In the early 80's, US Industry realized the importance of characterizing competitive pressures from Japans emerging manufacturing industry. A now famous benchmarking study revealed the significant gap between US and Japanese companies, largely attributed to the post WW II work performed by Dr's Deming and Juran. Leveraging team work, quality tools, statistics and management alignment, Japan became the benchmark for quality and business performance. In response Motorola created Six Sigma, which captured the essence of these basic quality principles and aligned it with US cultural norms. The result was a 20 year run of award winning performance and Six Sigma became adopted by thousands of companies across the globe.