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In the seventh chapter of their book Six Sigma: the Breakthrough Management Strategy Revolutionizing the World’s Top Corporations, the authors Mikel Harry, Ph.D., and Richard Schroeder explain the meat of the book’s contents by explaining just what the Breakthrough Strategy entails.

It consists of three levels, the business, operations, and process level, and there are eight stages to each level:

1. Recognize
2. Define
3. Measure
4. Analyze
5. Improve
6. Control
7. Standardize
8. Integrate

The standard Six Sigma project consists of the five stages Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control, with the Recognize being the input from the higher level, and the standardize and integrate being the outputs back to the higher level.    Stages 1, 7, and 8, therefore, tie the three levels together.

This allows the Six Sigma process to flow up and down across organizations, so that those at the business level communicate with those at the operation and process levels to make sure their projects are meaningful to the improvement of the overall business, and those at the operation and process levels communicate their successful results in the form of “lessons learned” which can be integrated into management’s thinking and thus increase the company’s intellectual capital.

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