Month: October 2009

There’s a definite honor in being “award-winning.” I experienced this firsthand last year when iSixSigma Magazine received editorial excellence honors. The awards provided an opportunity for us to pause and recognize the work that goes into our editorial efforts and to celebrate the accomplishments. But, as I said in my Editor’s Notes following the announcement, […]

You may have seen the cover of the September/October issue of iSixSigma Magazine, featuring J.D. Sicilia and “The DoD Roundup.” The western theme continued into the DoD Breakthrough Convention, Oct. 14 to 16. Here’’s a sneak peak of the fun: Jeannine Hall, director of events, taking a hand at roping a bull. Yes, this may […]

The scoring is complete and the 2009 Top 10 Best Places to Work for Six Sigma professionals is out. Here is the Top 10 List in alphabetical order: I repeat, alphabetical order. Cardinal Health Inc. Computacenter AG & Co. oHG Ecolab Inc. McKesson Corp. Merck & Co., Inc. Pfizer Inc. Piramal Healthcare Ltd. Starwood Hotels, […]

Save time for your customers by enabling efficient transactions and watch your WOW-O-Meter go off scale.

Next month (yes, I’m giving you early notice so you can put this in your calendar)TRIZ expert, Ellen Domb, will once again be on air with Steve Wilson of Quality Conversations, discussing practical applications of TRIZ. Tuesday, Nov. 3rd, 11 AM Pacific. Be there. Ellen is also speaking at the iSixSigma Live Summit & Awards […]

I’m going to go out on a limb and open up a discussion on the “Ultimate Organization” here. In my last two posts, I talked a little bit about integrating the 6S culture in an organization (vs keeping it at a specialist level only) and organizational fear. I figured a logical progression of the overall […]

I had a very nice phone call today, from a colleague who had chatted with me earlier about a current project. She called to say thanks for allowing her to bounce ideas around, which helped her clarify some things about herapproach to the process. Naturally I felt good to receive this feedback, and it made […]

“One of all and all for one!” Or, in the original French, “Tous pour un, un pour tous!” In the story by Alexandre Dumas (1844), the three musketeers, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, were joined by the musketeer-wannabee D’Artagnan, without whom the first three would have led very boring lives. I was reminded of this the […]

The latest iSixSigma Magazine research is about to be released in the upcoming November/December issue. For this research we surveyed over 800 Six Sigma practitioners and asked them all about the tools they use, the tools they don’t use, and what tools they think are misused… The chart at the leftis the top 10 tools […]

I used to be really annoyed with people who took a wait-and-see approach to change. They’re not resistant, exactly, and they might be classified as “late adopters.” But I could understand active resistance better than passive indifference. Now, however, I have a little different take on things. Because I have realized that if you wait […]

As families struggle to make ends meet, the value provided for the dollar spent is more important than ever. What should we do? Panic? No – we don’t need to stinkin’ panic. . . we got Six Sigma!

Now accepting salaries! Each year iSixSigma analyzes the data from its own iSixSigma Job Shop to create a comprehensive Six Sigma Salary report available in the March/April issue of iSixSigma Magazine. Last year data showed that the average Black Belt in the United States made an average salary of $88,438. Master Black Belts brought home […]

There’s no doubt that fear can prevent an organization to be what it could be, but what can be done about it…how many times have you been in a situation where there were problems to solve, but no one stepped up to the plate to solve them because of fear? Piggy-backing on my previous posting, […]