Six Sigma doctrine asserts:

Continuous efforts to achieve stable and predictable process results (e.g. by reducing
process variation) are of vital importance to business success.
Manufacturing and business processes have characteristics that can be defined, measured,
analyzed, improved, and controlled.
Achieving sustained quality improvement requires commitment from the entire organization,
particularly from top-level management.
Features that set Six Sigma apart from previous quality-improvement initiatives include:

A clear focus on achieving measurable and quantifiable financial returns from any Six Sigma
project.
An increased emphasis on strong and passionate management leadership and support.
A clear commitment to making decisions on the basis of verifiable data and statistical methods,
rather than assumptions and guesswork.
The term "six sigma" comes from statistics and is used in statistical quality control, which
evaluates process capability. Originally, it referred to the ability of manufacturing processes to
produce a very high proportion of output within specification. Processes that operate with "six sigma
quality" over the short term are assumed to produce long-term defect levels below 3.4 defects per
million opportunities (DPMO).[3][4] Six Sigma's implicit goal is to improve all processes, but not to the
3.4 DPMO level necessarily. Organizations need to determine an appropriate sigma level for each of
their most important processes and strive to achieve these. As a result of this goal, it is incumbent
on management of the organization to prioritize areas of improvement.