Michael Marx

I recently came across a fairly newblog in the “business improvement” universe…Sith Sigma. It’s the rantings and ravings of a couple of infamous Sith Lords, Darth Sidious and Darth Vader. They offer plenty of entertaining but solid advice on Leadership, motivation and project management. The blog has nothing to do with Six Sigma directly, butthe […]

“Donuts. Is there anything they can’t do?” Homer Simpson would be proud of Maidstone Bakeries. Striving for the perfect donut. According the a press release: Maidstone produces more than 60 million donuts per week and wanted to ensure top quality while making sure its production operations were as efficient as possible. Maidstone is using Six […]

iSixSigma launched a new website last week, Six Sigma in the Military, complete with stories about how the U.S. Military is using Six Sigma. The purpose of this iSixSigma Military channel is to document the transformation of the United States Armed Services through the use of Lean Six Sigma and related process improvement methodologies. Ronald […]

This training video was made for CISCO by the Creative Learning Studio. It’s an entertaining explanation of process improvement as told by a fictitious news station in need of better proceses. DMAIC gets a plug as a way to achieve improved processes. Enjoy.

If Fort Wayne Indiana is the Six Sigma City, we just might see a Six Sigma County on the horizon…if Christopher C. Collins is elected as the Erie County Executive. He believes that good government can be achieved through good business. The Buffalo News reports: Collins’ candidacy is built on his remarkable success in turning […]

Jack Welch in an interview talks about what it means to be a Six Sigma Company alongsideJack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) and his take onSix Sigma. Enjoy.

There is just no end to the kinds of business problems Six Sigma is able to help solve. A news release picked up by CNNMoney.com, Forbes.com as well as others websites discusses a unique application of Six Sigma at Raytheon… A team of Raytheon Six Sigma(TM) experts used the Raytheon Six Sigma process to validate […]

Instead of hiring the usual ethnographers or consultants, Westin owner Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. turned to Six Sigma, a management process known for reducing defects and increasing efficiency.

Earlier this year Elizabeth M. Ferrarini at Enterprise Leadership interviewed Gerald Shields, CIO for AFLAC. EL: What best practices do you use for IT? GS: We have a couple of people who are Black-Belt certified in Six Sigma, and we use Six Sigma for some projects. Our primary best practice is the Capability Maturity Model […]

A common way to learn principles or tools is to associate a word as an acronym. The seven/eight wastes of Lean is a great example of acronymic variation. I’ve come across five different words invented to illustrate the wastes of Lean: The iSixSigma dictionary uses the word DOTWIMP to list the seven wastes of Lean […]

One thing I really like about the government Six Sigma initiatives is the public sharing of information. The DOD units are so proud to talk about how they are using Six Sigma and the benefits they are getting out of it. The Indian Head Division of NAVSEA has an entire website dedicated to Lean Six […]

For those of you who talk Six Sigma at dinner parties, here’s something for your next soiree – Six Sigma wine. I hear it goes well with a fishbone diagram and doesn’t leave that statistical aftertaste like those lower sigma level wines…. I’m not a wine drinker so I can’t comment on taste, but I can […]

Second quarter financial results have been hitting the wires the past few weeks and companies have been publicizing the benefits of Lean and Six Sigma. Quotes from a few of the recent releases: Ducommun Incorporated “We continue to benefit from healthy aerospace markets and the success of our Lean and Six Sigma initiatives. As a […]

This week’s iSixSigma Blogosphere Newsletter features SEMOE as the Guest Blog. SEMOE stands for Search Engine Marketing Operational Excellence and is written by Matt LeVeque,a search Marketing Manager with Commerce360. Matt knows his search engine marketing as well as his Six Sigma. He has a strong background in online marketing and was formerly the Sales […]

Yesterday, Covance, a $1.3 billion in revenue drug development service company, announced their second quarter results. The results were good, earning up, revenues up, etc…Included was a plug for their Six Sigma program: Our relentless focus on operational and service excellence continues to deliver substantial benefits. Six Sigma, which is being utilized across more than […]

At the iSixSigma Blogosphere you can subscribe to feeds that will deliver updates whenever one or all of our bloggers writes something new. These feeds use the RSS format which you can pick up with an RSS news reader. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is an XML-based format for content distribution that is […]

iSixSigma just announced a new marketplace called iSixSigma Publications (https://www.isixsigma.com/pubs/). The marketplace sells Six Sigmaresearch articles and project examplesas well as training materials and templates. Not only does iSixSigma Publications sell their own publications, they also have a partner programwhere independent authors can distribute their own works. If you write it, develop it, or build […]

Big news for the Six Sigma consulting community. Accenture has agreed to acquire George Group. The news hit the PR wires yesterday: The acquisition will expand and enhance Accenture’s ability to help clients become high-performance businesses through the addition of George Group’s specialized expertise in process improvement techniques including Lean Six Sigma, which combines process […]

Last week I was alerted to a fairly new blog in the Six Sigma Blogosphere. It is written by Michael Jordan, Sr. VP Management Consultant at Jones Lang LaSalle. After perusing his blog for just a few minutes I could quickly see that his writing is as good as his name. He’s the Michael Jordan […]

I read this story a long time ago about a hotel chain that learned that customers were happier if they experienced a problem and it was fixed than if they had a defect free stay. I must have told this story a few dozen times without remembering where I read it. I finally found the […]

MoreSteam.com is at it again. First with their April Fool’s Day press releaseand now with their Independence Day press release… We Hold The Data To Be Self-Evident: that all men and women are not created equally as instructors; that some are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable teaching abilities, and that others are not; […]

We’ve all heard the stories of rock stars and their chemical dependencies…now it looks like The Martin Guitar Company has picked up the habit too. The world-class acoustic guitar company has recently become dependent on Air Products and Chemicals… to teach them their ways of Continuous Improvement. Dave Rosendale, the Global Director of Continuous Improvement at […]

The July/August issue of iSixSigma Magazine includes my latest research article that explores different aspects of innovation, including what people think of the relationship between Six Sigma and innovation. A press releasewas issued this morning that includes a few highlights from the data: With a vast majority of companies professing to want “innovation,” those that […]

Ever see the Ocean Spray commercials, Straight from the Bog, with character growers Justin and Henry? According to an Ocean Spray press release last year, the new ad campaign featuring the two character growers has boosted sales six percent year over year. Innovation around the cranberry is what Ocean Spray is all about. Here’s a […]