A few years ago, when I was going through Master Black Belt training, we got a visit from a Caterpillar executive coming to motivate us and tell us how important Six Sigma was to the company.

Rich Thompson, our group president in charge of engines, told us about his experience at GE when strategic planning was all the rage and cautioned us about what he called Six Sigma robots.

R2-D2 meet Six Sigma?

R2-D2, the little android from Star Wars, lives in a galaxy far, far away. Robots on earth are not yet as advanced – picture a robotic arm in a factory, repeating the same operation day in and day out, without thought.

Six Sigma robots can be equated to these machines. They obtain limited success, applying the methodology repetitively without much thought.

What makes the power of the Black Belt is his or her brain or as one of the greatest Master Black belts, Jim Wilkins, used to call it, the gray noodle.

To be successful, a project requires thoughtful input from the Black Belt and the team. In the define phase, a project has to be chartered with a clear understanding of the problem at hand, the knowledge of what's upstream and downstream of the process and any connection points. In the measure phase, the team must thoroughly plan the data collection effort. Failure to do that will rapidly push the project budget in the red. In the Analyze phase, blind acceptance of statistical results will lead to costly mistakes. Finally, the Improve and Control phases offer the biggest opportunities to botch the entire project if thoughtful implementation plans are not devised.

Applying the Six Sigma methodology cannot be done without thought. Thinking about the problem, understanding what the customer wants, devising a creative solution cannot be done by machine. Even the statistical part, often considered the most challenging of Six Sigma cannot be gone without using one's brain. And until we have R2-D2s we will have to rely on our gray noodles.