Six sigma flies at Xerox

MANAGEMENT PRACTICE

Xerox was introduced to Six Sigma through its interactions with General Electric. The financial services to biotechnology conglomerate adopted the metricsmad process improvement technique in the late 1990s and, because of its size and influence, has served as an effective missionary.

Anne Mulcahy’s conversion came as she was negotiating the outsourcing of Xerox’s troubled billing and collections operation to GE Finance. She recalls: “I remember sitting there and watching the discipline with which [ the GE team] defined the problem, scoped it and attacked it from a Six Sigma perspective. I remember feeling for the first time the problem would be fixed.”

The precise definition of Six Sigma quality is an error rate of 3.4 per million. More important than the exact number is an approach to problem solving that emphasizes small teams, measurement and economic return.

Quality improvement techniques were by no means new to Xerox. In the 1980s, it was one of the first U.S. firm to adopt Total Quality Management (TQM) as it fought to turn back the tide of Japanese competition.

As an up- and- coming manager, Ms. Mulcahy experienced TQM first hand. “The financial metrics were not as precise with TQM,” she recalls.

“ Six Sigma is very rigid and very disciplined by comparison. Every project is managed with economic profit metrics.

The introduction of a companyapproach to project management is reckoned to break down barriers between departments and make it easier to work with suppliers and customers.