Welcome to Six Sigma Tools for Define and Measure! This is the second course in the Six Sigma Yellow Belt Specialization. Your team of instructors, Dr. Bill Bailey, Dr. David Cook, Dr. Christine Scherrer, and Dr. Gregory Wiles, currently work in the College of Engineering and Engineering Technology at Kennesaw State University. This module will introduce you to the process of project development and selection. The first phase of the DMAIC process is the Define phase which begins with project identification and proceeds onto project management. When identifying Six Sigma projects it is important to ensure that resources and time are used in the most effective and productive way. In this module you will learn about the importance of customer and stakeholder needs in relation to project development.

Now that we have identified the Six Sigma project how to we begin to develop it? This module will cover the basics of project development and management. You will be introduced to many common aspects of a project plan as well as tools for managing your project. These tools include activity network diagrams, affinity diagrams, tree diagrams, relations charts, and matrix charts. Project Management is the second aspect of the Define phase in the DMAIC process of Six Sigma.

The next phase of the DIMAC process is the Measure phase. We will begin by exploring basic statistics and its significance to Six Sigma. This module will introduce you to the measures of variance, range, standard deviation, center, mean, median, and mode. You will also learn how to interpret these measures using given data sets.

The second aspect of the Measure phase is Data Collection. In the previous module we learned about statistics and how to use data for different needs. In this module we will learn different techniques on how to collect data, the reasons for collecting data, and ensuring data accuracy and integrity.