Tag: product development

The Lean Six Sigma (LSS) toolbox can always be extended with new approaches that enable the harvesting of new opportunities for improvement. Philosophically, improvement in terms of velocity, cost, quality, performance, reliability and widespread customer acceptance remain relevant but also complex. One way of extending the use of these methodologies and tools is by developing […]

Scrum is an Agile project management methodology that can be used to control software and product development using iterative, incremental practices. Scrum generates the benefits of Agile development with the advantages of a simple implementation. This methodology can significantly increase productivity and reduce time to benefits while facilitating adaptive, empirical systems development.

Dave Wheeler has been promoted to senior vice president, global supply chain and corporate Six Sigma at Cintas Corp. in Mason, Ohio, USA. Wheeler will be responsible for all company-owned and contracted production facilities, procurement, distribution facilities, textile research, new product development, production planning and Six Sigma initiatives.

Royal Philips Electronics subsidiary Assembléon is cutting New Product Introduction (NPI) time on its A-Series pick & place equipment by 30 percent.

Imagine receiving the following message from your organization’s travel assistant: “You will really like your next business trip! I have booked you into a hotel right in the city center. It is a bit far from the factory and not really cheap, but after work you can do lots of things!” But what if you […]

Instantis, a leading provider of on-demand project portfolio management software used by business process and IT leaders to improve strategy execution and financial performance, announced today that WR Grace will lead an upcoming Webinar entitled: Optimizing the New Product Development Process at Grace.

A bad taste can prevent some people, particularly the young and the elderly, from taking a medication – which can endanger their health. Taste can also influence what over-the-counter drugs people purchase and the choice between generic and brand-name medications. Because taste is such a key factor in compliance and purchasing decisions, optimizing taste is […]

In the battle of “survival of the fittest,” every business must constantly re-evaluate its processes to improve how it delivers products or services to customers, while at the same time reducing its cost of doing business. Businesses that establish an effective continuous improvement culture will be able to sustain their competitive edge. Beginning in 2003, […]

To survive in today’s competitive software-development market, organizations need to build their capabilities around delivering the best service within customer-stipulated time frames and costs. Increasing productivity – the rate of output per amount of input – is the factor most likely to give an organization an edge over others. Many software-development organizations have realized the […]

When attending a performance by a symphony orchestra, the audience witnesses a tightly coupled, highly predictable process executed by a high-functioning multifunctional team. This is exactly how product development should be executed. Many similarities exist between an orchestra and the product development process. An orchestra’s “product” is delivered during the performance. The product is the […]

As is true throughout virtually all areas of business across diverse industry sectors, Lean Six Sigma principles and practices applied to research and development (R&D) and product development in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries have a dramatic effect on reducing cycle times and the cost of developing new technologies, products, and protocols for research and […]

When competition for new markets and customers increases, the level of customer satisfaction becomes a key factor for long-term business success. Satisfied customers often become loyal customers and help to ensure future cash flow. In their article “Zero Defections: Quality Comes to Services” (Harvard Business Review, 1990) F.F. Reichfeld and W.E. Sasser report that a […]

In many industries, improvement projects quickly face an obstacle: The lack of easy to get and reliable data. This is especially true when the critical-to-quality elements (CTQs) of the project are “soft attributes” such as taste, smell or texture. Facing such a problem in the food and drink industries is obvious. While in a Kano […]

Several years ago, a company created a wristwatch pager – quite an advancement for its time – combining a wristwatch and pager in one. The developer instituted production quality at near Six Sigma level. Yet, the product never sold. While failure can occur for a number of reasons – quality, cost or being late to market […]

Avoid the costly mistake of developing a product no customer wants. Instead, use a quality function deployment to focus attention on the critical features of your product or service and to bring organization and structure to your decision-making.

The goal in product design or business process engineering is to create products or processes that are insensitive to the sources of variation that inhibit their intended function. The design phase in the product development process is a crucial activity since this is when most downstream production and quality problems are locked-in. As a consequence, […]

Launch of Six Sigma BrokersTM: a Unique New Service, which Optimizes the Productivity of Six Sigma® Deployment