isixsigma.com

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 […]

Next up is Brad Dalton, Senior Vice President of Bank of America. Brad is talking about a project at BofA to build a single Six Sigma based change management capability – One that will integrate all existing practices and take advantage of the best of them all. The guiding principles for the project approach: •VOC […]

Key bullets from Bill Steenburgh, Xerox Services First he gave us a rundown of the last six years at Xerox: 2000-2002: Xerox losing money on a sustained basis 2002-2005: Investing for growth 2005 +: Expanding customer relationships Then Bill talked about how Xerox has combined Lean and Six Sigma to drive improvement. He said “you […]

Today is the opening day of the IQPC Lean Six Sigma Summit West 2006. Roxanne O’Braskey, President of ISSSP is the conference chair today. Roxanne is a wonderful speaker. She show so much passion for Six Sigma when she speaks about it. She’s pumped us up to hear and learn from the presenters today. We’re […]

During my recent travels, I was passing through London on the way to Bristol and bought a copy of the London Evening Standard to pass the time on the tube (subway) from Liverpool Street to Paddington. On leaving Liverpool Street I read the front-page headline, ‘£40m tube refit sends out the wrong signals’. A five-month […]

This week I’m in Las Vegasfor the IQPC Lean Six Sigma Summit West. The event last year was fantastic. This year I’m looking forward to the keynote from Richard Teerlink, former Chairman of Harley-Davidson. There’s also a nice line-up of speakers from The Home Depot, Cintas, and Cisco as well as case studies from Sun […]

I was very interested to read Stephen Crate’s recent post with Jim Womack’s “Historical Perspective of Lean,” which mentioned the idea of gemba consciousness, or awareness of what’s actually happening on the shop floor. “Management by walking around” is related to this concept; at one organization that I know of, meetings were forbidden before 10 […]

Nayism 32: We’ve learned the tools, trained folks and made good progress with our projects but somehow Six Sigma hasn’t become the “way we work.” Exactly when, if ever, will the cultural transformation thing happen? Sounds like this organization is having a tough time changing old habits. Much like the latest weight loss fad, short-term […]

Here is further article on the use of IT in six sigma projects.  We are all familiar with using analytical tools such as DOE, regression, and control charts for inferential statistics to model and predict behaviour. One IT tool I have recently had the benefit of using being decision trees. Let me explain. Take for […]

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

This note from Jim Womack at the Lean Institute provides an excellent historical perspective of lean manufacturing. It is reprinted here with permission.   Stephen,   I’ve been reflecting on today’s remarkable headlines about the latest retreat by the Ford Motor Company as part of its “Way Forward”? campaign. While reflecting, I have found it […]

I was in New York City on a busy summer weekend not too long ago. Me and a whole lot of other tourists. In fact, it was the busiest I have ever seen the city in terms of tourists. Saturday night found me and my companions at one end of Times Square, fighting the crowds […]

Balance is one of those tricky concepts which appears on the surface quite simple yet is often deceptively difficult to grasp. In its more common forms, like standing up and walking about, we never give it a second thought. There are scant few of us however who would conclude that because we can walk we’re […]

Much is said about how Six Sigma will radically change your company, how it will save millions of pounds / dollars, and how it will change your company’s culture. Little is said about on of the major problems most Six Sigma deployments even the mature ones face; the “non-believers.”

As our organization implements lean, we are running into fears that our employeeswon’t be as productive after a lean project. There’s a theory that we’ll be “paying people to wait around” for patients / customers to show up. I’m pretty fascinated by this fear, since lean concepts of value are supposed to be be employed […]

I recently began to research Six Sigma Belt Certification Programs on the Internet. I have been thinking that I might like to obtain some credential in additionto my Masters Degree. I became concerned because there appeared to be multiple opportunities with no clear standard. Each one I discovered had a different number of hours of […]

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

Our organizationhasjust comethrough a phase that I’ve heard called “The Wave III Bump” by other institutions – the projects are all successful, but they just take so darn long, isn’t there any way we can speed things up? Our organization responded by moving to Lean in a big way; we’ve done Rapid Improvement Events (kaizen […]

At the Bank of America, Health Care Conference 2006 in May, Express Scripts gave a presentation that included a few slides about their Lean Six Sigma program. Their value proposition: “To reduce pharmacy costs, without compromising health outcomes, while maximizing patient satisfaction.” Lean and Six Sigma together are part of how they are giving “value” […]

Nayism 31: “Of course I’m on board with Six Sigma. What’s not to like about it?” Fact or Fiction? Is this leader a genuine believer or a shrouded figure from the “dark side”? How can you tell? Here’s what I say . . . As spoken by the true master Yoda, “Find the answer to the […]

As a division of Brunswick Corporation, Mercury Marine recently completed their 1,000th Lean Six Sigma project. BYM News reported this morning on this significant milestone and shared more insight into Mercury’s deployment: “Since (Patrick C. Mackey) launched the cultural transformation of Mercury three years ago, nearly 700 management and production employees have been formally trained […]

I continue to be amazed at the creativity some people have. I’ve even heard some staff boast that they were “The Kings and Queens of Workarounds” because they knew how to get things done through back channels, crisis management, and personal connections that were never listed in any procedure manual. They are too busy to […]

A Black Belt friend of mine was telling me about deployment in his company. I listened to his problems patiently and then said to him, “It looks like you have employed a ‘bunch’ of Black Belts who are brilliant at the statistics, but when it comes to facilitating a project team, who might for example […]

Peter Abilla is conducting an interview with Mary Poppendieck, a thought leader in the Agile/Lean for software development space, over at his blog. Pete has invited all interested to submit their own questions to Mary via the comments section of his post, Interview with Mary Poppendieck. This is your chance to ask a guruyour questions […]

In my last blog I asked readers to comment on the core reasons for project failure. Well having waded through the flood of 10 responses (thank you all) here is what you said. Projects were split 50:50 between manufacturing and transactional with improving satisfaction levels and reducing costs the main objectives. But what I was […]

In my opinion, one of the key questions to answer when planning a deployment is whether the Black Belt role should be full-time. While this sounds like a reasonable question to some, many experienced Six Sigma folks find it strange to even ask, because in the majority of programs the Black Belt role is automatically […]

Having worked a couple of projects combining Lean, Six Sigma, and Theory of Constraints over the past year or so, I’ve often been asked how these methodologies work together.This is still a point of great debate amongst the hardliners but generally I find most practitioners are open to learning and applying tools that improve business […]

Noteworthy Six Sigma news this week… Even Six Sigma couldn’t save Sony or Dell from the recent battery recall. A handful of exploding batteries out of more than 4 million manufactured is better than Six Sigma…but some products just require perfection. Flights, medical procedures, and now laptop batteries… The Six Sigma methodology is credited with […]

The Cox-Box is Copyright © 2000-2005 iSixSigma LLC and Gary P. Cox – All Rights ReservedReproduction Without Permission Is Prohibited – Request Permission

As the academic year begins our Six Sigma team has met, created a new team charter, and began accumulating a list of projects that we would like to try this year. Our team named “Gravy” (gravy, or Six Sigma, being the goal of the team) fits in our planning objective: “More Six Sigma projects to […]

Thank you to everyone who contributes thoughts, suggestions and comments to iSixSigma on how we can improve what we provide. We’re constantly making improvements to our technologies as a result. Our Discussion Forum is a popular Six Sigma-related destination on the Internet. Since our inception in May 2000, we’ve had about 94,000 postings. People have […]

I recently participated in a great discussion with a group of Black Belts in my SSBB exam review class. We were talking aboutthe importance of “walking the process” to understand it. Several BBs had the experience of managers trying to create a process map in a back room somewhere – these managers swore that their […]

So why did Jack implement Six Sigma? Larry Bossidy. Why do thousands of other companies use the methodology? They’ve seen it work and they want to emulate successful companies. Such is the case with Lopez Foods. They are on a quest for growth, and how do they plan to achieve it? They benchmark the best […]

I have recently moved to the east of England (Norwich) and one of the first things I did was join the library. Now, every library I have used had a simple process for borrowing books. The book details are recorded and the return date stamped at the front of the book. Sound straightforward? Well not […]

In my last post, about a recent Rapid Improvement Event (RIE, sometimes called a kaizen event), I mentioned that there were three Black Belts involved. I’d like to expand on that a little further and see what you may think of our arrangement. When a Rapid Improvement Event is chartered,alead Black Belt is assigned tomeet […]

Coast Guard Station Cape Disappointment, situated at the mouth of the Columbia River, is the largest Coast Guard search and rescue station on the Northwest Coast of the United States. This area is regarded as one of the most treacherous river bars in the world and because of the large number of shipwrecks near the […]

The latest podcast is ready to download. This podcast includes highlights from the “Compliance and Six Sigma”survey, published in the July/August issue of iSixSigma Magazine. This survey looked into how Six Sigma is helping companies “play by the rules” of regulatory compliance requirements including Sarbanes-Oxley, OSHA, EPA, and the SEC. Listen for the highlights, get a […]

Having spent the last week in a healthcare Rapid Improvement Event (i.e. Kaizen), I continue to marvel at the power and resourcefulness of a dedicated team of people. Our topic was “Patient Access” – in other words, how to get patients into beds more rapidly in a hospital that is typically at (or beyond) stated […]

The Cox-Box is Copyright © 2000-2005 iSixSigma LLC and Gary P. Cox – All Rights ReservedReproduction Without Permission Is Prohibited – Request Permission

Over the past year or so I’ve had occasion to work several Lean projects in conjunction with the implementation of Critical Chain Project Management. One project has been a huge success and the other was a bit of a goat rodeo which ultimately had the plug pulled on it before any real progress was made. […]

Unfortunately, my road as a blogger for the iSixSigma Blogosphere has come to an end. At this time, my plate has become too full and I must make more time for events in my life of higher priority. Currently, my wife and I are both completing our Master’s Degrees. More recently, we have found out […]

Can you help the unwilling? My co-worker and I are completely paralyzed by a group of staff members in an implementation that refuse to adopt the principles of Lean because it takes away the “joy” of working and the group cohesion. According to them, now that Lean has been implemented, they don’t have time to […]

Who would you like to hear speak at the IQPC 8th Annual Six Sigma Summit in Miami? Here’s you chance to be heard. Please take this short –one question– survey and choose your ideal speaker for the event in January next year. To participate in the survey follow this link: https://www.isixsigma.com/miamikeynote07

IT Business Edge interviewedme last month regarding the results of the survey “Information Technology and Six Sigma” published in the 2006 May/June issue of iSixSigma Magazine. The interview was only three questions but that was enough to elaborate on a fewkey findings in the research. For those of you who do not receive iSixSigma Magazine, […]

Over the past weeks and months I have become increasingly aware that there is a grouchy counter-Six Sigma-culture out there. As indisputable proof of this, a Google search on the phrase “Six Sigma sucks” returns no less than 111,000 hits. (See for yourself here.) Even discounting bitter G.I. Joe fans, this is a big number. […]

Nayism 30: The action taken as a result of the Six Sigma project has no basis. Looks like this Six Sigma stuff is a scam for doing whatever management wants to do. There is nothing worse than a good project gone bad. How do you identify them and what do you do? Here’s what I […]

iSixSigma is proud to announce the upcoming release of the Cox-Box Calendar. The 2007 wall calendar will feature brand new, never before seen Cox-Box cartoons. This calendar will make a perfect holiday gift for your data-minded friends and co-workers. Visit https://www.isixsigma.com/calendar/ to learn more and place your advance order online. Tell a friend: Get the […]

This week there was quite a bit of Six Sigma chatter in the headlines… The U.S. Army regularly makes the news these days touting their success with Lean Six Sigma. This latest article, Lean Six Sigma Eases Fiscal Constraint Challenges, from Military.com mentions that the Army saved $30 million last year from applying Lean Six […]

Coming from an IT background I am fluent in Techie. I feel right at home talking about NAT, BIOS, ERD, PERL, API, DHCP, IMAP, SMTP, SNMP and so on. With the right audience I can have rapid conversations in what may well sound like utter nonsense. But equally when working with a non-IT person I […]

Here’s a synopsis of a recent conversation I overheard: “We do Six Sigma, but we don’t call it that.” “Why not?” “It would scare people off.” “Huh?” “If we called it Six Sigma, that gets interpreted by people as this strange, large, project “thing” with lots of data and statistics and change and being monitored […]