Category: Blogs

CTQs, short for Critical-To-Quality, are key quantifiable requirements of a service or product which are critical to meet customer expectations and often defined by customer expectations. It’s what the customer expects of our product or service. Customer expectations and comments which are gathered from surveys or comment forms for a particular area of service are […]

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 […]

While reading Gianna Clark’s blog below,”Green Belt Sonic Boom,” my first reaction was: Great minds think alike! We are in the starting phase of a boom of training, and all of Gianna’s caveats are valuable. Last year in October,our healthcare system started our internal training of Green Belts with a class of 40. We planned […]

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 […]

Recently, I had the fortunate or unfortunate pleasure of pulling my head out of the sand, and becoming more versed in another one of our internal surveys. It comes in the form of a link, appended to an automated case response sent to end users when a service request case (think CRM) is resolved or […]

As my title would suggest, the concepts of business intelligence and Six Sigma seem to be revolve around each other according to most practioners, rather than intersect, like I believe. Gone are the days (or should be) where the applications and business processes are distinct, individual units operating outside the realm of process improvement projects. […]

Recently I had the opportunity to attend the IQPC Australasia Six Sigma summit. For me, the highlight of the event was a presentation given by GE. The presentation focused around how the company was taking the voice of the customer to the next level by aligning NPS (Net Promoter Score) methodology with Six Sigma. NPS […]

“We need to train as many Green Belts as fast as we can!” At first this sounds like the type of fast-track deployment that will get things moving. But training too many Green Belts too fast may fuel unnecessary resistance if not deployed properly. Listed below are a few things you may want to consider […]

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 […]

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 […]

A couple of weeks ago I ordered a pair of red stiletto shoes on the web. I received them the next day (free delivery of course). They didn’t fit quite right so I decided to send them back. The return instructions were in the box. I got online, printed a pre-paid return label & dropped […]

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 […]

Over the past two weeks we talked about how Six Sigma can help organizations accomplish “What’s Needed” and the significance of being “On Time.” But none of this matters much if it is not done “With Value.” Value – wartosc – der Wert – valor . . . Whether said in English, Polish, German or […]

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 […]

Last week we talked about how Six Sigma can help organizations accomplish “What’s Needed.” Without this element, nothing else really matters because being “On Time” with the wrong thing won’t “wow” anyone. This week we are exploring the significance of being “On Time.” Whether it is the delivery of a product or service or keeping […]

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; […]

Please pardon me for ignoring iSixSigma for the last two months. Life took over, and I did not have time to blog. This is a short post consisting of three questions. Would anyone comment on the range of cycle times for DMAIC black belt and green belt projects? At your companies, is mastery of a […]

In today’s world, new technology, changing customer expectations and the competitive market are constantly redefining “What’s Needed.” Any company with hopes of competing must constantly reshape their processes and products to meet these changing needs. Fortunately, Six Sigma is there to help accomplish this by: Providing a systematic approach to continuously improve and redesign processes […]

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 […]

For the Army deployment, this is ” the year of production.” We are in full swing of BB and GB training plus project completion for certification. The work in progress is pretty high. We have a full pipeline of newly trained belts itching to do projects. But with a constraint to complete x number by […]

The following is theOpen Mike column from the July/August 2007 issue of iSixSigma Magazine, entitled “Durable and Great.” During the last 50 years, companies around the world have focused on operational excellence – the near-flawless execution of business processes. The pursuit of process excellence has evolved through various structured forms, from TQM to Six Sigma […]

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 […]