Dean Bottorff

Mike,
I believe there is an important distinction between “non repitive” and “low volume.” Low volume is often repetitive, just in a low volume degree. When an instance is purely a one shot deal, with no evidence of repetiveness whatsoever, 6s tools may not be the best tool kit to address this scenario. Also, acting immediately on an emperitive…[Read more]

I can think of 2 cases where 6s may not be the proper approach. One is if the underlying objective is patently illogical or unethical. Just because something is desired does not make it a worthy undertaking. Second, non-repetitive events, or events which merely demand execution, not improvement (such as the flat tire example), where little or no…[Read more]

What your are describing is more the norm than the exception. Regardless of any rhetoric to the contrary, most upper managers only provide a limited number of “support chips” which need to be quickly regenerated by your progress. My advice: report lots of progress fast using as few of the power chips as possible to build up your inventory with t…[Read more]

The notion that 6s has succeeded where TQM has failed presumes a great deal and needs clarification. First, 6s has continuously adopted TQM methods over the years, so to say 6s is better than itself is in part a formal fallacy. Second, in spite of their similarities there does remain a key difference between 6s and TQM, and that is the conc…[Read more]

Hector,
The problem is not subjectivity but consensus among people knowledgeable about the process. If you start with the people most knowledgeable about the process, I have found it useful not just to document their mean scores but their Sdt Deviations as well. If the Std Deviation is greater than 1.0 on any team score, I facilitate more d…[Read more]

Chris,
The fact that you are even considering doing marketing research as a six sigma project is an indictment of the marketing function, which should already be doing this on a continuous basis. But if you must do marketing research I suggest you use the decision roadmap from the field of marketing research. Marketing research methodologies…[Read more]

Chris,
I am a career marketer, so I have faced this problem many times.   First, statistics are not necessarily what you need. This is not an SPC project, or even a six sigma project (unless you focus on the true nature of the problem). Second, what you need is a bonafide marketing criteria to evaluate your marketing processes against to est…[Read more]

Jeff,
I facilitated hundreds of improvement projects using quantitative tools before it was called six sigma, and headed 3 separate TQM initiatives (it took 3 to get it right). I can offer this advice. First, becoming a change agent is tough work for even the good ones and some are not cut out for it at all. Second, you and the involved parties…[Read more]

When management shows interest in the money, they usually are more interested in economic performance than cost (or should be). Real economic performance involves the relationship between input costs and output benefits. Without consideration of the total economic picture cost alone is an insufficient metric. This is why many methods of cost acco…[Read more]

John,
This is why multiple views are needed where metrics are concerned, as choosing just one as a primary metric imposes a bias on the focus, which may not show the whole picutre of a process and how it affects the organization. Also, financial metrics themselves can be abstractions. I have found using a throughput metric such as transactions…[Read more]

John,
The balancing act between cost and quality focus is perhaps the biggest challenge in 6s IMHO. Classical quality theory says if you improve quality for internal and external customers cost experiences come down (quality is free so to speak). However, the opposite is not theoritically true: just pulling down costs does not…[Read more]

Sandy,
When 6s is used to improve things for everyone, it is a winner. But when it gets overly politicized, or improves only some things for some people at the expense of others, it can seriously disrupt a group’s operating culture, which ironically 6s needs to do projects.  If 6s causes too much cultural dysfunction, 6s can be a losing pr…[Read more]

Jeff,
Getting the results of the means and variances tests is a good starting point, but this likely will not conclude anything of particular value. The issues of bias, root cause, nonlinear vs linear relationships, mixed effects and marginal economic analysis may be more important to your future promotion planning than statistical significance…[Read more]