More than five years ago, Apogee adopted Six Sigma/Lean companywide to deliver business results, as well as customer value and satisfaction. During this time, the company has saved approximately $50 million through the disciplined Six Sigma/Lean approach to business improvement. The company also surpassed its goal of training 20 percent of its work force in Six Sigma tools by the end of 2006. It is evident that the Apogee culture embraces continuous improvement.

At Apogee, Six Sigma/Lean is a world-class business strategy designed to help the company provide better products and services, faster and at a lower cost than our competition. The company is using the Six Sigma/Lean fact-based analytical tools and methodologies for preventing defects in products, processes and services, reducing cycle times and controlling costs to generate value for customers.

The combination of Six Sigma and Lean Thinking brings a powerful business improvement process, and a comprehensive set of tools and techniques for problem solving to Apogee and its businesses. Six Sigma/Lean is a business strategy for reducing variation within processes (Six Sigma) and eliminating non-value-added process steps from the customer's view (Lean). (The word "sigma" is a statistical term that measures how far a given process deviates from perfection.) The Six Sigma business improvement process was pioneered by Motorola and later embraced by GE.

Every year Apogee trains a significant number of employees in the use of tools for simplifying and perfecting its businesses. These Black Belts (four weeks training) and Green Belts (two weeks training) use Six Sigma tools and methodologies to lead and complete high-impact improvement projects.

The world-class Six Sigma/Lean business strategy provides exceptional opportunities for employee development, greater return to shareholders and improved products and services for customers.