SIX SIGMA is the most powerful breakthrough management tool ever devised, promising increased market share, cost reductions and dramatic improvements in bottom-line profitability for companies of any size. The darling of Wall Street, it has become the mantra of Fortune 500 boardrooms around the world because it works. What is SIX SIGMA? It is first and foremost a business process that enables companies to increase profits dramatically by streamlining operations, improving quality, and eliminating defects or mistakes in everything a company does. While traditional quality programs have focused on detecting and correcting defects, Six Sigma encompasses something broader: It provides specific methods to re-create the process itself so that defects are never produced in the first place. This is the reason Wall Street and corporations as diverse as Allied Signal, Honda, Maytag, Raytheon, Texas Instruments, Canon Hitachi, Lockheed Martin, American Express, Toshiba, Du Pont, and Polaroid have embarked on corporate wide SIX SIGMA programs.