Lori Kinney

When faced with the news that drug manufacturers of cancer medication were responsible for causing a massive amount of financial waste, the oncology department at UCSD utilized Six Sigma and Lean tools like a cause-and-effect diagram, a Kaizen Event, the 5 Whys, and others in order to improve scanning processes that could help in recovering […]

The web development team at The Nature Conservancy in Arlington, VA, was able to utilize Lean and Six Sigma tools to close the gap in downtime due to a coding freeze every 45 days. The Nature Conservancy used such Six Sigma tools as process maps, The 5 Whys, and cause-and-effect diagrams to dramatically bring the […]

In the emergency department of a hospital, the amount of wait time is of huge importance to the patient as well as the staff. Using Six Sigma methodology, the nurse director of Providence Hospital in Michigan was able to dramatically cut down on wait times for patients. Before Providence Hospital in Southfield, MI, embarked on […]

By employing Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma methodologies, the U.S. Army’s Aberdeen Test Center was able to improve the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of its vehicle maintenance operations. Six Sigma’s DMAIC method gave the Aberdeen Test Center the necessary tool for improving its cycle time, significantly decreasing the wait for its clients between when a […]

In the 1980s, Wipro made the leap from being primarily known as a vegetable oil company in India into the world of IT. In order to be a competitor in this industry on a global scale, Wipro would need to continually improve its performance as well as work smarter towards meeting the needs of its […]

There are plenty of available case studies when it comes to how large corporations have integrated Six Sigma methodologies into their organizations. Less attention has been paid to the smaller and medium-sized companies that embrace Six Sigma. Can the same kind of success that big business garners from Six Sigma methodology translate to much smaller […]

Lean and Six Sigma practices are ultimately about helping businesses use efficiency to provide the ultimate customer experience. But what about state and county government entities? Can the same practices apply, and do they even have “customers”? The residents in the counties these government offices serve would likely say “yes”. Kern County spans the southern […]

You may have taken notice of Deschutes lately. In the last few years, it has become much more commonplace to find the brewery’s products on draft at your local pub or at your nearest retailer. Such a marketplace presence did not happen overnight, and the brewery credits the lessons learned from Six Sigma as having […]

ZARA changes its clothing designs every two weeks on average, offering upwards of 11,000 distinct garments every year. In comparison, competitors change their designs every three or four months and product 3-4,000 distinct pieces. This is fast fashion: the business model of replicating high-fashion, luxury-brand pieces quickly and cheaply, making them available to customers while […]

In 1985, Coca-Cola embarked on what has since been viewed as one of the worst marketing blunders in history. The customer response as well as how Coca-Cola decided to reformat how it dealt with customers, informed how the beverage company would modify its processes for decades to come. When Coca-Cola discontinued its original formula and […]

On the Success Stories podcast with Marshall Atkinson, Ali Banholzer of Wear Your Spirit Warehouse discussed how Lean Six Sigma was utilized to increase profit margins for her company as she worked towards achieving a Six Sigma Black Belt. When a small business goes through a period of growth, it can become painfully clear that […]

When you are part of an organization that is working towards goals, you are part of a team. A team moving toward hitting milestones can sometimes need to generate excitement and motivation while inching toward the goal line. This is why we have acronyms like TEAM. An acronym like TEAM can be used by team […]

Not all experiments are created equal. Learn how randomization can improve the validity of any business’ experiments aligned with Six Sigma principles. Randomization in Six Sigma Business owners and managers want to know what works and what doesn’t when it comes to existing processes and methods of operation. Running experiments and assigning inputs and outputs […]

In discussions about the Six Sigma methodology, you will often find the equation Y=F(x). It is an important formula in working with the methodology and can serve as a very helpful tool in project management. When working with the Y=f(x) formula, X stands for the various inputs utilized to generate an outcome, while f represents […]

Measurables indicate how a process is performing or how customer expectations are being met. These indicators are quantifiable, expressed numerically, and can have units of measurement. There are two kinds of these indicators. They are process measurables and result measurables. It is important in any business to know if you are meeting the expectations of […]

Xerox went from being an industry leader to resting on its laurels. Their focus shifted away from improvement for the benefit of their customers. This, coupled with a financial scandal, brought the organization to the point where many financial experts believed that bankruptcy was on the horizon. A major shift in how Xerox did business […]

What is the point of having a bunch of raw data if you don’t have the tools to analyze it? Regression models provide you with the ability to see if there is a relationship between two types of variables, helping make some sense of data that has been collected by fitting it to a line. […]

Arrow Electronics had already been utilizing Six Sigma practices when it introduced its drone project in 2016 at its two main distribution centers in Malaysia and Asia. The drone project gained them further recognition for their use of Six Sigma methodology and helped usher in a new era of using drones in warehouses in the […]

A process window index (PWI) is a quantifiable and reproducible statistical measure which indicates how a product performs relative to range limits.

Ideation brainstorming is the first stage of a formal solution development process that usually includes free-form exchange of thoughts and ideas.

Activity Based Costing (ABC) is a tool to help companies understand how their products and services are being used.

Entry criteria is an established set of conditions that must be met before a specific process can begin.

S-hat is a common model used in statistics when estimating a population.

While you may not be familiar with the specifics of Z st, you’ve almost certainly heard of it. It’s a measure of the distance between two data points on a distribution curve, and it can be used in many different ways to enhance your understanding of how processes work.