His job was to infuse the gospel of Six Sigma into Tyco management during its post-Koslowski recovery.

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What Mr Welch cared about was quality hence his embrace of the Six Sigma programme for total-quality management.

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One firm that has embraced the new management techniques including Six Sigma quality-control measures made famous at GE is Seyfarth Shaw, a Chicago firm with 800 attorneys.

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They have enrolled the company on the so-called "Six Sigma" program, a management program championed by, among others, General Electric's Jack Welsh and used to great effect at Sierk's old employer, AlliedSignal.

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The program--known as the clunky "At the Customer, For the Customer"--taps the parent company's wealth of expertise in the vaunted Six Sigma defect-reduction method, just-in-time manufacturing and such management pursuits as succession planning.

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However, as Mr Bonsignore takes over that task, a longer-term question still remains about the viability of conglomerates in an age in which management people talk about core competences even more than six sigma.

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