Six Sigma Documentation

The term Six sigma refers to deviations from an ideal level of operation, where a high sigma means fewer defects. Six sigma equates to 3.4 defects per million. When you write technical documentation, six sigma is a method to quantify the grammatical quality. When technical manuals have procedural errors, the quality of the product or service is reduced. Remember, the Internet makes manuals available to millions of readers in 190 countries.

In 2010, there were 100,000 avoidable medical accident deaths in the USA.

Many successful companies like GE, Motorola, Honeywell, Fidelity Funds, Toshiba, Xerox, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Textron, Sony, and Wal-Mart have applied Six Sigma quality principles to their products and services.

The SMART Team has applied the same quality techniques to technical writing on mission-critical products. When a document scores above five sigma, that document is easy to read, understand and translate. The use of Controlled English enforces quality control standards for technical writing.

All versions of the MAXit Checker have a six sigma quality report feature.

This report shows the writers an idea of the quality of their documentation.

If the sigma score is less than five, documentation efforts are wasted.

Six sigma report for Documentation Quality

Six sigma metrics can identify problems before they reach the customer.

This small example shows how MAXit and Controlled English can return your investment. In China that statement (right) was misinterpreted as one half turn. The misunderstood sentence caused unnecessary product support time and costs.

"Turn the valve 1 1/2 turn."

We welcome questions. Request a list of 21 common errors in documentation.

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Cost savings ...

It costs less than a penny a word to adopt Controlled English and the MAXit checker. These tools can dramatically reduce your global customer support and training costs. Our trainers can teach your writers how to apply Six Sigma metrics to improve the quality of your documentation. An IBM study shows that $1 spent on ease-of-use technologies, returns $100 in cost avoidance.

Click on QuickQuote to obtain FREE cost information about the MAXit Checker, Writer training and our consulting services for Six Sigma documentation.