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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 […]

Fixing or otherwise improving a process usually involves changing it in some way. For this reason, Six Sigma projects almost always involve some element of process engineering or re-engineering. On top of that, folks in deployment leader roles or similar are often tasked with developing brand new processes like project selection, candidate identification, certification, and […]

This week Sam Decker gives a beginners course on Six Sigma and marketing over at his blog Decker Marketing. I’ve been reading Sam Decker for about a year and a half now. He never fails to share the insights he’s learned from his work experiences from start-ups to managing Dell’s eBusiness. As for marketing blogs, […]

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

Hi All, Sorry for the long delay since my last post. I’ve been neck deep in my project out in California and it seems every time I sat down to write, something else came up. Anyway, this project has been a real eye-opener. Essentially, I’ve been leading the transformation of an old school batch & […]

Recently, I was asked to participate in an evaluation of presentation skills for one of our senior leaders. The questionnaire included questions that I expected – “speaks concisely” – but also some that I didn’t. After I completedthe survey, I started to think about my own presentation strengths and weaknesses. Here are some of my […]

Six Sigma news this week… Fortune Magazine has decided to pick on Jack on the cover of their latest issue. The article, Tearing Up the Jack Welch Playbook, is an attempts to throw out the old and bring in the new… way of thinking that is. Fortune senior writer Betsy Morris, lists seven of the […]

Ok, I have to pose a question for the general “Lean Thinkers” out there who are aware of how conservative healthcare is. I have been reading so many articles that highlight the success of Kaizen events in healthcare settings. However, I have to ask myself, do they really work? Do the changes really sustain? Is […]

As I was scanning news this week, a couple of articles caught my eye. The first was a piece by Damon Darling in the New York Times about Farecast, an airfare search engine that aims to predict how much the price of an airline ticket will rise or fall before the flight actually occurs. Says […]

Thelatest podcast is ready to download.This podcast includes highlights from the Six Sigma and Information Technology survey, published in theMay/June issueof iSixSigma Magazine. This survey takes a look at the relationship between Six Sigma and IT and answers questions such as: How often is Six Sigma used to improve IT processes? How often are technology […]

Likely to be overheard if you have a Klingon Black Belt… 1. Behold, the Value Stream Map of Kalis! The greatest Klingon Black Belt who ever lived! 2. You doubt the worthiness of my statistical analysis? I should kill you where you stand! 3. By questioning my data you have challenged the honor of my […]

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

Lean and Six Sigma make their rounds through the media this week surfacing in publications around the world including Time Magazine… The article in Time entitled “Lean and Mean” is the story of the Army’s implementation of Lean Six Sigma. It is a fantastic article full of Six Sigma war stories from streamlining procurement to […]

In a world where I could call myself the Senior Master of the Highest Order of Black Belts, I have always been a little circumspect of using the Black Belt handle. So after 18 months the time has come. I can now call myself a Six Sigma Black Belt! I have been accredited by our […]

Nayism 29: I’ve been to Green Belt training, passed my test, completed my project and have been certified. Now can I get back to doing my real job? This naysayer has obviously gotten lost but has not realized that he is not in Kansas anymore. In his view, he has ‘punched his ticket’ and now […]

What was really written on those stone tablets that Charlton Heston held in “The Ten Commandments?” The Ten Commandments For Six Sigma Black Belts in Healthcare I.Thou Shalt Have No other Goal than to Serve the Welfare of the Patient, by Process Improvement using Data Analysis or Lean Tools as Thou Needest. II.Thou Shalt Not […]

For a Fourth of July Six Sigma post, I’ll pay tribute to the Lean Six Sigma efforts in the United States Military operations. Read success stories from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines.

This week in Six Sigma related news around the globe… Read about the new weighing and traceability system, Trac-IT MES, which Maple Leaf Bakeriesin the UK is using to reduce waste in their bagel making process. Now let’s head down under to Linde Australia to read about how Six Sigma in the service division is […]

Nayism 28: So much analysis, so little time. The project needs to get moving – I need a fix now. Ah yes, the analysis paralysis phase of projects can haunt even the best of black belts. Is there ever a time to throw in the belt and call it “enough?” Here’s what I say . […]

There’s a lot of talk about Six Sigma certification these days. I remember being asked by a talent acquisition manager at a previous employer what it meant to be a “certified” Master Black Belt. The question arose because a quick search on Google turned up programs ranging from 3 days (online) to 2 years in […]

Hess, the energy company formerly know as Amerada Hess, got its first taste of Six Sigma from GE back in the year 2000. GE came in and gave a presentation but Six Sigma didn’t stick. Four years later it was introduced in the Marketing & Refining division of the company as a CEO driven initiative. […]

After writing my recent blog, “Physician Heal Thyself,” I attended a review session for the ASQ certification exam. The subject of physicians came up when we were discussing identification of customers in healthcare. One of the attendees reminded the group that physicians tend to be diagnosticians, looking for a way to fit the patient’s symptoms […]

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

What makes some physicians so difficult to convince of the need for change? I’m talking aboutphysicians who are extremely unhappy with the current state. They complain to anyone who will listen. They threaten to take their patient volume elsewhere. They tell horror stories about orders they wrote that weren’t filled, wrong items in the orthopedic […]

Here is another example of the use of IT in projects. I would like to describe how useful mapping is in data analysis. I will use a fictitious scenario. Sigma Industries have a fantastic product that VOC research says should be a phenomenal success. But the problem is product sales are not meeting expectations. As […]

Why are we struggling with selecting the “right” Six Sigma Black Belt projects? The “right” projects are the projects that are delivered on time, within the budget and generating or exceeding projected savings in a sustained manner. The “wrong” projects are by default all other. Now think about your own organization. What’s the proportion of […]