The origin of Total Quality Management (TQM) had many forefathers in its inception, but was generic in nature. Meaning you could plug the works of Ishikawa, Juran and Deming (just to name a few) into any business and you’d get results — just not the best results for your specific business.全面质量管理（TQM）的起源有不少先例，不过本质上却是通用的。也就是说，你可以把石川图（鱼骨图）、朱兰质量手册以及戴明学术（随便列出几个名称）推广到任何一家企业，并且得到结果-却不是特定企业想得到的最佳结果。
Six Sigma has some differences from TQM — it puts an even stronger focus on customer requirements; after all, businesses are there to serve their customers. So,Voice of the Customer (VOC) is extremely important in the quality of their product or service.六西格玛与全面质量管理（TQM）还是有一些不同之处的—六西格玛，更加注重客户的需求；毕竟，企业是要服务客户的。因此，客户之声（VOC）在产品或者服务的质量中还是相当重要的。
Six Sigma also requires additional tools used in data analysis. The financial focus is on a project level — with TQM, it is on an organizational level.六西格玛，也需要额外的工具来分析数据，财务上的焦点是在项目层面上，而全面质量管理（TQM）财务焦点则是在组织层面。
The clear understanding is that Six Sigma’s methodologies have a mindset of having a success rate of 99.9997% or less than 3.4 defects per million opportunities. With these high goals, specificity is a must.要清楚的知道：六西格玛的方法，要拥有一种成功率达到99.9997%，或者每百万分之3.4的缺陷的心态。拥有这些高目标，具体性才是必不可少的。
In order to achieve this level of excellence, a Six Sigma culture must exist throughout the business or organization. General Electric has had such a huge success with Six Sigma that if you go to their website you’ll see that they are Six Sigma’s biggest advocate.为了达到这一卓越水准，六西格玛的文化必须贯穿到整个企业或者组织中。通用电气公司用六西格玛取得了令人瞩目的成功，如果登录该公司的网站，你会发现通用电气公司是六西格玛的最大倡导者。
In yesteryear, it was believed that if a business gave in to their customer that it would cost that business too much money. In fact, the opposite is true.前些年，我们相信：如果企业向客户让步，那么，该企业将会损失太多的金钱。事实上，实际情况却刚好相反。
Here’s a good analogy: receiving a lawn of beautifully planted sod, but you wanted to landscape your new lawn with beautiful rocks and water efficient foliage. Although the sod looks great, it was not what you wanted and it is a big disappointment — to both the customer and the business. The customer feels unheard and the business feels unappreciated for producing a great product. It’s not great if it is not what the customer required. This can ultimately lead to a loss of customers over the long run.这里，来个比喻：你得到了一块种植美丽草皮的草坪，而你想用漂亮的岩石和节水的绿叶来对草坪进行美化。虽然草坪看起来很不错，却不是你想要的——这对客户和企业来说都是令人失望的。顾客感到未被理睬，而企业则感觉生产了不错的产品却不受赏识。如果不是客户所需要的，那么肯定很不好。从长远来看，这最终会让客户的流失。
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