One of the riskiest things that any company can attempt to do is research and development.
It is hard to take a blank piece of paper and come up with a wonderful idea that consumers will like.
While a long-shot can work wonders for an ailing corporation, the risk of it being a failure are very high.
Similarly, a corporation that has a good relationship with its customers may still fail to meet their expectations with a new product.
Usually a failure is not discovered until after a lot of time, effort, and money have already been put into the research and development of the product.
Six Sigma encourages the gathering of information in order to make informed decisions.
This works perfectly for reverse research and development.
Why should a company risk time, money, and employee efforts on a project that may never pan out? A business can greatly reduce their risk by following some simple steps.
The first step is to find out what the customers want.
This can be done by using a survey, talking with professionals in the industry, or by such methods as taking a good look at customer testimonials and seeing what customers are saying about existing products.
For example, a toy company may look at the comments left on their website about a particular toy, and see that many parents prefer toys that have volume controls.
By identifying that parents want volume controls, they have already reached the second step.
Now the company can take a look at their line of toys and see what can be changed in existing models, and what they can do to make new models better.
Here the answer is simple - add volume control to existing models of toys and implement volume controls in new toys.
To find out whether customers like it, they can develop a prototype and then test it with just a few key customers.
The company could test the new toys in a daycare or they can allow a small group of parents to test the toys.
Once they see that customers are indeed happy with the new feature of volume control, the toys can go into mass production.
Sales will rise for the company because they offer this feature and they will make a profit.
It's a simple method that avoids risks and allows companies to better communicate with customers.
The way to success is through Six Sigma implementation.