Six Sigma Out of Fashion?

We did training using Six Sigma in its early days.    We joined with GE regionally to do advanced training with them.    Though in later connects with GE the term was not mentioned.  Agile was more in fashion.   It had been a very high flying thing for manufacturers.  Now here a fascinating article in Quartz,  tracking the way it seems to be slipping.  Not that it should have been called a fad, but rather a 'fashion' of the late 80s.  See below for more on that.     See also some interesting measures in Google searches and uses in Linkedin Skill Lists, where 'Six Sigma' has been failing.   I am looking forward to seeing push-backs on the article, it still makes lots of sense. just perhaps less in fashion.  I know lots of people that are near religiously devoted to it.

Whatever happened to Six Sigma?
By Oliver Staley In QZ.com

Twenty years ago, no company was flying higher than General Electric. In early 2000, GE passed Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable company. The sprawling conglomerate, which sold everything from jet engines to mortgages to advertising on Seinfeld, was directed by a dynamic CEO, Jack Welch, and his unwavering faith in the power of Six Sigma.

Six Sigma, at its core, is a system for eliminating defects in manufacturing. The name refers to a statistical model, based on deviations on a bell curve, that dictates the number of acceptable defects per million manufacturing steps. Achieving Six Sigma means an organization tolerates just 3.4 defects per million steps, insisting that 99.99966% of its products or services are without flaws. Historically, most industrial companies operate between three and four sigma, making them between 93% and 99.3% defect-free (these figures can vary slightly depending on the statistical model).  .... 

According to Google, searches for “Six Sigma” peaked in 2004, and have fallen steadily since. LinkedIn data reveal a similar story, with fewer and fewer of its 630 million users adding Six Sigma as a skill to their online résumés. It’s since been surpassed by Agile, a management process that emerged from the world of software development.  .... "