The “Rich Dad Poor Dad” Philosophy
The domain of personal finance is exceptionally wide. There are lots of experts who have differing opinions, who coexist in the personal finance arena. However, in the early 2000s, a relatively unknown author by the name of Robert Kiyosaki started making waves in this area. Some of the ideas that he suggested were radically different […]
Capital Budgeting and Depreciation
Depreciation is an important concept in capital budgeting. This is because it is a non cash expense and ideally should not have any effect on the cash flows. This is the reason why it is added back during cash flow calculations. Since the amount of depreciation never actually left our bank account in the form […]
Strategic Finance and Capital Structure
The capital structure decision has been considered to be a purely financial decision for a very long time. However, in reality, this decision has long-term strategic implications. The failure to understand these implications has encouraged firms to continue studying the fields of finance and strategy in isolation. The end result is that the firm often […]
How HR Managers Must Deal with Legal and Regulatory Challenges in Organizations
What Happens When Employees Sue their Employers? By definition, corporates deal with contractual exchanges between the various entities that make up the internal and external systems in which they exist. Whether it is dealing with customers, or suppliers and vendors, and more importantly, the employees, corporates undertake all these transactions that are covered by legal […]
Assessment and Development Centers
Assessment Center An assessment center is basically a series of assessments carried out using several techniques like simulation, psychometric test and exercises to take critical decisions like selective or rejecting a candidate for recruitment, for promotions and appraisals etc. There are some basic considerations for running an assessment centers which is again the corporate adaptation […]
Sigma or standard deviation is a statistical measure of dispersion in data. It is a measure which uses the characteristic of past data to make judgements about how the process will perform in the future. If a given set of data has normal probability distribution then the number of defects that will occur in the process over a period of time can be known depending upon the sigma level of the process.
The sigma (standard deviation) is multiplied with the numbers 1, 2, 3 etc to come up with a range. For example lets assume that the average of a data set is 10, while the sigma is 2. Hence 1 sigma will include all the data points between 10 +/-2 i.e. between 8 and 12. A 2 sigma measure would include 10+/-2(2) i.e. all data points between 6 and 14. So on and so forth.
However, it is a known fact that in a normal distribution the points tend to be around the mean. Therefore all the points will be closer to the average. Hence as one goes to farther and farther sigma levels the additional gains in terms of productivity are less.
To be a six sigma organization, the processes of an organization must be able to support this kind of efficiency sustainably. Building such robust processes requires a lot of intelligence and effort.
| Sigma Level | Defects/Million | Percentage Defects |
| 1 | 691462 | 69% |
| 2 | 308538 | 31% |
| 3 | 66807 | 6.7% |
| 4 | 6210 | 0.62% |
| 5 | 233 | 0.023% |
| 6 | 3.4 | 0.00034% |
| 7 | 0.019 | 0.0000019% |
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What the Current Wave of Protectionism and Populism mean for the Future of Globalization and Free Trade
February 12, 2025
