Uwe H. Kaufmann

An insurance firm discovers through value stream mapping that it must fix its broken processes before it can increase its productivity in a sustainable way.

The job of any purchasing department is to source for reliable suppliers who deliver products conforming to specification on time and within a certain price range. The more data is available about potential suppliers, the better the decision will be. The question is, how should that data be analyzed? The following case study helps to […]

A survey by iSixSigma Magazine of more than 1,300 business professionals whose companies are using Six Sigma revealed that leadership development programs which involve Six Sigma training are six times more likely to be called “highly successful” than those without. Many of these leadership development programs involve a Black Belt track for future leaders. Thus, […]

Many companies spend considerable amounts of money on customer surveys every year. They then use those survey results to amend strategies, design new products and services, focus improvement activities and to celebrate success. But can practitioners always rely on the results they see? Here is a fictional example: MyInsurance, a life insurance company with worldwide […]

Six Sigma practitioners looking to clarify or explore a task, find root causes of a problem or develop their strategic thinking skills may want to consider using webbing, a valuable exploration tool. Similar to the 5 Whys, this tool encourages practitioners to ask a web of questions about a task or process in order to […]

Well-focused improvements done in the right place can lead to significant system-wide results for an organization. In simple terms, it is a matter of choosing the right Six Sigma projects. But the problem is that it is not always easy to know which projects will produce the highest system-level leverage. Often Green Belts and Black […]

An international bank with 50 branches in Germany and approximately 300 employees decided in 2003 to adopt Six Sigma in all its business units in Europe. It then set out to use Six Sigma to implement one of its priority business strategies – significantly grow its car loan business in the next two years. The […]

Nearly all medium and large companies spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions, on customer surveys every year. Customer survey results are used to amend strategies, design new products and services, and focus improvement activities. Gathering customer data is only the first step. The second step involves making best use of the data – analyzing […]

Six Sigma and ISO 9000 can be highly complementary. Unfortunately, the two concepts often are driven by different project leaders, competing for resources and therefore not delivering the best results. There is, however, a way to combined the power of both concepts to add value to a company. An Overview of ISO 9000 ISO 9000 […]