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A high-tech company was exploring the use of haptics to provide gentle haptic vibration with wearable devices (Figure 1) for future customers, including tweens (children around 11 or 12 years old). Haptics involve how users perceive tactile feedback from a device. Mobile devices typically provide haptic sensations and responses using vibrations of various frequencies, amplitude, […]

Consider the following contact center scenario. Janet, a mobile consumer, calls her telecom provider and lands at the Contact Center. Janet: Your network connectivity is poor in the Dukes and 53rd area. I keep dropping business calls when I commute through it every day. Advisor: Thank you for the location details. Is there any specific […]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Press Contact: Caryn Schockling [email protected] (800) 777-3020 May 13, 2015 (Dayton, Ohio) – PQ Systems announces the release of SQCpack 7, a comprehensive update to their best-selling statistical process control (SPC) solution that helps organizations utilize the power of data analysis to improve quality. SQCpack 7 is an easy and scalable application that […]

Faced with stiffening competition, increasingly demanding customers, high labor costs, and, in some markets, slowing growth, service businesses around the world are trying to boost their productivity. Although manufacturing businesses can raise productivity levels by monitoring and reducing waste and variance in their relatively homogeneous production and distribution processes, service businesses find that improving performance […]

The full value of any improvement initiative is realized only when it is complemented by a robust change management strategy to effectively manage the people side of the change throughout the course of improvement cycle. What Is Change Management? Change management is a systematic approach to transitioning individuals, teams and organizations to a desired future […]

The Northern Regional Medical Command (NRMC) Office of the Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO) is a team of high caliber military and civilian leaders tasked with deploying and supporting the use of information technology across 33 hospitals and clinics up and down the Eastern seaboard and extending as far West as the Mississippi River. This […]

Overall equipment efficiency (OEE) – the percentage of production time that is actually productive – has its roots in manufacturing where all production ceases when the equipment is offline. It is possible to gain a greater understanding of how effectively a system is operating, however, by expanding the concept to include all process steps in […]

I have to admit this is one of my favorite subjects – beer! Recently I toured the Ellis Island Casino and Brewery in Las Vegas. Our guide stated that their customers loved “cold” beer. Like most of you I immediately thought of Six Sigma critical-to-quality (CTQ) trees. (Yes, this stuff can be a curse.) As […]

If you’re a job candidate, and you search on Google or Bing for Lean Six Sigma certification, you’re likely to only see the training providers paying the most to have the highest listing on the page, or you may only be looking at the provider with the lowest advertised price. How do you figure out […]

The Lean Six Sigma (LSS) tool 6S has long been used by LSS practitioners as a tool for organizing work spaces from shop floors to operating rooms. This tool can also have tremendous value in organizing an area where many workers spend the majority of their work time – the electronic workspace. 6S Overview 6S […]

The Difference Between a Growth Mindset and a Fixed Mindset “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” – Pablo Picasso As the engineering manager of a large manufacturing facility, Rick had a knack for identifying talent. Rick had a set of criteria that […]

The goals of standard work are simple and straightforward. They are to: Provide everyone who performs a task with a well-documented, visual system that guides them through the proper execution of that task. Ensure that everyone performing a task follows a consistent reproducible process that minimizes opportunities for variation and error. Ensure that work flows […]

The startling fact is that most continuous improvement programs – whether they use Six Sigma, Lean, total quality management or some other methodology – fail to survive in the long term (Edward Pound, 2014). This stands in stark contrast with programs like the Toyota Production System that has been successful for over 60 years and […]

Have you been paying attention to your iSixSigma User Profile rankings? We’ve had a couple of community members jump levels in the past month. We offer our thanks and congratulations to them for being a part of the iSixSigma community! Chris Seider: Gold Trish G: Silver Michael Carver: Copper Forgotten what the rankings are? Want […]

Every statistician knows that basing a decision on limited data is certain to generate problems. Non-statisticians, however, may find making a decision without any data a bad habit to break. “Point mentality” – responding immediately to data that seems to indicate a change but may just be a reflection of natural variation – is even […]

LinkedIn, the largest and most popular business-oriented social networking service, announced over the weekend their top 25 “hottest skills” of 2014. What is a “hot skill” you’re likely wondering, as I did. Basically, LinkedIn looked across all 330 million member profiles, determined who was hired, which jobs were posted that recruiters were searching for talented […]

The best of iSixSigma 2014 features the highlights of this year’s content – as determined by our readers. Most Popular Build a Visual Dashboard in 10 Steps The Lean Six Sigma team at Ball Corporation began an initiative to develop visual signs on plant floors that would depict the health of the company and point […]

Kaizen is a Japanese term that means continuous improvement, taken from the words kai, which means continuous or change, and zen, which means improvement or good. A Kaizen event gathers operators, managers and leaders in one place. An existing process is reviewed and all team members – generally comprised of those directly responsible for or […]

In 2008, Susan Guthrie was the communications manager of the City of Tyler, Texas, (current interim city manager) and a General Electric-trained Green Belt. She approached the assistant city manager at the time, Mark McDaniel, with the idea of implementing Lean Six Sigma (LSS) in the City. Guthrie recalled, “The City’s culture of continuous improvement was […]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Press Contact: Rachel Glassford (888) 744-6295 November 25, 2014 (Kitchener, Ontario) – SigmaXL Inc., a leading provider of user friendly Excel Add-ins for Statistical and Graphical analysis, announces the release of SigmaXL Version 7 for Mac. “SigmaXL was designed from the ground up to be a cost-effective, powerful, but easy to use […]

We all know the importance of a good project Champion in the execution of a successful continuous improvement project. Without good Champions, project teams do not get the resources they need to do good work. Without good Champions, teams become mired in the internal politics of change that delay project execution. Without good Champions, project […]

Billions of people across the globe were bitten by soccer fever in 2014. It’s a sport that is widely followed and has the highest level of thrill. The other day I was watching a repeat telecast of the Brazil vs Chile match. It was an exciting match that went into extra time and then eventually […]

Over the course of the last year, I have had the privilege to speak with many companies that are either starting or are in the early stages of business transformation. It is astounding how many have not engaged in any form of benchmarking and even more astounding that many never intend to. Most understand the […]

Are you paying attention to your iSixSigma User Profile rankings? Get your ranking higher like two community members have in the past month. We offer our thanks and congratulations to them for being a part of the iSixSigma community! Pranali Humne: Aluminum Eric Maass: Aluminum You can earn reputation points a variety of ways, including: […]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Press Contact: Rachel Glassford (888) 744-6295 October 30, 2014 (Kitchener, Ontario) – SigmaXL Inc., a leading provider of user friendly Excel Add-ins for Statistical and Graphical analysis, has bundled SigmaXL Version 7 with DiscoverSim. DiscoverSim is an Excel add-in that enables you to quantify your risk through Monte Carlo simulation and minimize […]

Using resource models to balance staffing and skill sets can lead to higher service levels, lower costs and other benefits. A server migration example shows how this can work in information technology.

Many organizations have attempted to implement some form of project management into their organization with different degrees of success. Implementation success varies by the awareness and method to which the program was introduced, often leaving many feeling that LSS is just another flavor of the month. Once the awareness of the benefits that LSS can […]

As announced in the Democrat & Chronicle today, Xerox is cutting its formal Lean Six Sigma program (“Xerox cutting back on Lean Six Sigma program, jobs“). According to the president of corporate operations Herve Tessler, Xerox has met its goals of embedding the culture of Lean Six Sigma within the organization an “we no longer […]

KISS stands for “keep it super simple.” There are other definitions of the acronym but they all mean essentially the same thing. Lots of things in life are complex but there is great value in presenting them in a manner that can be easily understood by everyone. The ability to present complex things simply is […]

A medical devices company, developing technology to enable smaller medical devices, launched a substrate development effort as part of a larger-scale technology and product development effort. The substrate development effort involved predicting the stress caused by the laser welding process to ensure product reliability. In this Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) case study, design and […]

It is a common process-improvement scenario: After a project team or a work group is formed, members have a series of productive meetings and workshops, but then nothing happens. How many times has it felt like there are great team dynamics in the conference room but when it comes time to execute change, no one […]

There are many reasons why you should be submitting articles to be published on iSixSigma.com: You receive the notoriety of being published on the premier worldwide Lean Six Sigma website You share their professional experience and expertise You earn 100 iSixSigma reputation points for each published article, increasing your standing in the business community We’re looking for […]

Gaining support to implement and sustain a continuous improvement program is an oft-voiced concern of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) practitioners. These concerns reflect frustration in both senses of the term –  feeling frustrated personally and encountering attitudes that frustrate the effectiveness of the program. Three sets of skills and methods have shown success in gaining […]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Press Contact: Rachel Glassford  (888) 744-6295 Kitchener, Ontario – SigmaXL Inc., a leading provider of user friendly Excel Add-ins for Statistical and Graphical analysis, announces the release of SigmaXL Version 7. New features include: “Traffic Light” Automatic Assumptions Check for t-Tests and ANOVA A text report with color highlight gives the status […]

Have you been paying attention to your iSixSigma User Profile rankings? We’ve had a couple of community members jump levels in the past month. We offer our thanks and congratulations to them for being a part of the iSixSigma community! Marc Schaeffers: Copper Prabhu V: Copper Forgotten what the rankings are? Want to learn more […]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Caryn Schockling, Marketing Manager (937) 885-2255  [email protected] DAYTON—Michael J. Cleary, Ph.D., founder and president of PQ Systems, Inc. and a professor emeritus at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio died suddenly on September 10, 2014. Michael Cleary was born June 3, 1939 in Dumont, New Jersey. He was a graduate of […]

A leading environmental services company provides collection, processing, recycling and disposal of hazardous and non-hazardous materials for industrial and automotive customers. The company has branches all over the United States. The service representatives in these branches carry out services for geographically dispersed customers in their respective territories. This case study describes how DMAIC (Define, Measure, […]

Executing actions directly aligned to an organization’s strategy is fundamental to achieving success. Strategy with no action is just an idea; action with no strategy is anarchy. Neither scenario enables a company to deliver results. This article explores the three essential steps of achieving success (as defined by a given organization). Successful organizations: 1) define […]