In a recent blog at Harvard Business School Press Online, Tom Davenport challenges the applicability of Six Sigma. You can read his post at http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/davenport/.

Coming from anyone else, a statement that Six Sigma “should only be used in product manufacturing, where the idea of reducing defects to one in six standard deviations really makes sense” might be dismissed out of hand. But Davenport has credibility as an expert on business process management and information technology.

Perhaps he’s right, and Six Sigma should be viewed as one among several toolkits to embed statistical methods and scientific thinking in managerial practices.