Describes at a high level the area of concern that the six sigma project will address. The business case defines how the customer is impacted, how long they have been impacted, the benefits for improving the process, and the risks associated with not addressing the process. The business case is created before the project charter.

Examples of areas of the business case

  • Excessive customer returns
  • Increase in scrapped products during production
  • Excessive wait times at a call center
  • Increased labor costs due to overtime work

The business case should define the target goal of the department or process and the current baseline with the estimated amount lost.

Examples of business cases

In 2014, our company is not meeting our goal of two minute wait times at the customer call center. Overall, the department has a current wait time of 10 minutes costing $100,000 in lost sales.

In the first quarter of 2014, our company is not meeting our goal of 5% scrapped materials at machine A. Overall, machine A has produced 25% of scrap material costing $500,000.