Month: March 2008

Today’s question comes from the realm of business etiquette. Since I didn’t think Miss Manners would have the answer, I’m asking in this forum. Traditionally, when an organization begins deployment of Six Sigma, “Black Belts” are hired, trained, and certified by their company or an outside vendor. After some years of service, some Black Belts […]

Magic Mirror on the Wall – Why did my deployment stall? When companies deploy Six Sigma, most have a vision of what that will mean to the organization. It might be improved customer satisfaction, or shorter cycle time or better quality products, cost reduction, revenue growth or maybe achieving an overall culture of excellence. Whatever […]

Lucky Kat Television, in association with Dr. Mikel J. Harry, is launching a Six Sigma for kids program. The online TV network has partnered with several education and entertainment companies to build a fun online learning network for kids. Part of the fun will be teaching kids about Six Sigma through Harry’s Six Sigma for […]

I have been re-reading Henry Fords book My Life and Work. I got the idea to re-read this from Walter Lowell, the Lean Initiative Director at the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. It is available as an e-book from The Project Gutenberg (see below). In this wonderful book Ford talks about how he […]

Every Six Sigma project is (or should be) built around improving a primary process metric: the Big Y.

Six Sigma in Erie County is seeing setbacks as skeptic county legislators put a cap on the Six Sigma budget. The initial one million dollars planned has been slashed to $120,000. “I’m one of the skeptics, I believe. They didn’t name me Doubting Thomas for nothing,” Legislator Thomas J. Mazur, D-Cheektowaga, said Thursday. “I am […]

Deming proposed his famous “Red Bed” experiment more than half a century ago. These days, videos and descriptions circulate freely via the web, and there are many books and other publications that describe the experiment. But even for those who are familiar with its lessons, the applicability of the experiment and what it teaches are […]

While flipping around the channels a while ago, I happened to catch an episode of “House.” This show, for thoseunfamiliar with it, features aphysician in a hospital setting. He’s faced withpatients who have complex and puzzling disease conditions that he must diagnosis in order to save their lives. I was intrigued, at first. But after […]

Last week I spent an evening at the local emergency center with my mom. The experience reminded me of the old saying: “You are only as good as your weakest link.” And here’s why. . . When I walked into the emergency center I was immediately accosted by a huge poster focused on customer service […]

In January I looked through the ASQ body of knowledge (BoK) for Black Belt and said to myself, “I know most of this stuff now”. So put in my entry and passed the Mar’08 exam. I thought I would share the experience, as I believe a number of practitioners may have looked at the ASQ […]

Imagine a world in which we routinely do things Right First Time, Every Time. There would be no more rework as first time yield is 100% and no need to coach & mentor as green & black belts hit the ground running. Unfortunately it tends to be the case that in order to be Right […]

There’s a great quote from Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” that I was thinking of today, in relation to how we teach lean. Thecharacter Malvoliosays, “Be not afraid of greatness. Someare born great, someachieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.” So, with apologies to Will… “Some are born lean, some achieve lean, and some have […]

Thank you to all who attended iSixSigma’s premier webcast. We had a great time delivering it live from Boston last week. If you missed it though…it is now available online for your viewing pleasure. Gary Cox drew a special Cox-Box just for the event. The only place to see it is on the webcast. You’ll […]

What the heck is SigmaLeanZenOut? It is what a lot of people are doing in the world of continuous improvement. No matter where you got started, most companies gradually evolve to SigmaLeanZenOut. Six Sigma deployments add Lean, Kaizen, and then Workout (not necessarily in that order). Lean deployments add Kaizen, Workout then Six Sigma. You […]

I’ve received a decent number of emails and calls from people who wanted to see our premiere webcast, but couldn’t attend for one reason or another. Rest assured, we will be releasing a recorded version of the webcast soon. We’re still finalizing the recording, landing page, etc. Stay tuned to the iSixSigma Blogosphere for an […]

I was privileged to speak at a conference in San Francisco last weekend, sponsored by the American Society for Clinical Pathology. The topics focused on leadership in the clinical (medical) laboratory. After giving a presentation on 6S, I served asa panel member for questions submitted from the audience. One of the questions asked, “What can […]

It’??s election time again in Malaysia on 8th March 2008. I picked up this interesting story from Yahoo and wish to share it with the readers here. Held once every 5 years, this article talks about dead voters in Malaysia. KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Malaysia has found nearly 9,000 people aged more than 100 on its […]

Many of you have recently heard about the tremendous loss to the Quality profession. There is a press release from Juran Institute and a forum discussion. I had an email forwarded to me from the leaders of the Joseph M. Juran Center for Leadership in Quality. Below is the email:   February 29, 2008 Dear […]

In a previous post I mentioned that our webcast tomorrow was heading for a record. Well, as of this morning we’re up to 850 registrants. If you haven’t registered, please do so immediately! http://goto.spotfire.com/isixsigmawc/ Michael Marx, our research manager, will be going over the 5th Annual iSixSigma Global Six Sigma Salary Survey and highlighting some […]

“Innovation comes from the producer – not from the customer.” -W Edwards Deming   In the course of teaching Kano Analysis to green belts and others, I frequently talk about the difficulty in uncovering delighters or excitement needs, as the customer often cannot articulate these at an actionable level. Or in other words, “The iPod […]

Oh no – not a label! Too bad. Whether you like it or not, you are being labeled – or branded – every day. Regardless of whether your company brands themselves and markets this brand or does nothing, your customers have already put a brand on you. Think about it. What comes to mind when […]