Month: October 2006

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 […]