Robin Barnwell

For a hobby last year I started making cider (hard cider in the US). Below are some of the demijohns of apple juice I fermented. I cracked open a finished bottle and it looked & smelt great, but the taste…. it was insipid, slightly acidic and low in alcohol. Not good. Being in the business […]

Across the globe food prices are rising rapidly. The potential causes are many including big ticket issues like rising demand in emerging markets, oil prices, bio fuels, trade tariffs, global warming, population growth and tight supplies. With all that lot stacked-up its no wonder that prices are going up. Big problems call for big solutions […]

In 1660 King Charles 2nd officially established the General Post Office by act of parliament. In 1840 the first adhesive stamp, the penny black, was introduced. There’s a fair degree more history I skipped because I want to talk about a recent innovation. Pricing in Proportion was launched on the poor unsuspecting customer in 2006. […]

Our Lean Manufacturing program is stepping-up a gear and as part of this we are looking to present the approach to a large audience of about 200 people. And I am looking for some inspiration. If anyone has a good ice-breaker, simulation, case study or other activity that would take about 30 minutes and engage […]

The Adam Smith Institute has set June 2nd as UK Tax Freedom Day. This means we spend more than 5 months each year working for the government. How do we spend what’s left? Our gasoline is currently £1.23 per litre (that’s $9.15 a US gallon). If you avoid the car then our train prices are […]

Now I have achieved my ASQ Black Belt certification and with my brain still packed full of Lean Six Sigma information, I thought I would see if I could collect some more badges. So it’s a big “Lean Six Sigma Certification” welcome tothe British Standards Institute (BSI). My experience with BSI goes way back to […]

In our business we are passionate about achieving breakthrough innovations and I’d like to share a few examples of how we really push the envelope. Lets start with the fire alarm. It’s seldom used for real but reaches right across the whole campus with a very clear message: “Emergency, please leave the building by the […]

In January I looked through the ASQ body of knowledge (BoK) for Black Belt and said to myself, “I know most of this stuff now”. So put in my entry and passed the Mar’08 exam. I thought I would share the experience, as I believe a number of practitioners may have looked at the ASQ […]

Imagine a world in which we routinely do things Right First Time, Every Time. There would be no more rework as first time yield is 100% and no need to coach & mentor as green & black belts hit the ground running. Unfortunately it tends to be the case that in order to be Right […]

Over my career I have taken many personality & skill tests. For example, I know my Myers Briggs Indicator Type, mapped myself across the Insight Discovery Wheel, discovered my rating on the Management Assessment of Proficiency, found the next number in the sequence, found the wrong shaped shape and generally been tested in every conceivable […]

Having now delivered many transactional projects I have noticed common themes repeatedly occurring. These include: IT Systems that have been poorly designed or operated Inadequately thought through policies & procedures Opaque, non-existent or duplicate processes Lack of viable information on process performance But there is one area I would like to focus, decision points. People […]

Every morning and every evening I walk to and from work.It can go fromcold rainy days (like today!) to balmy summer evenings. I enjoy the exercise and get to watch the changing of the seasons. For those of you with a statistical bent this is the season to “guess the population distribution”. On my return […]

The very first Six Sigma book I read was The Six Sigma Way. The first page describesthe story of a CEO jumping to solutions and being educated by a Black Belt on the methodology. He is turned around and states, “We’re not in the ‘Just Do It’ mode anymore”. My take-away being, we take a […]

Here is a take on the Christmas challenge for you, Retrograde Chess. Your aim is to identify the missing piece. This position was reached only through legal chess moves. A word of caution, its tough, it took me a few days to crack and I found coming back to it a regular intervals helped. If […]

While reading about type I & II errors and specifically beta-risk I realised that although I was happy with alpha-risk I didn’t recall seeing beta-risk in any of our sampling or hypothesis equations. Being curious, I wondered why I was only accounting for type I errors in my work? Just to review, we need to […]

The triple constraints triangle (below) is used to show the tensions a project needs to balance when meeting its objectives. Normally set at the beginning of the project, a scope change in any one dimension will have an effect on at least one other dimension e.g. a reduction in time can increase costs or reduce […]

Customer relationship, customer insight, customer retention, customer proposition, customer experience, customer journey, customer-centric, customer analytics, customer loyalty, customer value, customer satisfaction, customer equity, customer intelligence, customer contact strategy……the poor customer they have been so slice-n-diced by so many people over so many years they must be a messy pile of little cubes on the floor. […]

I believe Deming may have said something in this area, but given I couldn’t find a famous quote I made one up. 80% of business issues come from the process and only 20% from the people who work at the business If someone told me that, I’d say, No!Look at the things people do that […]

Now I like to think I am quite an objective & freethinking person and don’t always follow the herd when I think something is wrong. I’m not a complete contrarian but am willing to “go it alone” when I feel something is important. So it is a great disappointment to me to say I have […]

I have been working with my colleague, Dave Baker, here at Aviva and we have been researching the long-term behaviour of our processes. Now I am not going to go down the path of process capability analysis, Cp, Cpk, Zshift and the like. Take a look at this simple time series plot to see why. […]

I have a secret weapon, let me explain. At the start of a 6-week project, I put together a detailed data collection plan to pull data from one of our legacy systems. Worked with IT and received the schedule next day, 2-weeks analysis, 2-weeks build & 2-weeks test. Not good news! The project was planned […]

I have struggled for sometime to appreciate the relationships between Lean Six Sigma and Innovation. Part of this is because I have never really given it much thought and also a couple of things worry me. I think I need to cover what this baggage is before talking about how I think they the two […]

A couple of days ago, during a particularly boring meeting I started to doodle. But it wasn’t one of those doodles where you draw a box, then put a cross in it, then shade it, add a couple of surrounding circles, give it legs etc…. it was a doodle with purpose, I started doodling Lean […]

One of the foundations of Lean Six Sigma is its clear link to benefits. Take a look at some of the quoted benefits from the Lean Six Sigma behemoths: GE saved $12 billion over five years and added $1 to its earnings per share Honeywell (AlliedSignal) recorded more than $800 million in savings Six Sigma […]