Application of Six Sigma in the Indian Statistical Institute Library (Bangalore): A Case Study

Six Sigma is a leading performance improvement tool in the present era. It is a business improvement process that focuses on organization of customer requirements, process alignment, analytical rigour, and timely execution. Library is an organization where people are directly involved. By applying Six Sigma a library can provide high quality and consistent services to the end user community. This paper deals with the improvement of library services through DMAIC (i.e., Define, Measure, Analysis, Improvement and Control) roadmap of Six Sigma philosophy. The philosophy behind Six Sigma is that if you can measure how many defects are in a process, it can be figured out how to systematically eliminate them and get as close to perfection as possible. For a company to achieve Six Sigma level, it should not suffer more than 3–4 defects per million opportunities.