity. Finally judging whether the team’s performance is consistent with the goal. If there is a deviation, restart the DMAIC cycle, through this continuous cycle, and finally achieve the team goal.

Throughout the team building process. We always focus on customer satisfaction, as mentioned above.  The customers here include external customers. As well as team members, and continuously improve external customer satisfaction through team members working hard for the team.

In addition, in the whole process of team building. We should focus on cultivating a team culture that pursues perfection, continuous improvement and cooperation without boundaries. Which is also an important purpose of team building.

Conclusion

Team building is as important in management as task schedule, cost budget and quality management. A good team can ensure that tasks are completed quickly, and efficiently at low cost. Team building is regarded as a core factor in organisational activities in organisational management. The introduction of Six Sigma management into the process of team building will play an important role in improving team quality and promoting the achievement of goals.