Smith, Bill

Bill Smith (1929-1993) is the little-known inventor of Six Sigma while working at Motorola.

Reportedly, his early version of the problem-solving steps was “MAIC”, or measure, analyze, improve, control, with “Define” added later to make it the current version, “DMAIC”.

As a result of Smith’s efforts, Motorola was the first recipient of the Malcom Baldrige Award.