"I never did get to the statistical bits, at the back of the book, but quietly returned it to the bullsh.. - sorry, Management section of the company library."

You did yourself a favor! You could have done your company a favor and dropped it into the garbage!

Six-sigma is almost "cult-like" in it's approach. The training, the green and black belts, the methodology, etc.    It may be great for some companies, but managment loves buzz words and feels that it will work for all applications. It doesn't, or at least - I never saw it implemented correctly.

One thing that I will say in its favor - it does teach you to look at all the steps in operations and find potential opportunities for error. Most of it is purely common sense, and the process does give people a chance to sit back and look at what they have been doing. The problem that I found is that it tends to dry up all the resources in collecting data and studying that data, and the changes never happen.