Six Steps to Effectively Plan for Lean Six Sigma Efforts

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Some of the complaints commonly levied against continuous improvement deployments is that they focus on the wrong issues, and that projects take too long or require too much investment (time, training and financial) in order to achieve meaningful results. Unfortunately, these complaints are often justified – not because of some fault in the Lean Six […]

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How to Keep Your Lean Program on Track

How to Keep Your Lean Program on Track

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Who knows more about what it takes to improve digging ditches – the person holding the shovel or the executive vice president of ditch digging? Learn from a self-described Gemba nerd as he takes us behind the scenes in a Lean powerhouse.

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Beyond Cost Savings: Making the Case for 5 Other Financial Benefits of LSS Projects

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Although many LSS organizations focus their improvement efforts solely on reducing costs, cost savings are chump change when compared to the revenue implications of delivering an enhanced customer experience. Learn how to quantify – and achieve – five categories of financial benefit beyond cost savings.

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The 3 Most Important Practices for Achieving Process Excellence [VIDEO] – With Lee Pollock

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If you are leading any type of process improvement program, you have probably felt at times like your efforts were yielding less-than-expected results. It is no wonder: the list of possible hurdles to overcome – restrictive organizational structure, politics, stagnant organizational culture, power trips – goes on and on. This interview with Lee Pollock, the […]

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Roadblocks to Implementation

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Every Six Sigma project and Lean event goes exactly as planned right? There are many reasons for detours during your project journey; unfortunately, many of these are unpredictable. As much as we try to avoid these pitfalls by following established methodologies or hiring experienced project management personnel, it remains clear that some of the best […]

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How to Improve Project Cycle Time

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A common metric many organizations use to assess the performance of their Lean Six Sigma program is project cycle time – the total time from the beginning to the end of a process improvement project, including total process time and all delays. If your organization’s project cycle time is running higher than your targeted rate, […]

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Driving Six Sigma Success Without Top-level Support

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Common wisdom about Six Sigma is that top-level executive support is one of the prerequisites for having a successful deployment, regardless of the organization. Almost all Six Sigma training materials (either developed in-house or delivered by external consultants) for Green Belts and Black Belts focuses extensively on how executive support is critical for the success […]

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What Makes a Training Program Effective?

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The purpose of a training program is to impart knowledge of a system or process to someone new to that process. Individuals may have worked on something similar previously, so will have an idea, or at least a starting point, on which to build. However, most training programs must start with the basics and a […]

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Why Lean Manufacturing Fails

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During both prosperous and difficult times, successful businesses naturally look for new ways to improve performance. However, in recent years, as the world economy suffered through one of the worst recessions in history, many companies turned in droves to Lean and other variations of continuous improvement programs to rescue their sagging businesses. But, did they […]

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Avoid the “Bloom and Doom” Cycle

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Many Lean Six Sigma programs start out strong, but not all stay that way. Leaders must make special efforts to ensure their deployment ends up a success.

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How Can Lean Users Sustain Gains?

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How’s your Lean initiative doing? Is it going great? Or is it starting to lose steam? Or is it clearly failing to meet expectations? Have you given up and gone back to the not-so “good old days” from which you had hoped to escape? These are questions I see a lot of firms both asking […]

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Eight Steps to a Successful Lean Six Sigma Implementation

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For any organization, the first step in a Lean Six Sigma deployment is deciding to use the methodology. Once the leadership of an organization believes they can benefit from using Lean Six Sigma, they can follow eight steps – from creating a burning platform for adopting the approach to recognizing team member contributions – to […]

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Top 10 Tips for Managing Six Sigma

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How does an organization manage the Six Sigma process for delivering outstanding business results? 1. Leadership/top management commitment is essential. Secure the top management commitment by first training them. This training should consist of an introduction to Six Sigma, tools and techniques used, and the roles and responsibilities of the management as Champions. The leadership […]

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Becoming a Master Black Belt in Healthcare

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A Master Black Belt (MBB) has been trained as a Six Sigma Black Belt and demonstrated proficiency in statistical tools and expertise in leading and teaching others. Within the healthcare organization, the MBB trains Black Belts and Green Belts, helping to select, scope and mentor projects. MBBs also guide the organization in addressing quality from […]

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7 Keys to a Change Deployment Process

7 Keys to a Change Deployment Process

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There is plenty of variation to be found among adopters of change programs – from widely successful to not so much. Most likely, your success lies somewhere in between. To move closer to wildly successful, mark off each one of these seven keys to success for a process improvement deployment.

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Understanding Six Sigma Deployment Failures

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A recent iSixSigma Discussion Forum thread posed the following question: “Have there been any Six Sigma deployments that have failed?” My answer is ambiguous enough to make me sound like a politician. The question immediately begs definition of the term “failure.” My definition of a failure would be anything that does not deliver the Return […]

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Six Sigma Critical Success Factors

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“You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” This axiom, while intuitive for most managers and business professionals, is often not applied to the Six Sigma management process itself. For Six Sigma or any other management initiative to yield the advertised results, many factors must be considered, aligned, measured and acted upon. Having been involved with […]

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Why Six Sigma Black Belts Make Better Leaders

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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, […]

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Black Belt as Mobilizer: Key to Six Sigma Effectiveness

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How does a company measure the effectiveness of a Six Sigma program? Common metrics include: time to the break-even point for the program, project completion rate, total and average financial value of completed Six Sigma projects, and average project completion time. The common element in all these metrics is that they rely on the effectiveness […]

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Work-out as a Problem-Solving Tool for Healthcare

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Healthcare organizations face tremendous challenges in addressing efficiency, cost, quality, staffing shortages and mounting pressure to raise salaries. To bolster lagging morale and improve retention rates, management must empower staff and effectively leverage existing resources. Tools and techniques that support these imperatives are critical to the success of modern healthcare organizations. Many problems in healthcare […]

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Patient Management Scorecard Checks Health of Hospital

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A patient management scorecard presents, in general, a comprehensive framework that helps healthcare managers to define strategies, track performance and provide information to show whether their institution is performing well in terms of its mission. By implementing this strategic management tool, hospitals can construct measures to aid performance measurements in areas essential to their strategies. […]

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Leadership Sustains High Performance in Manufacturing

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How does one sustain high levels of performance in manufacturing after the first successful waves of Lean Six Sigma projects? Research done on 75 manufacturers, predominantly European, sheds light on the balance between product/process and people leadership capabilities needed to sustain high levels of performance. Of High Performers and Lagging Performers High Performers: Sustaining high […]

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Six Keys to a Successful Six Sigma Deployment

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Six Sigma is a powerful tool for solving business problems and driving excellence in organizations. Its benefits can include breakthrough improvements, cost savings, defect reduction, greater customer satisfaction, and higher productivity and efficiency. To reap these benefits, however, organizations must pay close attention to six key factors that can make or break a Six Sigma […]

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Adjusting Continuous Improvement in Hard Economic Times

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The events of the last few months can only be described as an economic perfect storm. Both junior companies and large conglomerates around the world went from planning their next multi-million (or billion) dollar expansion to putting projects on hold and cutting production, seemingly overnight. The focus should now be on managing costs, controlling expenses […]

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