209 Six Sigma & Quality Article Archive

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Archives by Year: 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000

• Interpreting Anomalies Correctly Can Help Avoid Waste
  Without the benefit of extensive project experience and strong statistical interpretive skills, a Green Belt or even Black Belt may improperly diagnose data anomalies, leading to poor decisions. Learning some quick analysis techniques can help. Read the full article. October 6, 2008


• Remember Common Cause Variation in Fight Against Waste
  Practitioners often approach forms of variation differently, with special cause variation taking priority. But it may be profitable for practitioners and company leaders to reconsider and pay closer attention to variation from common causes. Read the full article. September 29, 2008


• Black Belt Tenure Grows Future Business Leaders
  For companies hoping to groom future leaders, a two- or three-year Black Belt tenure can serve as a key testing ground. Therefore, it is important to select the right Belt candidates, provide them with proper training and assess their performance. Read the full article. September 25, 2008


• Coach-like Mentors Achieve Greater Effectiveness
  As a mentor, Black Belts have the experience and the map – but it can also pay off to experiment with the value of being a coach-like mentor. Using a coaching perspective will increase the effectiveness of the team and the impact of the solutions. Read the full article. September 22, 2008


• Standardize Processes to Make Change Stick
  One method to approach change is to actively engage process owners. This can be done through the creation of standards for how a process is to be completed, using owner input. Once in place, they can lead to improved quality and reduced costs. Read the full article. September 18, 2008


• Give Trainees DOE Experience with Simulated Experiments
  Design of experiments (DOE) is an important tool for driving improvement. Through simulations used in training, new Belts can get hands-on experience while learning the challenges of DOE before they apply it to costly real-world experiments. Read the full article. September 15, 2008


• Strengthening the Employee-customer Interaction
  The most perfectly designed process is only as good as the human being who uses it. That’s the idea behind Human Sigma, a new branch of Six Sigma that focuses on improving employee-customer encounters particularly within service organizations. Read the full article. September 8, 2008


• Reactive Complaints: A Valuable Source of Customer Data
  Customer complaints, known in the VOC process as reactive data, may be difficult to hear, but they are valuable information for an organization to track. They usually represent many unspoken issues, and can be used to take needed improvement action. Read the full article. August 28, 2008


• Non-normal Data Needs Alternate Control Chart Approach
  Some people believe that it is not necessary to transform non-normal data before creating an individuals control chart. The chart, however, is not robust to non-normally distributed data. Therefore, it is important to use an alternate approach. Read the full article. August 25, 2008


• Maximizing Success When Implementing a Basic 5S Program
  Practitioners should reach a strong understanding of the original Japanese 5S method so they will be able to educate others about it in a way that will garner employee buy-in and achieve the best results in helping their firm become more organized. Read the full article. August 21, 2008


• Picking the Best Approach for the Problem at Hand
  Choosing the correct process improvement methodology is not a difficult task for full-time practitioners, but for other team members this is often an obstacle that takes up valuable time and energy. A positioning map may help in making selections. Read the full article. August 18, 2008


• Objective Defect Evaluation Leads Improvement Efforts
  In order to objectively analyze and take corrective action in instances where the best improvement project is not immediately visible, assigning severity, failure effect and end effect numbers to each option may help practitioners make the next move. Read the full article. August 11, 2008


• Analyzing Experiments with Ordered Categorical Data
  Six Sigma projects often deal with experiments whose outcomes are ordered categorical data, rather than continuous. It is important to know the right analysis methods for these cases, such as Jeng and Guo’s weighted probability-scoring scheme (WPSS). Read the full article. August 4, 2008


• Ron Santo, Baseball's Hall and a Lesson in Desirability
  The desirability function can be used to prove Ron Santo's right to a spot in the baseball Hall of Fame, as well as to determine how well certain variables are meeting customer needs, and is therefore an important skill for Six Sigma practitioners. Read the full article. July 31, 2008


• Enlist Process Owners to Survive an Absence of Data
  Although real data is always preferred, in the absence of data, it has been demonstrated that a valid direction can still be found through a creative approach and good old-fashioned interpersonal communication with people who understand the process. Read the full article. July 28, 2008


• Start with Leaner Tools to Ease Non-belts into Method
  When starting a deployment, it is best to make things as painless as possible for the non-Belt community. Leaner versions of the FMEA, analytic hierarchy process and quality function deployment tools can be used to ease process owners into Six Sigma. Read the full article. July 24, 2008


• Six Sigma and Innovation Need Not Be Exclusive
  The TRIZ algorithms, such as the inventive principles method, strengthen Six Sigma’s power of generating change. The input of TRIZ may increase efficiency in existing processes, as well as in the creation of new products, services and processes. Read the full article. July 21, 2008


• Using Critical Path Analysis to Prioritize Projects
  For lead time reduction initiatives, a critical path analysis of the overall timeline is a useful method to visualize which sub-processes impact the lead time, thereby enabling the business to make the right decisions on where to apply resources. Read the full article. July 14, 2008


• Blending Process Analytical Technology and Six Sigma
  The process analytical technology (PAT) approach encourages manufacturers to re-think their systems strategy both for infrastructure and applications integration. Lean Six Sigma provides a bevy of tools to make this possible. Read the full article. July 7, 2008


• Follow Brainstorming Basics to Generate New Ideas
  Before brainstorming, it is important to understand not only the fundamentals of the method, but also how to prepare for and conduct a session. With the right atmosphere, team members and encouragement, the ideas will flow. Read the full article. July 3, 2008


• Finding the Sigma Level of Customer Complaints
  Although customer survey data is often used to determine the degree of customer satisfaction, it is worthwhile to consider recorded complaints data in order to calculate the number of actual complainers and the number of possible complainers. Read the full article. June 30, 2008


• Sample Correctly to Measure True Improvement Levels
  In sampling, a comparatively small number of customers, called a sample, is used to draw conclusions about a population. Although this method saves time and money, it comes with a higher margin of error that must be taken into consideration. Read the full article. June 26, 2008


• Identify Constraints and Reduce Wait Time in Processes
  It is important to identify and understand bottleneck resources before making improvement decisions. This can be done by creating simple value stream maps that factor in the average wait time, inventory and the cycle time for each step of a process. Read the full article. June 23, 2008


• Developing BBs and MBBs: Three Questions to Answer
  Technical skills alone cannot guarantee success when getting people to behave differently is one of your goals – as is the case in Lean Six Sigma. Because of this, organizations must focus on developing soft skills when training Belt candidates. Read the full article. June 16, 2008


• Model Change Effectiveness Using Bug Tracking Data
  Through a modeling method, practitioners may be able to establish process change effectiveness using historical bug data. This technique can be used in situations where running an actual controlled experiment on the process would be difficult. Read the full article. June 9, 2008


• 15 Criteria for Selecting a Viable DMAIC Project
  Having a robust and reliable approach to, first, quickly determine whether the project is indeed a good DMAIC project, and second, to prioritize projects to ensure resources are allocated appropriately, is essential to Six Sigma program success. Read the full article. June 5, 2008


• Systems Thinking Results in Holistic Improvements
  The whole is often greater than the sum of its parts. By looking at issues through a systems-thinking lens, it’s possible to work with a system as a whole – and to deliver sustainable and comprehensive process improvements that address root causes. Read the full article. June 2, 2008


• Improve Product Design: Watch What End Users Do
  The beginning of any design or development project should include activities aimed at a deep understanding of likely user behavior. Gathering this information should involve open-ended questions and observation, which will highlight user needs. Read the full article. May 29, 2008


• A Lean Approach to Staffing Brings Optimal Performance
  Organizations are often challenged with managing seemingly unmanageable work volumes with available staff. By completing a Lean assessment in tandem with capacity modeling, an organization can optimize its staff and avoid gaps or surpluses. Read the full article. May 26, 2008


• Change Dynamics: Prepare for Optimal Buy-in
  Why is change so difficult? The answer lies in how people are innately hardwired and how that hardwiring affects how they accept and buy-in to change. By recognizing these differences, it is possible to make change a more comfortable experience. Read the full article. May 19, 2008


• Process Improvement: A Process Owner's Dilemma
  By following a Lean Six Sigma framework, process owners can use its tools on a path to process excellence that blends greater control with improved technology in order to meet the challenge of increasing efficiency and staying profitable. Read the full article. May 12, 2008


• Use Point System for Better Six Sigma Project Selection
  For early projects, it may be best to play it safe. By selecting projects using a point system, practitioners can move forward with the best options for their experience level and the ones most likely to help the Six Sigma effort in the long run. Read the full article. May 8, 2008


• DMAIC Phases Mesh with Project Risk Management
  Efficiency in projects comes from effective risk management. Using an example from a telecom supplier, it is possible to see how Six Sigma's DMAIC methodology can be applied in tandem with the six steps of project risk management. Read the full article. May 5, 2008


• Get a Feel for Lean: Explore Application Opportunities
  Lean is intuitive, flexible and can be executed quickly. As a result, almost any business or organizational process can benefit from the application of Lean. To gain a better understanding of the method, test its tools on an everyday process. Read the full article. May 1, 2008


• Implementing a Customer Satisfaction Metric
  To find if customers are happy with the products and services they are receiving, an organization must implement a metric for tracking customer satisfaction. This can be done by using a Servqual survey framework and a voice-of-the-customer matrix. Read the full article. April 28, 2008


• Start Small with New Lean Six Sigma Initiatives
  To maintain control and assure a payoff from LSS, it may help to start on a limited scale. With only a few key team members – including the right Black Belt candidate – a company can create a program that will have an impact enterprise wide. Read the full article. April 21, 2008


• 5 Six Sigma Deployment Mistakes - And How To Avoid Them
  Six Sigma deployments across the globe have created a wealth of both success stories and important lessons about the challenges that can arise during the process. Deployment teams should learn from these lessons and steer clear of others' mistakes. Read the full article. April 14, 2008


• A Method for Aligning the Six Sigma Performance Metric
  Some Six Sigma practitioners are concerned about the current method used to calculate Z-scores and express process capability. A proposed modification, based on Berryman's scorecard, may fill the need for a more intuitive and business savvy metric. Read the full article. April 7, 2008


• The Futility of Call Center Coaching
  Although it has become an industry standard, one-on-one coaching is less valuable than many believe. Through the use of mathematical modeling, it is possible to see that coaching, even in moderate turnover environments, is a fool’s errand. Read the full article. March 31, 2008


• Corporate Ethnography: A Way to Gather VOC
  In many Six Sigma projects, practitioners use traditional voice-of-the-customer techniques to find the specifications clients seek. But to get the full picture, they should also try a set of data-gathering methods known as corporate ethnography. Read the full article. March 24, 2008


• 5 Lean Tools and Principles to Integrate into Six Sigma
  Integrating Lean into an existing process-improvement framework can result in more high-impact, quick-hit projects. As this experience from one business shows, it's possible to bring in Lean tools without creating ripples in the Six Sigma structure. Read the full article. March 17, 2008


• 12 Tips for a More Motivated Team and Better Results
  Follow these tips to incorporate motivation at all phases of an improvement project in order to ensure passionate teams and management buy-in, along with better business results. Read the full article. March 10, 2008


• Improved Forecasting with Moving Averages and Z-Scores
  For short-term forecasting, Black Belts can benefit from analyzing moving average plots and looking for special causes of variation. When making long-term forecasts, a method that uses a normal curve and Z-scores may be the better bet. Read the full article. March 3, 2008


• Applying 5S Tool to Environment in Service Industries
  In order to successfully deliver service to customers, satisfy them and increase the likelihood of future business, transactional companies can make good use of the 5S tool as a basic framework to manage workplace dynamics. Read the full article. February 25, 2008


• Dispute Resolution: Facilitators, Mediators, Arbitrators
  Dispute resolution has become a popular way to identify the root cause of a problem and to build a solution strategy - both in and out of the business world. The three resolution processes are facilitation, mediation and arbitration. Read the full article. February 18, 2008


• Using the Five W's and One H Approach to Six Sigma
  5W1H (who, what, where, when, why, how) is a method of asking questions about a process or a problem taken up for improvement. 5W1H of Six Sigma explains the approach to be followed for understanding and analyzing the process, project or problem. Read the full article. February 11, 2008


• DMAIC Project Selection Using a Systematic Approach
  Growth of the DMAIC methodology in the United States' more service-oriented economy is not as fast as earlier in manufacturing industries. While DMAIC is well-proven, it requires a systematic plan for project selection in transactional environments. Read the full article. February 4, 2008


• Lean and Creative Six Sigma to Solve Real-life Issues
  Some organizations using Six Sigma are failing to obtain the true potential of the methodology. Those organizations need to integrate with the Six Sigma methodology an effective, comprehensive and a focused approach to solve real-life problems Read the full article. January 28, 2008


• Making SCOR Model More Effective with Lean Six Sigma
  Many Six Sigma practitioners have asked how the Supply-Chain Operations Reference model, or SCOR®, relate to Six Sigma and Lean. However, perhaps a more relevant question should be, "How can Six Sigma and Lean make a SCOR model more effective?" Read the full article. January 21, 2008


• Multi-Generation Project Planning's Fit with Six Sigma
  At the time of NASA's Apollo mission, multi-generation project planning (MGPP) was not a popular tool, but the moon landing project is an excellent example of the power of MGPP, and it provides a chance to explore how it fits with Six Sigma. Read the full article. January 14, 2008


• Managing Change to a Continuously Improving Culture
  Instead of rewarding those ready to change and discouraging those who fight change, organizations establishing a culture of continuous process improvement should focus on moving the largest group, the neutrals, toward supporting the change. Read the full article. January 7, 2008

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