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Learning from past mistakes, a logistics company came up with three areas to focus on when training its future deployment Champions. The result? Lean Six Sigma infused into the company culture.

Last year, business process outsourcing firm Firstsource, based in Mumbai, India, was one of the participants in the iSixSigma Live! Summit & Awards program in the Most Successful Start-up category. Recently, iSixSigma caught up with Chandeep Singh, Executive Vice President, Process Excellence and Workforce Management, at Firstsource to discuss some of the recent accomplishments of […]

In an exchange on the iSixSigma Discussion Forums, a representative from a telecommunications firm was interested in learning about what methods are best to improve forecast accuracy at the company’s call center. After some discussion about defining the goals of the project, the responding Six Sigma experts then offered their views about using such tools […]

Until recently, the flow of management and strategy know-how was one-way; it was India that absorbed business models, technology and management systems from foreign corporations and institutions. As “India Inc.” raced to globalize and global companies sought to exploit the country’s low-cost talent pool, such industrialized-economy concepts as Kaizen, The Toyota Way, Six Sigma and […]

As expressed in my first blog, learning and practicing Lean Six Sigma helps me communicate with more clarity and consistency. In my opinion, one of the barriers to continuous improvement is the use of words without clearly defined and mutually agreed upon meanings. It’s common to see project charters include vague statements like these: improve […]

Thanks Chief, but you really aren’t in charge…The talk that has to happen. In most organizations there are several layers of decision makers. Each layer has more authority to make decisions than the one before. Military and law enforcement know this to be called, “chain of command.” Several times, I have had a high ranking […]

To increase plant efficiency, organizations need to start broad and carry on to a narrower perspective. Do this by focusing on the 5Vs: voice of the customer, value addition, value stream mapping, variation zero and visual management.

The Telefónica team of Buenos Aires, Argentina, took top honors, winning the Gold Award in the 25th International Team Excellence Award Process at the 2010 American Society for Quality’s World Conference on Quality and Improvement, held May 24–26, in St. Louis, Mo.

The rumbling and ash plumes have subsided for now over Europe’s skies, but the echoes from April’s Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruption in Iceland are still being felt throughout the Lean supply-chain structures of the continent and across the globe.

As we prepare for the arrival of our second child, we’ve decided to repaint the nursery. If you’ve ever tried painting a ceiling before, you know how easy it is to miss spots. Rather than go with normal ceiling paint, we opted for a special paint that goes on pink, and dries white. Pros call […]

Roughly a year ago, plastics company PolyOne Corp., located near Cleveland, Ohio, USA, was flirting with bankruptcy. Saddled with high rising material and energy costs, excess inventory problems, production delays, and the crippling global economic downturn, PolyOne looked to a bleak 2009 after suffering $273 million in losses in 2008. In February of this year, […]

The record label Music Co. was experiencing a high number of incident tickets regarding its digital release planning system, mostly as a result of delays in a release, reported by the sales team. To help deliver their record products in a more timely fashion, the organization used the DMAIC roadmap to uncover the causes of […]

I am fresh off of the American Society of Quality’s World Conference on Quality and Improvement. It was an outstanding idea forum that charged me up and allowed me to press some of the key thought leaders in Lean/Six Sigma/Quality on this idea of the need for innovation WITHIN the process improvement community. I was […]

By Jeffry J. Smith How can practitioners create a rigorous accounting method for measuring the financial benefits from their Six Sigma projects? The key here is being able to translate measured operational benefits into dollars, either in the form of cost reduction, inventory reduction or a revenue increase. The following five areas should be measured […]

Today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) granted patent rights to MoreSteam.com for inventions developed by MoreSteam’s President, Bill Hathaway.

Awards season is officially open for the iSixSigma Live! Awards, which recognize Six Sigma projects and programs that have demonstrated breakthrough results and people who have made significant contributions to the Six Sigma community.

DMAIC is a very powerful method and provides a framework for leading business improvement projects. The consistent rigor has led to many great results. However, I have also seen less successful DMAIC projects that took too long and/or generated little improvement. As mentors, we all have seen inexperienced belts struggle with various tools. However, my […]

In a difficult economy, an increasing number of senior business leaders are seeking to boost the performance of their operations by adopting Lean Six Sigma. Before these organizations can begin to reap the benefits of continuous process improvement, they must first understand the fundamental elements of the process known as DMAIC (for Define, Measure, Analyze, […]

The gains that Lean Six Sigma has brought in the areas of manufacturing, operations and physical product design speak for themselves. It is natural to want to replicate that success in software design. To do that most effectively, however, practitioners must meld Lean Six Sigma with Agile, a software development technique that is gaining traction […]

Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard’s Lifting and Handling Department recently won a Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) Excellence Award for the first quarter of 2010 for its major improvements in crane safety and operational productivity.

On March 1, the 448th Supply Chain Management Wing stood up the Planning for Defense Logistics Agency Managed Consumables Flight with the goal of improving DLA support to the Air Force.

A new on-board missile health-monitoring device is providing troops in the Middle East an added measure of assurance that the Army’s Hellfire II missiles will perform without failure. According to a news release from Pacific Northwest National Laboratories, this marks the Army’s first-ever deployment of missiles that features a device to constantly monitor the weapon’s […]

There is a battle being waged on the fringe of the Six Sigma community. The battle is over how to apply Six Sigma to one of the last frontiers of business – marketing. There are two sides to the argument: those who favor a direct application, and those who feel the method should be modified. […]

OK, we’ve got our kaizen team going full speed ahead, and one of the improvements will be to replace the central printer with individual desk printers to avoid interruptions and transportation waste. Workers won’t have to get up and walk to get their forms. Hooray! “But,” one of the workers says, “we like getting up […]

Here is the good news: To help their call centers improve, managers need to solve just one problem – between-agent variation. That’s right. Fixing that problem can take a call center to a new standard of excellence. Of course there are other operational challenges that need to be solved, but between-agent variation is such a […]

First published in 2004 by process improvement and business transformation consultants, QSB Consulting, the Six Sigma and Minitab pocket guide is now used by over 50,000 business excellence professionals worldwide.

A dilemma many organizations face while implementing Six Sigma is the selection of a deployment model. Many practitioners feel that they must choose between a central team running projects to attack pain areas or a dedicated team of Black Belts who are attached to each function and support the leadership in improving performance. While there […]

Four times a year, I donate blood at a local blood bank and receive readings on my cholesterol, blood pressure and pulse. Although donating blood does not improve a person’s health, the regular readings of the vital signs, along with analysis and actions stemming from this data, can be significant in the fight against heart […]

We home educate our children and one approach we take is to think up and solve problems. When solving one of these, “how can you measure how tall a tree is?”, the Tan-o-meter was born! The maths is straightforward. You measure yourdistance from the treeand the angle to the top of the tree. Multiply the […]

PolyOne Corp. — an Avon Lake, Ohio-based firm that ranks as North America’s largest compounder — on Feb. 4 reported a full-year 2009 profit of almost $68 million. The firm had reported a loss of almost $273 million in 2008. The improvement occurred even as the firm’s 2009 sales fell 25 percent to about $2.1 […]

Robert Weiner, a recognized Lean Six Sigma expert and CEO of North Kansas City-based PAS Technologies, died on Tuesday.

The Energy Forum for Process Excellence (May 24-27, St. Regis, Houston, TX), produced by iSixSigma Live! and presented by SSA & Company, will feature hands-on opportunities for attendees to strengthen their process excellence knowledge.

Royal Philips Electronics subsidiary Assembléon is cutting New Product Introduction (NPI) time on its A-Series pick & place equipment by 30 percent.

GE Appliances & Lighting will be getting the most out of the recently announced multi-year (2010-2014), $600 million investment in its manufacturing and other facilities at Louisville’s Appliance Park.

Arctic Cat Inc. today announced that the company has named Paul Fisher, 53, as vice president of operations, effective immediately.

I’ve used the phrase “closest to the customer” when explaining some aspects of lean – for example, starting improvements with the process closest to the customer outcome then working backwards in the process. Lately, I’ve been using the phrase “closest to the worker” to get people to think about removing non-value-added effort from out processes. […]

To improve the results of processes and make them leaner, practitioners need to identify which of the traditional seven wastes (or muda) are present in the process and take appropriate action. The seven wastes can be summarized with the acronym: DOTWIMP. D: Defect in the output, as identified in the eyes of the customer. O: […]

Linium’s acquisition of Five9 Technologies Training division, Chicago-based management consulting firm specializing in IT performance and business process, will springboard Linium’s own education offerings launch through Linium Educational Services, adding to its array of services specializing in IT solutions and strategy, enterprise performance and business technology optimization.

After a difficult year of serious cutbacks at many businesses due to the global economic crisis, average salaries for Six Sigma professionals around the world, including those in Europe, held steady, for the most part, according to the results of iSixSigma’s 7th annual Global Salary Survey. While Six Sigma salaries in Europe lagged behind those […]

Caterpillar Inc. said on Wednesday that its Chief Financial Officer Dave Burritt will retire next month as part a major management restructuring that will also lead to the departure of four other top executives.

Ina recent blog post, I mentioned a Waste Walk – and got a few queries about what that is. I see that I have assumed that everyone’s lean toolkit has the same tools, so I apologize for my assumption! Here’s some more information. Most lean approaches use a list of7 or 8 wastes to describe […]

Announcing a certification workshop on International MATRIZ level 1 in Mumbai from 17th to 21st May, 2010.

We have all heard a lot about “customer focus” in our work. But what does it really mean? How much has “bringing customer focus to the organization” helped you change the culture and improve the long-term performance of the business? What has been your customer’s response to it? Lean Six Sigma has brought more concrete […]

Imagine receiving the following message from your organization’s travel assistant: “You will really like your next business trip! I have booked you into a hotel right in the city center. It is a bit far from the factory and not really cheap, but after work you can do lots of things!” But what if you […]

A leading manufacturer of color picture tubes launched a DMADV project to increase speed and, thus, improve productivity and throughput capacity.

“Transformation” – One of the most overused words of the last decade…and at the same time, one of the most underreported phenomenon happening in the world today. Literally, much of the main stream media, academia and “so called experts” are missing the most important story of the day. The break-neck speed of global transformation driven […]

Just as people follow weather predictions to know if they should carry an umbrella, organizations use forecasting to predict and prepare for future events. Across industries, companies attempt to determine what will happen – they forecast for product or raw material prices, market demand, exchange rates, and numerous other key metrics. Based on these forecasts, […]