Category: Blogs

Last July, I took a new role in my company as program & operations leader for a global business development team, after several years as a full-time Lean Six Sigma professional. No more classroom teaching, lean events, statistical tests, coaching other belts, or lean six sigma projects to run. Instead, I was given a broad […]

In light of our overall desire to standardize processes in order to reduce variation, I’ve seen a fair share of projects in the service or transactional spaces where one of the recommendations is to script key parts of the customer interaction. While this may make sense to help shorten a call or standardize the interaction, […]

If you travel to multiple sites to support projects as I do, you know what it is like to drive on the highway during rush hour. Last week I was driving to another company site, which is normally about 1.5 hours away if there is no traffic. I was cruising at the speed limit until […]

The common Six Sigma roadmap can provide value in even the most unstructured environments By Braden Kelley On the surface, the DMAIC roadmap and the concept of innovation appear to be mutually exclusive ideas. At least that’s what many critics have claimed is the Achilles’ heel of the Six Sigma methodology. Six Sigma and innovation, […]

Continuous improvement (CI) practitioners know that Lean Six Sigma can be applied to almost any business process to achieve positive results. But perhaps no other sector better represents the challenges and potential of Six Sigma than the federal government. In the case of the U.S. military, incremental performance improvements can be a matter of life […]

Many times in our industry, organizational leaders spout that they desire and believe in continuous improvement. They use the latest buzzwords and seem very serious when they communicate the new direction that they want to take. I don’t know if CI is truly understood by many organizational leaders due to the fact that most of […]

If you didn’t have the ability to attend an iSixSigma Live! event in person during the first half of 2011 (and given the content at these world-class conferences, you really should have been there), you still have the chance to take in some of the best presentations from those programs with the iSixSigma “Best of […]

Ramblings, grumblings and samplings from the desk of Paul V. Arnold on June 9, 2011: Notes on Newt: iSixSigma publisher Katie Barry forwarded a Politico.com article to me this morning that chronicled Newt Gingrich’s formal signing in New Hampshire of a pledge to adopt Lean Six Sigma principles if elected President of the United States. […]

How often are your DMAIC projects terminated before their completion? While it’s a benefit to make early decisions in the Define or Measure phase to stop unpromising and/or non-priority projects, it can be difficult in the later phases after the organization has invested in significant time and resources. The problem is not unique to continuous […]

Nearly 150 change management professionals representing more than 60 companies in the oil & gas and utilities sectors attended the 2011 iSixSigma Live! Energy Forum for Process Excellence on May 16-19 in Houston. Those attendees came from 19 states and eight countries (United States, plus Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Thailand and the United […]

Three exceptional workshops opened up the third annual iSixSigma Energy Forum for Process Excellence, being held May 16-19 at the Westin Oaks Hotel in Houston. The workshops, attended May 16 by a host of leaders in the oil & gas and utilities sectors, were as follows: “Change Management: The Cornerstone of a Successful Lean Six […]

One of the “holy grails” of continuous process improvement is the reliable collection and analysis of real-time data. At Southern California Edison (SCE), one of the largest utilities in the United States, this fine level of data is being given not only to the process improvement teams, but to their customers, as well, in the […]

The latest issue of iSixSigma Magazine highlights the DFSS program at John Deere Power Systems, measures the critical inputs for Lean Six Sigma success and offers tips for recharging your deployment.

When talking about Lean and Six Sigma, people often associate them with improved productivity. Other times they associate them with their possible consequences: high profitability or loss of jobs. In today’s economic environment, many people are concerned with the potential trade-off between productivity improvement and employment. But is there such a trade-off relationship? A recent […]

  As many of you know, there are significant differences in Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt expectations and certification criteria between organizations. Typically Master Black Belt certifications focus on advanced tool knowledge, training/project coaching experience, portfolio management and program leadership to name a few of the most common ones. While I’ve always thought that […]

Hello fellow Lean Six Sigma professionals! Not so long ago, in conversation with iSixSigma, the opportunity to start blogging to share ideas and insights on deployment leadership came up. In addition to the personal blog that I’ve been maintaining for the past few months on WordPress in which I’ve been touching on a broad range […]

Everyone building Lean Six Sigma in an organization probably agrees that the challenge is not teaching the tools but changing the mindset. As many of us have experienced, we could introduce misconceptions that are counter-productive. For example, there are a lot of discussions or even debates on the standards of Black Belt certification – what […]

Throughout my professional career, I have always considered myself to be a life-long learner and educator who has continually strived to improve my own skill set as well as many of my business colleagues. My primarily focus for competency development has related to how organizations can become more effective in problem solving/prevention, innovation and continuous […]

I read a lot of our client’s feedback, pages and pages of comments and thoughts. I use this information to align our processes and improve our customer experience. Let me touch on one area. When I read comments from people who think highly of us a single word appears repeatedly – Responsive and its visa-a-versa […]

iSixSigma’s first Retail Forum for Process Excellence, presented by SSA & Company, wrapped up last week at the Westin Edina Galleria in Minneapolis. Attendees at the four-day event had the opportunity to learn from workshops, keynote addresses, breakout sessions, panel discussions and a site tour. They also had a chance to meet, network and share […]

The curtains were drawn the room was dark. The man tied to the chair could not escape. The kidnapers were out negotiating the ransom. The man spied his iPhone on the table. He shuffled the chair forward inch by inch. Leaning forward he activated his iPhone with his nose. He managed to start e-mail and […]

In my blog about a year ago, “How I became a Black Belt“, I wrote about Lean Six Sigma being “simply a scientific approach to problem solving and learning.” I am sure everyone understands LSS as a problem-solving methodology. But how does Lean Six Sigma help us learn? First, let’s look at some common barriers […]

The conference portion of the 2011 iSixSigma Retail Forum for Process Excellence concluded on Wednesday afternoon, March 30, with three case studies, a panel discussion and a keynote address. The four-day event officially wraps up on Thursday, March 31, with a post-conference workshop and a benchmarking tour of Best Buy headquarters. All total, the 2011 […]

An all-star lineup of speakers shared best practices and lessons learned during the morning sessions on Day 3 (Wednesday, March 30) at the iSixSigma Retail Forum for Process Excellence. The conference runs through Thursday, March 31, at the Westin Edina Galleria in suburban Minneapolis. Jess Elmquist, the senior vice president of Life Time University and […]