1 In terms of "design quality" and "conformance quality," explain how using the Six-Sigma approach helped American Express. THE GENERAL SITUATION A number of merchants that accept American Express cards fail to place point-of-purchase materials (e.g., decals) that notify cus- tomers that they can use these cards at these establishments while displaying competing (e.g., Visa, Mastercard, etc.) point-of- purchase materials. American Express defines these merchants as "passive suppressors." In an effort to increase visibility, an extemal vendor that placed point-of-purchase material in the marketplace, identified passive suppressors, and measured placement and passive suppression rates was hired by American Express. However, the vendor had a significant rate of failure to contact or meet with the merchants. The leading reason for not meeting with the merchant was that the store was closed when the vendor stopped by. DEFINE AND MEASURE The objective was to reduce closed store uncallables (failures to contact), which represented 27.4 percent of total uncallables and 8.0 percent of the annualized attempted visits. The process represented a 2,9 sigma level and 80,000 defects per million opportunities. ANALYZE A Pareto chart pointed to the "closed store" category as the number one reason for uncallables. By shadowing the vendor on merchant visits, American Express learned that the visits took place between 8:00A.M. and 6:00 PM. Of the closed stores, 45 percent were retail establishments and 16 percent were restaurants. Typically, these two types of establishments are not open before 10:00 AM. Therefore, American Express hypothesized that the hours the vendor was call- ing on the merchant contributed to the high uncallable rate. It also was determined that if an establishment was closed, the inspec- tion process was terminated with the merchant being reported as uncallable without first checking to see if any point-of-purchase materials were visible from the outside. This resulted in merchants who displayed point-of-purchase material being visited multiple times-leading to rework.