isixsigma.com

Six Sigma practitioners in multinational companies need to know the differences in perspectives between European business leaders and their American counterparts. With some insight, they can improve their understanding and avoid potential conflicts. By Thomas Bertels While the United States and Europe share a common cultural heritage, there also are vital differences in the way […]

The CEO of a $1 billion business with sales and marketing affiliates in Europe, the Middle East and Africa asked the question, “When one of my affiliated businesses makes improvements, how do I get the benefits across all my businesses without having to wait for people to reinvent the wheel?” His question stimulated those responsible […]

With half a dozen years of experience, this may be a good time for the healthcare industry to revisit the question which titled a frequently cited article published in 1998, “Is Health Care Ready for Six Sigma?” The question may best be answered by examining how Six Sigma and related improvement methods have been deployed […]

A growing number of healthcare organizations are striving to differentiate themselves by seeking awards and recognition. Hospitals vie for coveted positions on lists of top hospitals from U.S. News and World Report, Modern Healthcare, Solucient and others. Numerous state, regional and national awards are given each year for excellence in specific service lines, patient safety, […]

The diagnostic testing center at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago is an outpatient laboratory that is kept perennially busy serving the needs of the community. Thousands of walk-in patients are seen each year, primarily for blood tests (phlebotomy) and electrocardiograms (EKGs). Although Northwestern receives acclaim for its patient care, some complaints had begun to surface […]

Six Sigma has been used extensively in improving manufacturing organizations, but only relatively recently has it been used to improve processes outside the manufacturing arena. In our book Six Sigma Beyond the Factory Floor, my co-author, Dr. Ronald D. Snee, and I examine process improvement in the rest of the economy, such as financial services, […]

A power distribution company in India, serving domestic, commercial, industrial and agricultural users, was not meeting the country’s performance standard regulations for metering and billing. A Six Sigma project was initiated to reduce cycle time.

The Emergency Department (ED) increasingly is becoming the sole source of medical care for many individuals. It also is often called the “gateway” to the hospital since it is the first encounter many patients have with the hospital. Thus it is the place where positive or negative perceptions of the hospital initially may be formed. […]

Six Sigma practitioners know that operational definitions are definitions to do business with. An operational definition can be defined as a clear and understandable description of what is to be observed and measured, such that different people collecting, using and interpreting data will do so consistently. An operational definition is a concept to guide what […]

Certified Quality Engineer (CQE) Prep Course In Las Vegas May 10-13th

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Hamburg, Germany, and Ridgefield, Conn. – Valeocon Management Consulting and iSixSigma today announced a strategic alliance which has resulted in a new Internet portal for European companies, focused specifically on the application of Six Sigma – a rigorous, data-driven method for business process improvement. The primary purpose of this co-branded portal, named […]

Look around your workspace. Is your in-box stuffed to overflowing? Do you have a long list of new emails that will take you days to get through? Is your voice mail rejecting new messages? Are people waiting for your work output? All of those items represent “work in process,” also called “things in progress” (TIP). […]

Rath & Strong Announces the Publication of Whose Fault Is It Anyway? A Modern Fable About Six Sigma.

Of all the new and innovative applications for Six Sigma, none may be as interesting as one being used in the state of Colorado – applying Six Sigma to all aspects of a public school system. And “all aspects” includes the heart of every school district – the classroom. In 2008, businessman Jim Weigel, who […]

A Series of Articles on VOC Advances This article is one of a series on advances in obtaining and applying voice of the customer (VOC) information. The other articles in the series are VOC Advances: New Paths to Understanding Customers and VOC Advances: Helping Make Better Design Decisions. The series was written by Anthony E. […]

Corporate Leaders to Gather for Business Improvement Conference

Microsoft Boosts Office Solution Accelerator for Six Sigma

Pitney Bowes Chooses PowerSteering Software for the Launch of its New Quality Initiatives

New MINITAB® Guide Designed To Increase the Productivity of Six Sigma/DMAIC Projects

The quality and variability of care delivered by hospitals is highly profiled in the media today. Pick up a newspaper, turn on the television or open a healthcare trade journal and chances are there will be an article detailing the real or possible occurrence of medical errors, allegations of a hospital’s failure to comply with […]

Imagine that an organization has chartered four Six Sigma improvement teams – one each in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. Each has been given the charter to reduce manufacturing cycle times. The four facilities are virtually identical, producing comparable products and packaging, with the same technology. However, even with an equal degree […]

PowerSteering Software Announces New Solution for Managing Six Sigma Initiatives

While not as glamorous as designing a new product, the last step in an IDOV project – the Validate phase – can ensure the long-term success of the project and your customer’s satisfaction.

For a tool that has such broad applicability, the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is not as widely known as might be expected. AHP makes assessments, prioritization and selection among options more readily measurable. Thus it is a natural Six Sigma ally and a part of the toolkit for a growing number of practitioners. AHP, which […]

When contemplating a Six Sigma initiative, it is easy to visualize a group of technically skilled individuals running around with pocket-protectors and laptops, statistical software running 24/7 and operational problems and defects disappearing at a rapid pace. In reality, Black Belts learn not only statistical tools and Lean techniques, but also how to apply them […]

Leadership Programs That Include Six Sigma Are Six Times More Effective, Survey Shows; 60% of Six Sigma Professionals Are Promoted into Leadership Positions

Unmatched Customer Momentum Drives Four Consecutive Quarters of 40% Growth for Instantis

During the Define phase, it is common that a project is made smaller and more manageable by limiting the scope of the business process it will address. This may, however, cause problems during the Measure and Analyze phases when root causes outside the project scope are found. An exploration of this issue is found in […]

When outsourcing managers get enmeshed in the offshore service provider selection process, they frequently plan a whirlwind trip to the country of choice that involves brief meetings with multiple vendors to watch cookie-cutter presentations.

Being at the focal point in the cultural migration of executing change using Lean Six Sigma, deployment leaders/deployment Champions have many obstacles and opportunities to deal with. Strange as it might seem, the people who may be pushing the hardest for the results inherent in Lean Six Sigma deployments are the same ones who can […]

Nine practical steps that focus on facts and data can provide a roadmap for business leaders at all levels on how to use the Six Sigma method to drive strategy implementation. 1. Start at the Finish Line: Define Strategic Objectives By far the worst use of Six Sigma is on non-strategic issues. Chartering projects with […]

The goal in product design or business process engineering is to create products or processes that are insensitive to the sources of variation that inhibit their intended function. The design phase in the product development process is a crucial activity since this is when most downstream production and quality problems are locked-in. As a consequence, […]

Three years ago many best practices already were in place at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. The hospital was providing bedside registration, advanced triage protocols, point of care testing and real time radiology. A robust and comprehensive continuous quality improvement program had been established and as a result, higher patient satisfaction scores, […]

GW PLASTICS sees Success with Six Sigma

Much of the Six Sigma DMAIC methodology is concerned with finding differences: Do people do a certain job the same way or are there differences? Will a particular change make a difference in the output? Are there differences in where and when a problem occurs? In most cases, the answer to all these questions is […]

The Canadian government unveiled a plan in 2001 to create an interoperable electronic health record (EHR) for half of the country’s population by 2009. The plan is aimed at increasing healthcare efficiency, hereby helping to address Canada’s critical human resource shortages and potentially saving billions of dollars annually. As part of this effort, many hospitals […]

Many times when Lean and Six Sigma are introduced to an executive management team, there will be an individual who makes the statement: “This is just common sense. Why do we need to go through all this methodology, training and the statistics stuff to execute a simple project?” A large segment of thought leaders in […]

As a set of state-of-the-art tools for solving operations problems, Six Sigma can be used for both continuous and breakthrough improvement. What separates the two is the structure by which they are managed. When managers confuse the two types, the result is usually below-par performance. Even worse, such confusion could result in yet another dead-end […]

“What do you mean, special handling is waste? We can’t stop doing that! Eighty percent of our invoices require special handling!” — Medtronic accounts payable employee, May 24, 2005 Lean Six Sigma at Medtronic Medtronic has combined Lean and Six Sigma to achieve impressive results. In the last two years, Medtronic has graduated 579 Lean […]

University Medical Imaging successfully implemented a Lean and Six Sigma transactional process improvement and training program when delays and other issues began to affect patient satisfaction.

For a software company to make a case for process improvement, reliable measurement data is needed. Unfortunately, that data normally comes from an improvement project. Learn how to address this chicken-and-egg dilemma.

Digital check processing. Fraud detection. Compliance monitoring. Trading floor analytics. These are all integral functions for many modern financial service institutions. And all have one thing in common – they require a huge amount of computing power. One approach to providing fast responses even with highly complex computations is distributed computing, or creating a shared compute […]

Here is a provocation: Quality practices in the pharmaceuticals industry today are what they were in other industries 15 to 20 years ago. It is time to catch up. The regulators recognize it. Pharmaceutical business leaders recognize it. Six Sigma is an opportunity for operations and quality professionals to modernize quality practices. Those who get […]

Project Champions ensure that organizational systems are in place to support the Six Sigma initiative. As managers, they provide exposure of the program to their functional reports and endorsement of the program as a management initiative.

i-nexus Secures Investment

Read any Six Sigma article, attend any Six Sigma conference or talk to any Black Belt and the message is clear – the voice of the customer is a core value of Six Sigma. When Six Sigma is applied with a strategic perspective, the voice of the customer is indeed the necessary starting point. Six Sigma […]

A directory listing of Six Sigma Consultants In India.

iSixSigma’s 2004 Salary Survey for Six Sigma Professionals: Europe This section of iSixSigma’s 2004 Salary Survey for Six Sigma Professionals provides an overview of the average salaries in Europe. Salaries for Black Belts (BB), Master Black Belts (MBB), Champions (CH) and Deployment Leaders (DL) are broken down by levels of education and experience, as well […]

Drawing more than 250 – double the number who attended last year’s initial conference – the second annual conference on Six Sigma in Healthcare offered “Reducing Medical Errors and Improving Quality of Care While Keeping Costs Down” as its theme.

Six Sigma has been adopted by some of the world’s leading companies as a mechanism to improve bottom line results and delight customers. But though the companies have made spectacular gains in some areas – millions of dollars in increased revenue or reduced costs – success has not been uniform. Deploying Six Sigma in areas of […]