Month: November 2006

It’s the holiday season and that means one thing: shopping! This is the one time of year where I will seriously shop, making my seasonal impulsive buys and spending money on items such as clothing, candy, electronics, etc. that I rarely buy throughout any other time of the year. Evidently, I am not alone in […]

I read a very cool article in BusinessWeek yesterday called The Making of…a LEGO. (Brought to my attention via Slashdot.) While the article doesn’t actually talk about Six Sigma it does tell us a little about the manufacturing process of the LEGO bricks: “The bricks are so meticulously made that the company claims that out […]

Reading Gianna Clark’s latest blogmade me thing about all the “sayisms” that I’ve developed over the past three years of my Lean-Six Sigma journey. I have added lots of acronyms, sayings, and jargon in my daily speech – and I keep forgetting that not everybody is familiar with these terms (yet) – including my husband […]

Nayism 37: Six Sigma touts a lot of benefits for the company but what’s in it for me? The answer to this question could be the turning point for this individual. Can you give them the right answer to their WIFM (What’s In It For Me?). Where do you begin? Here’s what I say . . […]

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

I was up late practicing one of my favorite hobbies, web surfing, and after a chain of clicks on tonight’s topic of interest, optimization, I stumbled upon something I thought I’d share. I’ve been a practitioner/advocate of simulation for some time now and recently I’ve decided to educate myself beyond what the typical software packages […]

Dilbert and his pointy haired boss tackled two topics that are near and dear to my heart: Six Sigma and innovation. In one fell swooop, he reduced both topics to buzz words and hype. While I’m sure there are many people who may agree with Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, I’m hoping this site […]

Seth Godin points us to a positive customer service story regarding a flat tire. I’d like to tell you my story…the exact opposite experience at my local big chaintire shop. My tire went flat while I was out. Luckily I happened to be next to a gas station. I managed to fill it up enough […]

Our organization is starting to have a very constructive discussion about rewards and recognition for Black Belts. (Green Belts, hold on, you’re next.) We canvassed our current Black Belts and- as you might guess – the variation was wider than the mean! Ideas started fromcertificates, pins, and belts… through public recognition at organization-wide events… through […]

Last year to celebrate Six Sigma and Thanksgiving, I directed you to a couple of Thanksgiving DOEs. This year let’s talk apple pie. The Bama Companies make a mean apple pie. In fact they make millions of them each year. Not quite the same as the apple pie that my wife bakes for Thanksgiving, but […]

Is it related to design for Six Sigma? Is it TRIZ? Is it that guy in the corner cube who has 50 patents and tons of papers piled on his desk high enough to obscure anybody’s view as they walk by?

What a great way to return Six Sigma savings back into growing the business: Fund innovation projects. It’s also a nice synergy between Six Sigma and Innovation.

I recently took a long train journey to Wales to attend a user group for a software package that defines Enterprise Architecture (Zachman et al). More details in a future IT blog. But what caught my eye was an article in The Times newspaper: Tax staff told to clear their desk Being told to clear […]

The 30 Rock Six Sigma reference got me thinking about Six Sigma at NBC Universal… not much searching later I found a Six Sigma educational video produced by the quality team at NBCU and narrated by Linda Hildebrandt, a Master Black Belt on the quality team. The self-made video is professional quality (would you expect […]

Okay, time to pick up where I left off last month. You may or may not remember my post about assessing organizational maturity in order to discern the appropriate scope and/or starting point for continuous improvement efforts so I’ll refresh your memory with a quote from the post: “Our target end state for an organization […]

“Are quality and change one of the same thing, can you have one without the other or are they inextricably linked?” What is Quality ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality Quality can refer to a. a specific characteristic of an object (the qualities of ice – i.e. its properties). b. the achievement or excellence of an object (good quality […]

My mother-in-law (we call her TiVo) said she was watching 30 Rocklast week…(just one of the many, many showsshe records, hence the name TiVo) and told me about a scene where Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) explains Six Sigma to his staff writers. Well, I went a looking for it and thanks to YouTube here’s the […]

I am trying to make Six Sigma meetings at my project in the UK fun and a little ‘different’ than the normal meetings there. I am gathering up fun exercises and video clips to play in between facilitation of the DMAIC tools. I will share with you one GREAT team exercise (I got from my […]

In my previous two posts, I talked about the fugue and the symphony as metaphors for Six Sigma deployment. A fugue is a musical form in which a single theme is repeated or imitated successively by different instruments until eventually the entire orchestra is involved. This strategy isn’t a bad one for Six Sigma deployment, […]

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

I spent the afternoon with the North West Quality Forum (NWQF). Today’s meeting took place on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington, just North East of Seattle. It was my first time to Redmond, besides my house-hunting trip to the Seattle area a couple of years ago. The NWQF is a group of Seattle-based deployment […]

Nayism 36: “Six Sigma won’t work because. . .” As we approach Thanksgiving it is only fitting that we reflect on the things that we are thankful for. Believe it or not, I am thankful for Six Sigma naysayers. Yes – those stodgy, old school, dig in their heels, change resistant individuals who lurk the […]

Some vendors have recently expressed concerns about the review of project tracking software programs that was published in the November/December 2006 issue of iSixSigma Magazine. I would like to share with you a statement regarding this article that will be published in the January/February 2007 issue. It was written by magazine editor Erin Ducceschi, and […]

On 31st October, Sir Nicholas Stern, working for the UK Government, released the Stern Review. This review looked at the potential economic costs for global warming with a headline that global warming could shrink the global economy by 20% and up to 200 million people could become refugees as their homes are hit by drought […]