Six Sigma Companies Who Embraced Its Changes And Tout Its Success

When Six Sigma methodology was first introduced by Motorola in 1986, and the corporate world saw the dramatic increase in Motorola’s bottom line as a result, a vast number of companies raced to embrace the newfound business strategy in order to duplicate Motorola’s success. Six Sigma companies such as General Electric, Johnson Controls, Express Scripts, Mercury Marine, Cardinal Health, Baxter Healthcare, Amazon.com, Eli Lilly and Company and the Home Depot are just a small sampling of companies that have embraced the Six Sigma way of life and business process improvements. Home Depot even went so far as to base their entire strategy of expanding core business and opening hundreds of new locations based on what they learned through Six Sigma methodology. Six Sigma companies are now in every area of business, and several of the early pioneers had a tremendous impact on its continued growth today.

 When General Electric CEO Jack Welch saw the overall results at Motorola, and the effects that Six Sigma strategies had on the results, he immediately jumped on the Six Sigma bandwagon. When Welch decided upon undertaking the Six Sigma transition at GE, he had already built a reputation as a man who valued his customers and the quality of his products, and demanded the same from his employees. By the time Six Sigma was installed at GE in 1995, the company was recording close to $60 billion in revenue. At Jack Welch’s retirement from GE in 2001, the company’s revenues increased to $130 billion. Welch’s success with the Six Sigma platform prompted many other companies to become Six Sigma companies, and Welch had trained many executives who moved on to other companies. Robert Nardelli, who became the CEO at Home Depot, and James McNerney became the CEO at 3M Company, and they too became Six Sigma companies under CEOs trained by Jack Welch.

The unprecedented growth of Six Sigma companies prompted the launching of a blog at the iSixSigma website, which closely monitors the success of Six Sigma companies utilizing the prescribed business strategies and processes. Many of the companies predicate its bonus initiatives on the success of Six Sigma strategies, and some companies have even set up internal contests for Black Belts and Green Belts who produce the least amount of business opportunity defects. Six Sigma has come a long way since Motorola first introduced the methodology back in 1986, and many of its proponents, such as Jack Welch, have helped to continue the Six Sigma evolution in business today.