Category: Blogs

(Movie Review – WARNING! May contain spoilers…) At the beginning of the movie, the Santa Claus who is scheduled to appear in the Thanksgiving Day Parade is found to have significant defects. He is replaced with a worker who seems to utilizestandard work, Sensei Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn). The new Senseiyields improved results for the […]

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 […]

My last blog discussed elevating the strategic relevance of Lean, Six Sigma and process excellence. My view is that mature Process Excellence Organizations enjoy or achieve credibility and success by executing a flexible performance-improvement process attacking the top priorities, employing the best tools, selecting the right projects and leveraging organizational momentum. The first thing mature […]

Isn’t it ironic that what might actually be needed to address variation in your process is variation in your team? Picking the right team members is almost as important as picking the right project. In addition to an expert, a customer and representatives from other key stakeholder groups, you should think about how you can […]

I have had the fortune to serve twice on the ASQ’s International Team Excellence Awards judging panel. It’s not the entries that I want to talk about, but the experience of serving on the panel. The details of the competition and the criteria are posted on the ASQ website, www.asq.org. When I volunteered to serve […]

Ever wonder what a Six Sigma Thanksgiving would be like? Here’s a glimpse . . . 99.9997% of the turkey would get eaten so you don’t have to eat turkey sandwiches every day for the next two weeks 99.9997% of the mashed potatoes won’t have lumps 99.9997% of the desserts taste great and have no […]

“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 […]

A conversation I regularly get into involves discussion of the difficulties encountered when deploying Six Sigma in an environment that is already saturated with other programs and toolsets. A majority percentage of the time the discussion is about deploying Six Sigma in an area where Lean is already well established, but there are many other […]

When my fellow Black Belts and I facilitate, or teach, we ask the participants to give us feedback at the end of each session. We use the plus-delta format that we inherited from our original consultants, by dividing a flip-chart page into two columns for the “plusses” (things that worked well, were meaningful, or strengths) […]

Whether it’s a Six Sigma deployment, a project, a training class or metrics, one variable stands out as the ultimate gauge of success: Business Line-of-Site. Yes, I meant “Site” not “Sight.” It’s more than just seeing the path to the destination. It’s about actively targeting it. When you are passionate about something, it is easy […]

It’s Halloween and what could possibly be scarier than monsters and goblins? Here’s a top ten list of frightening Six Sigma moments that might send chills up your spine! Number 10: Having the network go down when you are on question 49 of 50 of your online Black Belt exam. Number 9: Being in the […]

Voice of the Customer (VOC) is a driving value that determines the amount of waste and what adjustments need to be made to the service or manufacturing process to achieve more efficiency and thus more value to the customer. To the extent that a service satisfies the customer the service is valued. A satisfied customer […]

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.

Like many companies in the Fortune 1000, we are planning 2008. At leadership meetings, around conference room tables and in hallway conversations, we are asking big questions: What will our industry look like? How will external trends affect us? How should our business model change? What capabilities do we need? Do we have them? What […]

Hours . . . Days . . . Weeks . . . Months . . . Years . . . Seems like some Six Sigma projects drag on forever. But the question here is not how long does it take to complete a project because that really depends on the project scope. The real question […]

Each company probably would have strategized targets to achieve on annually. In Starwood they are know as Big 5’s. Big 5’s are tactical targets that support the company’s global initiatives and global objectives; normally a mixture of financial and non-financial but measurable targets. These targets ‘flow down’ from divisional presidents’ offices’ to area directors and […]

Many companies look to Six Sigma to help them transform. They constantly talk of “weaving Six Sigma into the fabric of the company,” “having Six Sigma become part of their DNA” and “fundamentally changing the way they work.” These are all nice wugga words but without a real vision of what they want to transform […]

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 […]

Just got back from Philadelphia where I spoke at a conference on how to design a training strategy to support organization-wide Six Sigma learning. Entitled “Gearing Up for Success,” it focused on the linkage that must always be maintained between the training strategy/curriculum and business objectives. Without this, it’s easy for training to become disconnected […]

Having worked on many process improvement projects across multiple SBU’s in my organization in the Sri-Lankan apparel industry, a primary factor that determines the success or failure of any project is the level of cultural acceptance and support a project or practitioner receives from various levels of an organization. Overtime the Sri-Lankan apparel industry has […]

The first time I watched Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men (1957) was four years back, at a Six Sigma leadership workshop. We were only 3 days into a two week long training, and some of us were already stretched to optimal stress levels. Being a bit more of an action buff, and being after a […]

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. […]

Yes, the Six Sigma community has its own cartoon strip. We even have our share of corporate M&A excitement with recent acquisitions (Accenture and Oracle). But where are the good old fashioned MTV music and videos for the Six Sigma community? If you love mullets and buck-teeth, you’re going to love “The MiniTab Song” by […]