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Nayism 36: “Six Sigma won’t work because. . .” As we approach Thanksgiving it is only fitting that we reflect on the things that we are thankful for. Believe it or not, I am thankful for Six Sigma naysayers. Yes – those stodgy, old school, dig in their heels, change resistant individuals who lurk the […]

Some vendors have recently expressed concerns about the review of project tracking software programs that was published in the November/December 2006 issue of iSixSigma Magazine. I would like to share with you a statement regarding this article that will be published in the January/February 2007 issue. It was written by magazine editor Erin Ducceschi, and […]

On 31st October, Sir Nicholas Stern, working for the UK Government, released the Stern Review. This review looked at the potential economic costs for global warming with a headline that global warming could shrink the global economy by 20% and up to 200 million people could become refugees as their homes are hit by drought […]

Nortel Networks recently hired Ellen Bovarnick to run their newly deployed Six Sigma program. Ellen was previously the VP of Process Excellence at Coca-Cola. Mike Zafirovski,CEO of Nortel, is the former President and Chief Operating Officer of Motorola and before that spent 25 years at GE…No wonder he is pushing Six Sigma at Nortel! Six […]

The TRIZ Journal is now a division of CTQ Media LLC and a channel under Real Innovation (which will launch November 15th).

The most difficult problems in any Lean Six Sigma project or initiative relate to changing mind-sets. However, the right combination of vision, resources, incentives, skills and planning significantly increase the probably of success.

The Cox-Box is Copyright © 2000-2007 iSixSigma LLC and Gary P. Cox – All Rights ReservedReproduction Without Permission Is Prohibited – Request Permission

First, a special thanks to Dominic at the Fortune Business Innovation Insiderblog for directing me to this story. OK, this Halloween/Six Sigma connection is a small stretch… ConocoPhillips, the sponsor of this giant pumpkin, is a Six Sigma company. If you are in Southern California stop by the refinery for a visit: “ConocoPhillips extends an […]

Blood Systems Laboratories, a division of Blood Systems, is the second largest blood testing company in the United States (second only to the Red Cross). They launched a Six Sigma program early in 2004. The Blood Systems 2005 Annual Report highlights Blood Systems Laboratories’ Six Sigma achievements: “Completed 18 Six Sigma/Rapid Action Planning (RAP) projects […]

I imagine that Halloween is to Hershey’s as St. Patty’s Day is to Green. You can’t have one without the other. I love Hershey’s Chocolate…. whether it’s a Kit Kat, Reese’s, Mounds, or Almond Joy (sometimes I do feel like a nut), a Kiss or a Hug, or my favorite, a Special Dark Miniature, when […]

In my last blog entry, I wrote about the fugue as a model for deployment. A fugue is a musical form in which one or two themes are repeated or imitated by successively entering voices, until eventually the entire orchestra is playing the same tune. I suggested that this might not be a bad way […]

DearFantastic Sports Network, I’d like to thank you for choosing me to be your first-ever Master Black Belt. To start things off on a positive note, let me share some suggestions I have for the World Series broadcasts this week. These are all easy to implement and will make the show even more exciting for […]

Recently a colleague suggested Ken Miller’s book , ” We Don’t Make Widgets”as a strategy base for dealing with resistence from employees in the public sector. Abrief overview is available at: http://www.governing.com/books/widgex.htm. It looks like a good read. Thanks to all the comments on my last blog. It is clear performance and philosophy can be […]

To help prepare you for theHalloween spirit, this week I’ll be posting Six Sigma stories with a Halloween twist… I’ll cover the frightening, the sweet and the orange…. Today, let me introduce you to the Dark Side of Six Sigma – Six Sigmathe fuzzrock trio based out of Long Branch, New Jersey. These guys seriously […]

There are 3 kinds of lies: lies, big lies and … statistics. Many news topics are based on so called statistical studies. In average … the conclusions are based on the average. In average … there is no mention of the data range or other variation metrics, like standard deviation. In average … there is […]

Nayism 35: Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble, Send me a Black Belt on the Double. I have a problem and he needs to fix it! At first, this statement may not sound like a “nayism” but beware. Something is brewing in this organization and it is definitely trouble. Why? Here’s what I say . . . […]

When it comes to defects here is a great example I suspect other readers may have experienced. But as you will see it has made me question the Six Sigma approach. I would like to ask for guidance. It’s an example I find is happening with increasing regularity and seems to be linked to the […]

I recently attended my graduation ceremony for an Advanced Manufacturing Specialist certification in Kansas City.With Six Sigma methodology being a key component of the certification, I began to listen to the keynote speaker elaborate on the many projects and cost savings achieved by the seventy class graduates. As I reflected over the last year and […]

(Continued from “Lean Journeys – Part 1“) There were two departments in the plant, and the press area served both with most of their raw material. After about two weeks on the job, I found that my area was shutting down one assembly cell per day on average. As you could imagine, my stress level […]

Six Sigma Academy has announced that Mikel J. Harry, author of Six Sigma: The Breakthrough Management Strategy Revolutionizing the World’s Top Corporations, and founder of Six Sigma Academy, will rejoin the firm as Vice Chairman & Chief Knowledge Officer. This is big news for the Six Sigma community and as well as a strategic move […]

Gauging organizational maturity is one of the most critical tasks undertaken prior to the implementation of Lean / Six Sigma. Not only is it important relative to determining where to start, it’s also an indicator of how much of a cultural shift will be required to make sure the methodology sticks. The U.S. military seems […]

According to Wikipedia, the internet encyclopedia, Kaizen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizenis : “Japanese for “change for the better” or “improvement”, the English translation is “continuous improvement” or “continual improvement.” The goals of Kaizen include the elimination of waste (defined as “activities that add cost but do not add value”), just-in-time delivery, production load leveling of amount and types, […]

Today, XGP Gaming released an interview with Stuart Scott, CIO of Microsoft. In the interview Stuart talks about his first year as CIO with Microsoft and he elaborates on wherehe sees Microsoft ITheaded in the next few years.When questioned about his goals for Microsoft IT, Stuart stated: “…we expect to cut business complexity in half […]

Recently I had a call from a well known training company in Englandwho were planning a Six Sigma Lean Government workshop in February of 2007. He did not ask about successes, or best practices, he wanted to know the major difficulties with our Lean initiative in Maine. Thinking about it, I reached the conclusion that […]

My organization is embarking on a new frontier: teaching our own version of DMAIC to new Green Belts and Black Belts. For our first three waves, we used the material provided by our consultant.Now we’re ready (we think) to customize it with our own organization’s goals and culture. The original training focused on the DMAIC […]

The Cox-Box is Copyright © 2000-2007 iSixSigma LLC and Gary P. Cox – All Rights ReservedReproduction Without Permission Is Prohibited – Request Permission

A new colleague spoke to me the other day saying “if you really want, I have a problem in my department that you can fix”.

As I drove home this afternoon, I noticed workers attaching Christmas wreaths to the local real estate office. Call me crazy but I think it’s way too early to be adding snowmen and Santa to the landscaping. I mean it’s not even Halloween yet! Not to show my age or anything but I can remember […]

Deciding to go lean is very popular in today’s business climate. Eliminating overproduction and reducing excessive inventory (along with waste) is a must. If you’re a black-belt, you’re role may be central to the lean transformation (depending on the organization). Although there are many benefits to leaning-out operations, especially in a batch processing operation, there are […]

Implementing – Pay for Skills I recently led an initiative to implement a pay for performance structure within my employer’s Production department. While management unanimously believed the idea was excellent, I was challenged as to whether or not this constituted a Six Sigma project.“I though Six Sigma was about reducing costs. This project looks like […]

Yesterday (9th October 2006) I heard that Edmund Phelps was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize for Economics for his theories developed in the 1960’s on the interplay between inflation expectations and unemployment. This showed that there is a “natural” rate of unemployment, a level below which inflation pressures are likely to intensify. His theories led […]

October 2, 2006 – Eweek published an interesting article by Peter Coffee titled “What it means to be Lean”.  He correlates computer programming with lean thinking and describes a new book related to lean software. “I just received a new book with a copyright date of 2007, “Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash,” by […]

One of the toughest challenges that a manufacturing black-belt faces is institutionalizing data collection systems that yield project-critical information. Whether the needed data is attribute or variable, it is still a tough challenge to implement the system.Once the GR&R issues are resolved, it doesn’t get any easier. At this point, the black-belt has to make […]

One of my favorite pieces of music is Benjamin Britten’s “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.” In it, Britten decomposes then reconstitutes a fugal work for orchestra based on a much older tune by Henry Purcell. The work is somewhat unusual in that at Britten’s request, a friend wrote narration that describes textually exactly […]

The American Society for Quality had an attorney send iSixSigma a cease and desist letter the other day for an article iSixSigma published back in 2001. In the article, Charles Waxer wrote, “ASQ only started offering certification a year or so ago.” This was in fact true in 2001, but since we don’t include a […]

To a black-belt, looking at problems from a SIPOC point of view comes naturally… creating process flow maps, identifying potential inputs, identifying internal and external customers, etc. These activities are (or should be) core to implementing a given black-belt project. To an engineer that has not been though six-sigma training, many times these processes are […]

A group of Black Belts and I were recently discussing change management. One of the group pointed out that we don’t do a very good job preparing stakeholders for “The Dip.” “The Dip” iscommonly part of the Improve phase. We’ve measured and analyzed the heck out of our current process, brainstormed our way into improvement […]

I attended the IQPC Lean Six Sigma West Summit in Las Vegas from September 27-29, along with fellow blogger Michael Marx and the rest of the CTQ Media team. On Wednesday I gave a presentation entitled “From Good to Great Six Sigma: 5 Imperatives for Making the Leap.” Many delegates who attended the presentation asked for […]

Nayism 34: Every year our company sets unreasonable Six Sigma financial goals and we have to scurry around to find projects to meet them. It’s just too much for our organization to cope with. This is a common nayism heard in organizations with a culture of “business as usual.” Should they back off a bit […]

Consider you require a service in August and get feedback that you are waitlisted 6th (with 5 requests before yours) due to lack off resources. The outlook is that somewhere in September you’ll be helped. You decide to live with this answer and patiently wait. The remainder of August and September pass by and off […]

Nayism 24: Too Busy for Six Sigma The Cox-Box is Copyright © 2000-2007 iSixSigma LLC and Gary P. Cox – All Rights Reserved Reproduction Without Permission Is Prohibited – Request Permission  

Just three of the IQPC team that worked tirelessly to make the conference a success. The George Group Larry Goldman and Mark Briscoe of Decisioneering Eric Nadler of iGrafx The Instantis Team jmp on a customer demo The Quality Group SigmaFlow showcasing Coach SixNet Intelligence System Clark Swain of NIMBUS Richard Teerlink book signing The […]

Richard Teerlink, Former Chairman of Harley-Davidson, taught us that we need to embrace change if we are to be successful. He opened with a quote from Eric Hoffer: “In the times of change the learners will inherit the earth while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world than no longer exists.” […]

Nayism 33: Our department has had several Black Belts who completed projects that drove positive change but since they have been repatriated, it’s been business as usual. If this Six Sigma stuff was that good, why don’t the Black Belts keep doing projects once they return to the organization? Here’s a perfect example of how […]

Day two began with remarks by Steve Dubrow, today’s conference chair. Richard Goldberg, Vice President of Corporate Quality at Cisco gave a terrific overview of Cisco Lean. First he explained what Cisco Lean is: Cisco Lean is going: •From push to pull •From higher inventory levels to inventory reduced across supply chain •From redundant processes […]

We saw the King! A special sign just for us. Debby Sollenberger and Joe Ficalora of Sigma Breakthrough Technologies (SBTI) Tracee Beebe and Bryan Carey of DeLeeuw Associates. One cool Steve DuBrow of i-Solutions The one, the only, Chris Paret showcasing the Quality Companion 2. Additional Conference Photos IQPC Day Two: Photos

Today must be the day for metaphors; Raj Gohil, Process Fitness Master Consultant for BP, Lubricants Americas, taught us what it takes to make a Six Sigma project successful by telling intriguing stories that he learned from his father and grandfather. He even threw in a Confucius quote. Each story had its own business analogy […]

Next, I attended a panel discussion called “Brainstorming Innovative Techniques to Gain Shopfloor to Boardroom Buy-in.” Panel Members were: HT Vassar, Abbot – Ross Products Division Merle Schneider, Clinical Research Operations, Merck Matthew Booth, VP Operations Development, Boston Financial They each gave a quick overview of the beginnings of Six Sigma at their respective companies […]

Next, I listened to Liam Palmer, Global Head, HSBC Securities Services Best Practice. He was very entertaining as he talked about Six Sigma at HSBC, specifically teaching us what to do to sustain Six Sigma projects. He shared a yoga analogy to bring the concept of sustainability home. Here’s the short version. As a runner […]

I hit four sessions this afternoon. I couldn’t blog real-time because there was no wireless available…so I’ve found time between sessions to fill you in… First session, iSixSigma’s very own Michael Cyger, gave a fantastic presentation. He listed five Six Sigma imperatives and qualified each with company examples and research from iSixSigma Magazine. The Five […]