Six Sigma Blog: Fire alarms: The Dell notebook scare and Six Sigma defect control

Fire alarms: The Dell notebook scare and Six Sigma defect control

You have probably read news reports about several Dell notebooks going up in flames, apparently because of a short circuit. Dell has since recalled all such notebooks from the market. Interestingly, the notebooks are armed with a Sony battery backup, and naturally, both Dell and Sony are worried about the financial fallout.

However, according to Sony, the ratio between the total number of Dell notebooks in the market and those that caught fire is too low to warrant real concern. Shrugging off the episode, in a report by CIO, Sony cites Six Sigma measures and standards to show that the number of defects is below the Six Sigma figure of 3.4 defects per million opportunities.

True, the defective units might be within the Six Sigma stipulations, but the apprehension caused among Dell users shows that the prospect of an exploding notebook far outweighs the fact that the production process meets Six Sigma standards of defect management.