The Small Business Guerrilla Guide to Six Sigma

Thinking about Six Sigma, but worried about the exorbitant costs?

The Small Business Guerrilla Guide to Six Sigma will show you why the conventional "big business" strategy for implementing Six Sigma is wrong for small business. So how can small businesses out fox the big ones? By doing the opposite:

- To get big benefits fast, set big hairy audacious goals, not incremental ones

- To boost return on investment, narrow your focus

- To increase adoption of Six Sigma, reduce the number of people involved

- To accelerate Six Sigma, get commitment from your informal leaders, not the formal ones

- To maximize learning, minimize training

According to the SBA, small businesses:

- provide 75 percent of the net new jobs added to the economy

- represent 99.7 percent of all employers

- employ 50.1 percent of the private work force

- provide 40.9 percent of private sales in the country.

- account for 39.1 percent of jobs in high technology sectors in 2001

- account for 52 percent of private sector output in 1999

- represent 97 percent of all U.S. exporters

If Six Sigma is truly yielding huge savings for the companies that use it, then it stands to reason that small businesses need Six Sigma in order to achieve the kind of cost savings and increased profitability enjoyed by large-company Six Sigma practitioners. - Dirk Dusharme.