Curtis

Pal,My name is Curtis Atkisson. In response to your question, there exist many automated essay grading services that may do exactly what you are looking for. These programs address the objectivity issue very well. A program such as this would also save a lot of money in your graders’ time. Different programs use different techniques and the…[Read more]

One thing I did not comment on was the idea of “ranking” employees.
I do believe it is necessary for organizations to do their best to quantify employees’ performance and provide data regarding that performance as frequently as possible. Just like a process, the only way an employee knows where he or she stands is by the data. If an employee has…[Read more]

When talking about pay in the workplace, I think we confuse motivate with incent.
If we use Herzberg’s M-H theory as our starting point, motivation is a specific affect related to the need to accomplish our intrinsic personal needs. According to that body of research (which I know has just as many other studies attempting to dispute it–that is…[Read more]

I think the best way is having a BB who knows the process and can be objective working with a MBB who is objective.
This way the BB will skip the learning curve to get up to speed, while the MBB will check for objectivity.

You could start with a more qualitative approach to get involvement up and quick hits out of the way. I am thinking of the GE Work Out specifically the Express type as discussed in the The GE Work Out by Ulrich, Kerr and Ashkenas.
You could attack all areas of the company with Work-Outs and specifically identify 1 process to get in and use a…[Read more]

I think the key is to get a set of measures that accurately depict the effectiveness (from the customer’s standpoint) and the efficiency (from a business perspective) for your call center.
While AHT, calls per hour, blockage, and abandon are typically relied on soley by a call center, they are not all bad. The calls still need to get answered…[Read more]

Here are two good articles about deploying Six Sigma:
Implementing the Six Sigma Solution: How to achieve quantum leaps in quality and competitiveness. Jerome A. Blakeslee, Jr. Quality Progress July 1999
Six Sigma Program Success Factors. Mark Goldstein Quality Progress, November 2001

I agree with Norbert, the first thing too look for is the CEO actively supporting Six Sigma? Actively means by talking about it and attending Six Sigma meetings, training, etc.
After you have determined the CEO activley supports this, then check to see if it is part of the strategic plan. If not, there could be problems with competing goals.
In…[Read more]

I agree with what everyone else has said about stratifying your customers and therefore stratifying your sample across customer segments.
For a quick sample size calculator I use this site:
http://www.ncspearson.com/research-notes/sample-calc.htm
To generate randome non-duplicating numbers, I use this site (May be helpful in picking the…[Read more]

My two take-aways:
1) If you are the first person in an area to help them, the define phase is the most important. Simply defining what it is they do- through a top-down chart and process maps in addition to a rudementary baseline measurement.
2) As Beth said in an earlier post–managing the people. This is important for two reasons-

A)…[Read more]

The way that I detemine if my data is normal or not is by utilizing minitab. Efter entering the data in the X & Y in the “normality test and selecting 95% as the confidence level. I select 95% always because that is what I want as my accuracy. This process has worked on four projects that I have completed.