What is SIX SIGMA?  It is first and foremost a business process that enables companies to increase profits dramatically by streamlining operations, improving quality, and eliminating defects or mistakes in everything a company does.  While traditional quality programs have focused on detecting and correcting defects, Six Sigma encompasses something broader: It provides specific methods to re-create the process itself so that defects are never produced in the first place.  This is the reason Wall Street and corporations as diverse as Allied Signal, Honda, Maytag, Raytheon, Texas Instruments, Canon Hitachi, Lockheed Martin, American Express, Toshiba, Du Pont, and Polaroid have embarked on corporate wide SIX SIGMA programs.