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After a tasty appetizer of seminars and the hands-on work at the Project Bowl on Monday, iSixSigma Live! offered it’s main course yesterday in Miami to start the first official day ofthe summit. Steve Wilson, of Quality Conversations, may have summed it up best in his opening remarks when he said of the conference’s many […]

The most famous example of right-to-left planning I can evoke is – That the United States should set as a goal the “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth” by the end of the decade Powerfull stuff, no messing around, but with a budget of $19.6bn you get a […]

We’ve all sent the news of Toyota’s recall problems, including the latest decision to pull the andon as it were and halt production until the defect is sorted out. Suddenly the company, and its venerable Toyota Production System do not appear to be as infallible as it has in the past. Indeed, some analysts are […]

The 5 Whys approach to root cause analysis is by no means new, nor does it originate in Six Sigma. Yet it is often used in the Analyze phase (of DMAIC [Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control]), especially when significant data on the Xs is not available. Most of us have been there – we gather the […]

People may not always agree with what you say or find value in what you offer, but at the end of the day, if only one person walks away with a different question, thought or idea, then you have made a difference.

I am spending January travelling around the country running process workshops. This means lots of travel and time to ponder on the dynamics of the meetings.……. Cross-functional Teams A group of people with different functional expertise who work toward a common goal, it may include people from finance, marketing, operations, research, engineering, and human resources […]

I don’t usually win prizes. In fact, only once has my name been drawn out of the hat. (That was in middle school, when I became the proud owner of a Sony Walkman.) But what’s up for grabs now is a much better prize. Here’s your chance to be entered into a drawing to win […]

“All or nothin’ at all… Half a love never appealed to me If your heart, it never would yield to me Then I’d rather, rather have nothin’ at all.” (Song composed in 1939 by Arther Altman, lyrics by Jack Lawrence – a big hit for Frank Sinatra) I was thinking of these lyrics the other […]

I re-read Ken Miller’s book ” We don’t Make widgets” recently and rediscovered a wonderful resourse for our current times. Now more than ever this is the work that needs to be done.

Former Formula One and Indy 500 racecar driver, Derek Daly, is coming up as a guest on Quality Conversations on BlogTalkRadio â?? hosted by Steve Wilson, emcee of iSixSigma Live! Summit & Awards. Click and listen on Tuesday, Dec. 22 at 8 a.m. PT to a discussion on “The Championâ??s Model.” Although the language of sports […]

I have the good fortune to sit in an office right next to a hallway speaker, which has been loudly proclaiming the festive season since the day after Thanksgiving, in about a 4-hour loop. Naturally, I can’t help but think of work-related words as the songs repeat… and repeat… and repeat… Here are some of […]

There are five hats, two Black and three White. In a room sit three people, two can see and one is blind. The room is darkened and a hat is placed at random on each person’s head. People can only see the other hats not their own. The first person on seeing the other two […]

Are you searching for the perfect gift for your favorite Black Belt during this holiday season?

I have always thought the toughest parts of DMAIC are I(mprove) & C(ontrol). One of the reasons for this is that to deliver a sustainable solution means asking people to change. The opportunity to resist change and revert to status-quo being one of the challenges faced. What early indicator can you use to measure if […]

Lately I have been bombarded with well-meaning, intelligent, conscientious, motivated people asking me how they can get Black Belt certified. They’re not in a Six-Sigma environment; they just want to be able to learn how to improve their processes more effectively. So do they need to be a Black Belt? Here’s what I usually tell […]

In preparation for the Sherlock Holmes movie coming out, I decided to first introduce myself to the mystery-solving duo in print. Not very far into “A Scandal in Bohemia,” I ran across some wisdom from Holmes that I thought you might enjoy. Holmes has just finished reading a letter of unknown author to Watson. “This […]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about resistance to change. The RogersAdoption / Innovation curve (innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards) is referenced in some form by most people involved in change management. Now, I’m not an innovator myself. My special form of creativity doesn’t manifest itself by coming up with new ideas […]

Last year, we celebrated Bill Smith, widely known as the Father of Six Sigma, as the first inductee into iSixSigmaâ??s Six Sigma Hall of Fame. We are now identifying who should be the next person to join the Hall of Fame as someone who has made significant and lasting contributions in the Lean Six Sigma […]

Dear iSixSigma Blogosphere Readers, Back in January 2005, I started up a little blog about Six Sigma companies. It caught the eye of iSixSigma’s very own Mike Cyger and he invited me to join his growing team of forward thinking Six Sigma zealots dedicated to providing the best information about Six Sigma to the masses. […]

Having recently posted my 100th blog, I thought it would be worthwhile to share my list of 100 reasons why companies should embrace Six Sigma.

There’s a definite honor in being “award-winning.” I experienced this firsthand last year when iSixSigma Magazine received editorial excellence honors. The awards provided an opportunity for us to pause and recognize the work that goes into our editorial efforts and to celebrate the accomplishments. But, as I said in my Editor’s Notes following the announcement, […]

You may have seen the cover of the September/October issue of iSixSigma Magazine, featuring J.D. Sicilia and “The DoD Roundup.” The western theme continued into the DoD Breakthrough Convention, Oct. 14 to 16. Here’’s a sneak peak of the fun: Jeannine Hall, director of events, taking a hand at roping a bull. Yes, this may […]

The scoring is complete and the 2009 Top 10 Best Places to Work for Six Sigma professionals is out. Here is the Top 10 List in alphabetical order: I repeat, alphabetical order. Cardinal Health Inc. Computacenter AG & Co. oHG Ecolab Inc. McKesson Corp. Merck & Co., Inc. Pfizer Inc. Piramal Healthcare Ltd. Starwood Hotels, […]

Save time for your customers by enabling efficient transactions and watch your WOW-O-Meter go off scale.

Next month (yes, I’m giving you early notice so you can put this in your calendar)TRIZ expert, Ellen Domb, will once again be on air with Steve Wilson of Quality Conversations, discussing practical applications of TRIZ. Tuesday, Nov. 3rd, 11 AM Pacific. Be there. Ellen is also speaking at the iSixSigma Live Summit & Awards […]

I’m going to go out on a limb and open up a discussion on the “Ultimate Organization” here. In my last two posts, I talked a little bit about integrating the 6S culture in an organization (vs keeping it at a specialist level only) and organizational fear. I figured a logical progression of the overall […]

I had a very nice phone call today, from a colleague who had chatted with me earlier about a current project. She called to say thanks for allowing her to bounce ideas around, which helped her clarify some things about herapproach to the process. Naturally I felt good to receive this feedback, and it made […]

“One of all and all for one!” Or, in the original French, “Tous pour un, un pour tous!” In the story by Alexandre Dumas (1844), the three musketeers, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, were joined by the musketeer-wannabee D’Artagnan, without whom the first three would have led very boring lives. I was reminded of this the […]

The latest iSixSigma Magazine research is about to be released in the upcoming November/December issue. For this research we surveyed over 800 Six Sigma practitioners and asked them all about the tools they use, the tools they don’t use, and what tools they think are misused… The chart at the leftis the top 10 tools […]

I used to be really annoyed with people who took a wait-and-see approach to change. They’re not resistant, exactly, and they might be classified as “late adopters.” But I could understand active resistance better than passive indifference. Now, however, I have a little different take on things. Because I have realized that if you wait […]

As families struggle to make ends meet, the value provided for the dollar spent is more important than ever. What should we do? Panic? No – we don’t need to stinkin’ panic. . . we got Six Sigma!

Now accepting salaries! Each year iSixSigma analyzes the data from its own iSixSigma Job Shop to create a comprehensive Six Sigma Salary report available in the March/April issue of iSixSigma Magazine. Last year data showed that the average Black Belt in the United States made an average salary of $88,438. Master Black Belts brought home […]

There’s no doubt that fear can prevent an organization to be what it could be, but what can be done about it…how many times have you been in a situation where there were problems to solve, but no one stepped up to the plate to solve them because of fear? Piggy-backing on my previous posting, […]

Tomorrow (Wednesday,Sept 30), Ellen Domb, founder of the TRIZ Journal,will be on Steve Wilson’sshow Quality Conversations, hosted by blogtalkradio. Steve has interviewed a plethoraof quality professionals in the past. Guest appearances include Tom Kubiak, Forrest Breyfogle,Mark Graban,Jessica Harper, as well as yours truly. Ellen and Steve will be talking about Six Sigma Trees. Not the […]

How do you describe a process to a team? There are lots of tools in the toolkit including value stream mapping, functional swim lanes, context diagrams and SIPOC to name a few. But I find they can be “a little cold” for a non-technical or cross-functional team and I want to “bring it to life”. […]

I have been thinking about various topics regarding Six Sigma recently, and I keep coming back to a question that is hard to answer…if we “do Six Sigma” right, is there even a place for Six Sigma as we know it ten or twenty years down the road? Consider this…..ten years from now, do you […]

A quote from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), 1865: “The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. ‘Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?’ he asked. ‘Begin at the beginning,’ the King said gravely, ’and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’” I am sure I’m not the […]

  The archive of my Quality Conversation with Steve Wilson this morning. Thanks Steve for having me on your show.

On Monday, Sept 14, I’ll be speaking with Steve Wilson on his show Quality Conversations, hosted by blogtalkradio. Steve has interviewed many quality professionals in the past, including Tom Kubiak, Forrest Breyfogle,Mark Graban and our very own iSixSigma editor-in-chief, Jessica Harper. I am happy to join the ranks of Steve’s guest list. We’re going to […]

If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about the effect the current economy is having on businesses, it’s the polarization of Six Sigma. Programs have either been seen as the reverent coming of the messiah or the two-bit television evangelist that needs to be turned off and forgotten about. For those companies that feel they are […]