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Transactional Six Sigma

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Definition

Often used synonymously with the term Six Sigma for Services, Transactional Six Sigma is concerned with understanding and reducing variation in the transfer of information in a non-manufacturing environment. This includes organizations in finance, education, health care, sales and marketing, human resources and also the non-profit and governmental sectors.

The Six Sigma DMAIC process is actually quite similar in the service and manufacturing environments. The basic principles and tools are the same, and revolve around the idea that providing any service is a process and that all processes experience variability over time. Using logical and meaningful process Metrics can give insight into this variability and help improve process capability. The use of statistical and analytical tools can help optimize the process to realize tremendous gains.

In a transactional environment where no measuring process exists, the Define phase is especially important for this is where the most important task of defining the process and what constitutes a defect takes place, which in turn drives the creation of the right Metrics and data collection strategy.

Application

Transactional Six Sigma projects are often concerned with cycle time reduction and error reduction. Areas of application include improving on-time delivery, increasing profit margin, reducing call wait time, increasing billing accuracy.