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Each company probably would have strategized targets to achieve on annually. In Starwood they are know as Big 5’s. Big 5’s are tactical targets that support the company’s global initiatives and global objectives; normally a mixture of financial and non-financial but measurable targets. These targets ‘flow down’ from divisional presidents’ offices’ to area directors and […]

My last article discussed the importance of verifying the sustainability of project work.Although there are many positives to living in a Six Sigma world, it does have a dark side- failed project audits. My experience, dependent on my employer at the time, has been that anywhere from 10-50% of projects are not embedded into an […]

Most of us are familiar with the DMAIC approach to Six Sigma.But what happens after control phase is completed? The answer is verification. A lot of hard work has gone into the project and as a project leader you need to be able to walk away from an improvement that is embedded and is meeting […]

Some of our Black Belts were talking the other day about how many projects they’ve got going, and (in spite of focusing our projects on specific value streams) how they sometimes feel pretty fragmented, getting pulled from project to project. We discussed whether it would be reasonableto pause for a short while, to ensure that […]

Many companies look to Six Sigma to help them transform. They constantly talk of “weaving Six Sigma into the fabric of the company,” “having Six Sigma become part of their DNA” and “fundamentally changing the way they work.” These are all nice wugga words but without a real vision of what they want to transform […]

There is just no end to the kinds of business problems Six Sigma is able to help solve. A news release picked up by CNNMoney.com, Forbes.com as well as others websites discusses a unique application of Six Sigma at Raytheon… A team of Raytheon Six Sigma(TM) experts used the Raytheon Six Sigma process to validate […]

Instead of hiring the usual ethnographers or consultants, Westin owner Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. turned to Six Sigma, a management process known for reducing defects and increasing efficiency.

To: Executive Sponsor From: Six Sigma Black Belt Re: Lean Six Sigma Project #1031 Our Define Report-Out is now ready for presentation. This memo serves as an executive summary for your review. Customers: Children (primary), Parents (indirect) Problem Statement: Too many children in the United States receive Halloween candy in a way that is unpredictable. […]

Earlier this year Elizabeth M. Ferrarini at Enterprise Leadership interviewed Gerald Shields, CIO for AFLAC. EL: What best practices do you use for IT? GS: We have a couple of people who are Black-Belt certified in Six Sigma, and we use Six Sigma for some projects. Our primary best practice is the Capability Maturity Model […]

Just got back from Philadelphia where I spoke at a conference on how to design a training strategy to support organization-wide Six Sigma learning. Entitled “Gearing Up for Success,” it focused on the linkage that must always be maintained between the training strategy/curriculum and business objectives. Without this, it’s easy for training to become disconnected […]

Having worked on many process improvement projects across multiple SBU’s in my organization in the Sri-Lankan apparel industry, a primary factor that determines the success or failure of any project is the level of cultural acceptance and support a project or practitioner receives from various levels of an organization. Overtime the Sri-Lankan apparel industry has […]

The first time I watched Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men (1957) was four years back, at a Six Sigma leadership workshop. We were only 3 days into a two week long training, and some of us were already stretched to optimal stress levels. Being a bit more of an action buff, and being after a […]

Let me end the suspense: not to p. At least for me. Also not to F. And not to t. I got thinking about this topic after reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about “sloppy analysis” in scientific studies. That article is here, but you’ll have to pay to see it. However, the […]

Customer relationship, customer insight, customer retention, customer proposition, customer experience, customer journey, customer-centric, customer analytics, customer loyalty, customer value, customer satisfaction, customer equity, customer intelligence, customer contact strategy……the poor customer they have been so slice-n-diced by so many people over so many years they must be a messy pile of little cubes on the floor. […]

Yes, the Six Sigma community has its own cartoon strip. We even have our share of corporate M&A excitement with recent acquisitions (Accenture and Oracle). But where are the good old fashioned MTV music and videos for the Six Sigma community? If you love mullets and buck-teeth, you’re going to love “The MiniTab Song” by […]

We’re used to seeking the Voice of the Customer in the Define phase of our projects. Typically (at least at our organization) we haven’t asked, “How much of this process can we pass on to you?” This topic usually comes upwhen weteach a lean exercise in which the Voice of the Customeris supposed to rule. […]

A common way to learn principles or tools is to associate a word as an acronym. The seven/eight wastes of Lean is a great example of acronymic variation. I’ve come across five different words invented to illustrate the wastes of Lean: The iSixSigma dictionary uses the word DOTWIMP to list the seven wastes of Lean […]

I believe Deming may have said something in this area, but given I couldn’t find a famous quote I made one up. 80% of business issues come from the process and only 20% from the people who work at the business If someone told me that, I’d say, No!Look at the things people do that […]

Like many organizations, ours began their Six Sigma deployment with a consultant-based training and project mentorship. We were successful at internalizing the training, and we’ve used a value-stream approach to selecting improvement projects, but the process owners never seemed to be the ones to light the fire – most wait to be tapped on the […]

“We’re not in Kansas anymore.” Recognize this line? Made famous by the movie “The Wizard of Oz,” it fittingly describes the feeling you get when you suddenly realize that things have changed. How can change happen so fast that we get caught off guard? Even Dorothy saw the twister coming. I recently had a “Kansas […]

One thing I really like about the government Six Sigma initiatives is the public sharing of information. The DOD units are so proud to talk about how they are using Six Sigma and the benefits they are getting out of it. The Indian Head Division of NAVSEA has an entire website dedicated to Lean Six […]

If your company is like iSixSigma, you’ve probably read about Net Promoter Score (NPS) and thought it was a very cool topic. (For those of you who haven’t, you can read our iSixSigma Magazine cover story “Are Your Customers Promoting You…Or Do You Have to Do It Yourself?” in the Nov/Dec 2006 issue.) Net Promoter […]

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released recently a study of Lean adoption at nine manufactured housing plants. HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research and the Manufactured Housing Research Alliance were sponsors of the study. The study highlights the benefits of Lean to making production of manufacturing housing more efficient and improving […]

A fellow Black Belt and I were talking about project management skills. She made a very perceptive comment, which I will paraphrase: “Some people are really good at setting up a project – the ability to identify needed tasks, sources of benchmarking information, delegating, putting everything into a timeframe. And others are really good about […]

Now I like to think I am quite an objective & freethinking person and don’t always follow the herd when I think something is wrong. I’m not a complete contrarian but am willing to “go it alone” when I feel something is important. So it is a great disappointment to me to say I have […]

All too often we hear the accolades of Six Sigma being utilized in a large (and often publicly traded) companies. In recent years the DMAIC methodology has been spread into smaller healthcare organizations, government, and even some school districts. However it seems there is a vast under-representation of Six Sigma in small companies and private […]

As big as the Army is, the opportunities for improvement abound. However, the tolerance for improvement projects (particularly long drawn out ones) is very low. Anything that takes more than 90 days to complete is considered a waste of time. Or worse you get called an “oxygen thief.” What I have found is that one […]

I have been working with my colleague, Dave Baker, here at Aviva and we have been researching the long-term behaviour of our processes. Now I am not going to go down the path of process capability analysis, Cp, Cpk, Zshift and the like. Take a look at this simple time series plot to see why. […]

(Note: Bonus Cox-Box this week! Gary Cox received an email from a reader in India named Deepan. Deepan shared a funny Six Sigma story with Gary and then Gary drew up the cartoon above. If you have any Six Sigma moments you’d like to see immortalized in The Cox-Box, share your story with Gary. He […]

In every company, people in organizations make decisions and implement changes every day. Many of these changes are not typically the type of things that warrant a Six Sigma project. That being said, it should be recognized that the application of some Six Sigma tools in these everyday activities can provide a significant positive impact […]

If you subscribe to iSixSigma Magazine, please read the feature about how we used LSS to improve our Supply Requisition Process. The article is on page 22. Enjoy.  

Things that make you feel good in right away aren’t always beneficial in the long run. Some things, like candy, are actually harmful in the long term. While others, like getting the high score on Space Invaders, just don’t end up mattering very much. You feel good as they are happening, but beyond that they […]

I was driving to pick up my daughter from school yesterday when a story on National Public Radio (NPR) caught my attention. I only heard the end of the segment on the radio, but from what I could tell Medicare was forcing hospitals to change the way they do business by not paying for certain […]

I have recently been transferred back to a professional service position as a Rehabilitation Counselor in the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation Services. This is a long standing federal program that helps individuals with severe disabilities train for, maintain and obtain gainful employment within their functional capacities. The program was initially started for injured military personnel […]

For those of you who talk Six Sigma at dinner parties, here’s something for your next soiree – Six Sigma wine. I hear it goes well with a fishbone diagram and doesn’t leave that statistical aftertaste like those lower sigma level wines…. I’m not a wine drinker so I can’t comment on taste, but I can […]

A good project gets you the facts, the data. Talk objectively with those facts and you have a water tight case for any ‘rhetoric’! In my Blog Man v. Machine I talked about PBL; ’Performance Based Leadership’, basically Behavioral Science that at Bechtel they use hand in hand with DMAICT. They have an acronym called […]

Being in the business of customer satisfaction keeps us focused on making sure that our customers get the best value and service possible. When a customer tells us we did a great job, it is the ultimate measure of success. Try changing hats for a minute and think about how you rate as a customer? […]

Conformance is how well a process performs within its CTQs and specification limits. Variation is the opposite of it- the difference in the process output over time. Variation is often caused by elements which are part of the process itself (common cause), or elements which are external to the process (special cause). Common Cause variation […]

Changed processes, changed skill sets, changed thinking and changed performance. Six Sigma is all about change. Passion, defined as “boundless enthusiasm,” is the seed of change. With it, Six Sigma flourishes. Without it, project implementation is a constant struggle. Does your organization have the passion for change that allows processes to bloom to their full […]

For those of you practising Lean Six Sigma in the Austral Oceania region of the world, IQPC will be hosting a Lean Six Sigma Forum from November 27-29 at the Prince Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Confirmed speakers include: Quality Director- Reuters Senior Manager Business Enterprise- Motorola Quality/Operational Excellence Leader-GE Plastics Director, Six Sigma- Ingram […]

It didn’t take long for Robert (Bob) Nardelli to land on his feet… You’ve all probably heard by now, Bob Nardelli has been picked to run Chrysler. For those of you that may have forgotten or were not aware of all the details: Bob Nardelli came from GE, where he started in 1971. In 1995 […]

  Benchmarking and Six Sigma go together like peanut butter and jelly. Both are really good on their own but put them together and it is three times better. Here’s why. Benchmarking helps you understand how your performance rates against others. If your performance is not in the top quartile, you may want to commission […]

In the martial arts, you may know that once a person obtains a black belt there are usually levels of progression upwards. Each of these levels is called a “dan” and there can be 3 or more progressive levels, sometimes designated with astripe ortape around the end of the black belt. We’ve taken that concept […]

Understanding the VOC: Six Sigma Belt Satisfaction Often Six Sigma focuses on the voice of the customer in terms of a public consumer or end business user/department. Yet how many times does leadership consider Six Sigma Black and Green Belts as a customer within the Six Sigma organization? In order to successfully train and retain […]