Summary of

A Six Sigma Approach to

Sustainability
Continual Improvement for Social Responsibility
Holly A. Duckworth and Andrea Hoffmeier
CRC Press, 2016 
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Six Sigma experts Holly A. Duckworth and Andrea Hoffmeier
outline a continual-improvement program for long-term
sustainability. Their model is Japan’s 1,500-year-old firm, Kongo
Gumi, founded in 578 AD. They report that most current
continual improvement programs can address social responsibility
with a few small changes and little complexity. The authors apply
the Six Sigma method to transparency, fair labor practices,
community involvement and environmental impact. Their dry
writing style and jargon don’t undermine the value to managers of
their many actionable ideas.

Take-Aways
• Corporate social responsibility matters more now than ever.
• Form a “Continual Improvement for Social Responsibility”
(CISR) program with resources you already have.
• Use the “SOFAIR” tool in your CISR program.
• First, initiate SOFAIR by talking with stakeholders.
• Second, identify objectives that support both social
responsibility and business strategy.
• Third, prioritize potential areas of focus.
• Fourth, analyze your current system holistically.
• Fifth, propose improvements to processes or invent new
processes.
 • Finally, report progress to your stakeholders, and start the
next project. 

Summary
Corporate social responsibility matters more now than
ever.
Boosting a company’s social-responsibility profile can ensure its
longevity. Social responsibility means adopting institutional
behavior that will sustain a pool of customers and employees –
plus access to suppliers and resources – for centuries.

With the rise of social media, customers and investors gained

more power in influencing corporate behavior and more ways to
respond to corporate activities. Public perception of a firm’s
behavior can attract and keep customers, employees and investors
– or it can have the opposite effect. A community can be
welcoming or hostile toward a company that wants to set up shop

“
locally, depending on the business’s social-responsibility profile.

”
“The goal of social responsibility is the sustainment
of productive suppliers, employees, customers and
communities…for at least 1,500 years.”

Strive for a level of sustainability measured not in decades, but in

centuries. Consider the Japanese construction company Kongo
Gumi, which began in 578 AD and stayed in business for the next
1,500 years. When you evaluate potential sustainability initiatives,
ask if they’re sufficiently robust enough to keep you in business for

“
15 centuries.

”
“Two fundamental principles of social
responsibility are accountability and
transparency.”

In the past, industry lacked an agreed-on definition of social

responsibility. In 2010, the International Organization for
Standards reduced the ambiguity by releasing ISO 26000:2010,
which defines social responsibility as “the responsibility of an
organization for the impacts of its decisions and activities on
society and the environment, through transparent and ethical
behavior.” ISO 26000 set standards in:

1. “Organizational governance” – This addresses the

principles under which management runs a business. These
include accountability for its actions, transparency, ethics,
attention to stakeholder interests and compliance with the
law.
2. Human rights – The organization treats everyone with
respect and fairness. Human rights issues include whether
the firm uses discriminatory hiring processes or buys from
suppliers in countries that violate political rights or enable
the labor of children or compulsory workers. 
3. “Labor practices” – The company treats all employees
and subcontractors fairly. This covers disciplinary
procedures, safety issues, collective bargaining, and hiring
and promotion practices.
4. The environment – This encompasses the organization’s
impact on pollution, climate change and sustainable
resources.
5. “Fair operating practices” – This focuses on issues
related to competing honestly, including corruption, political
 activities, lobbying practices and property rights.
6. “Consumer issues” – This involves product quality, safety
and consumer rights.
7. “Community involvement and development” – These
standards govern how the company supports its local
community through investment and employment and by
promoting health and education. 

Form a “Continual Improvement for Social

Responsibility” (CISR) program with resources you
already have.
A CISR program may propel a total makeover of
your organizational culture, but you don’t need to build your CISR
program from scratch. You can adapt an existing continual-
improvement program to boost your social-responsibility
performance.

Six Sigma is one of the best-known continual-improvement

methodologies. It seeks to effect unending improvement through a
series of “projects,” each addressing a specific problem. You define
a problem by drawing on data you collect from customers,
measuring the current state of operations, analyzing all factors
contributing to the current state and formulating solutions to
foster improvement. When your new process is in place, assess its
effectiveness with rigorous measurements of compliance and
results. At the conclusion of each improvement project, start a
new one. As the organization completes more of these projects, the
culture will change, and employees will adopt the Six Sigma
perspective on all activities. 

Use the “SOFAIR” tool in your CISR program.

CISR pursues ongoing betterment through a series of projects. It
uses a technique called SOFAIR, a variation on a Six Sigma tool.
SOFAIR is an acronym for “stakeholders and subjects,”
“objectives,” “function and focus,” “analyze,” “innovate and
improve” and “report and repeat.” An organization with a Six
Sigma process in place can add SOFAIR to its existing
program. Take these steps:

First, initiate SOFAIR by talking with stakeholders.

Gather information from your stakeholders by holding in-person
dialogues, such as in town-hall type meetings. Focus sessions
solely on gathering information – steer away from blaming,
defending or attempting to solve problems. Supplement these
meetings with less-personal forms of data gathering, such as
surveys. Consider the stakeholder information in light of the seven

“
standards in ISO 26000.

”
“Since its invention in the 1980s, the Six Sigma
methodology has been used by many organizations
to improve performance on many different
performance criteria.”

For example, imagine a grocery retailer. Stakeholder data

suggested the store’s customers would buy more tomatoes if the
produce were fresher. So management defined a project: Obtain
the freshest tomatoes possible. When the project’s team members
evaluated the problem with traditional Six Sigma tools, they
concluded that adopting an air-freight delivery process was the
best solution. However, these traditional tools don’t account for
social responsibility. To find a socially responsible way to obtain
fresh tomatoes, the team initiated the SOFAIR process. The first
step was opening a dialogue with stakeholders that focused on
sourcing tomatoes through the lens of ISO 26000’s seven subject
areas.
Second, identify objectives that support both social
responsibility and business strategy.
A program of social responsibility isn’t beneficial if it harms the
company financially. To find the balance between social
responsibility and corporate strategy, consider which elements
you will need in place – such as customers, suppliers and
employees – to ensure your organization’s success for the next
1,500 years. Examine the data you collect, and seek areas where
your strategy conflicts with stakeholder interests. Identify any
social-responsibility subjects that might pose a threat to your

“
strategy.

”
“The idea of social responsibility, with the
complexities as we know it today, formed in just
the past 150 years.”

When you synthesize social-responsibility goals with business

strategy, you can formally set general objectives. In successful
projects, the SOFAIR team often writes a short summary of its
objectives. The project’s documents should also include a charter
that spells out such administrative details as the leader’s name,
names of team members, the project budget and its end date.
When the team prepares these documents, the company should
announce the project and explain its objectives to all internal
stakeholders. Hold off on announcing the project to external
stakeholders until you are certain that it will affect issues that
matter to them.

In the grocery example, the store composed a narrative describing

its objective as increasing profits by offering the freshest tomatoes
to customers in a sustainable way.

Third, prioritize potential areas of focus.

Identify the area of the organization to work on first. The grocery
store’s project team examined each step of the process of bringing
produce to market and identified the steps that were most likely to
foster socially irresponsible behavior. The team examined items
such as growing methods (what is the environmental impact?),
harvest laborers (what is their employment status?) and air
transport (how much energy does it require?).

Fourth, analyze your current system holistically.

Learn how all the inputs to the system – and the relationships
between all aspects of the system – affect stakeholders. Several
effective quality improvement tools also work well in CISR. For a
company that is not in a crisis mode and aims to improve
performance from good to outstanding, risk analysis tools are the
most useful. One such tool is “failure mode and effects analysis”
(FMEA). This involves first identifying all points where you face a
potential risk of failing to serve your stakeholders. Next, prioritize
these threats by rating the severity of their impact and their

“
probability of occurrence.

”
“Sustainability isn’t about stasis; it is about
continual improvement.”

If a company is undergoing a crisis – if it needs to raise

performance from unacceptable to good – it should use a form of
causal analysis. This comes in many formats, but asking the “five
whys” often turns out to be the most effective and simplest.
Describe the problem and ask why it occurred. Given that answer,
ask why again. Keep asking why about each answer until your
questions reveal the root cause.
“
“Implementing process change involves making
sure that everyone affected by the change knows

”
about the change before it happens, allocating time
and resources to make the change, and then
training and controlling the adoption of the
change.”

The grocery store used risk analysis to determine that the air-
freight process held the most potential for socially irresponsible
behavior, because of its environmental impact, its contribution to
air traffic congestion, and the possibility of unfair or corrupt
sourcing decisions on the part of air transport suppliers.

Fifth, propose improvements to processes or invent new

processes.
You may be able to solve or prevent problems by improving your
current system’s components. For example, you might demand
changes to how your suppliers grow tomatoes or modify how you
use air transport.

Sometimes, tweaking a current process is not enough to boost

performance. You need to reimagine the process, using innovation
tools such as “seven ways,” in which you list seven different
solutions to a problem. You’ll usually run out of obvious solutions
after the first few. Coming up with more stimulates innovative

“
thinking. 

”
“Ignoring the obligation to focus on social
responsibility can be a recipe for going out of
business.”

When you generate a range of possible solutions, rank them on a

solution matrix. List your selection criteria, and assign each
criterion a weight – a number that represents its importance. List
your proposed solutions, and rate how well each solution meets
each of the criteria.

When you implement your solution, announce the changes to all

relevant stakeholders. Make sure you allot adequate time, funds
and staff to bring the changes about, and that you are ready to
institute the necessary training. Often, it’s best to start an
improvement effort with a trial – apply the change to one

“
department or location to learn if you need to modify it in action.

“Organizational support, clear roles and

”
responsibilities, a rigorous methodology, linkage to
the business strategy and measurable outcomes are
critical factors in the success of the [continual-
improvement] program.”

The grocery store came up with the innovative idea of growing

tomatoes in greenhouses on its roof. This solution guaranteed
fresh tomatoes, reduced costs and lessened the business’s
environmental impact.

Finally, report progress to your stakeholders, and start

the next project.
In accordance with ISO 26000’s imperative for accountability and
transparency, the organization should report the results of its
project to internal and external stakeholders. Internal reports
should include data on the health of the business, an outline
of important management actions and a description of the
project’s performance in terms of the seven subjects of ISO
 26000. External reports should be less detailed, and offer a
summary of the firm’s activities that covers how they will affect
stakeholders and support sustainability.

After the grocery chain tried its greenhouse solution in one store,
it made plans to reproduce the program in its other locations
throughout the world. The company prepared reports for
stakeholders showing the costs savings to owners and investors,
the impact on employees and the environmental benefits for the
community. Such a report helps farmer-suppliers plan their mix of

“
crops.

”
“We are never finished; there will always be
increasing stakeholder expectations and new
opportunities for performance improvement.”

In accordance with continual-improvement philosophy, the end of

this project signals the beginning of a new one, which will take the
system to an even higher level of performance.
 

About the Authors

Holly A. Duckworth is a Six Sigma Master Black Belt and
volunteer leader for the American Society for Quality. Andrea
Hoffmeier is a Six Sigma Black Belt who focuses on marketing,
product development, quality management and organizational
excellence.

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