isixsigma.com

Are you making use of legal Lean at your law firm? It might seem counterintuitive at first glance, but there is some serious potential when it comes to using the methodology for streamlining your legal processes. It takes some adaptation, sure, but like any methodology, you’re going to be tailoring it to better suit the […]

In Six Sigma, we’re often taught that variation is the enemy. We apply a deeply analytical lens toward complex projects to seek out wastes, excesses, and bring them back under heel. When applied to a complex workload like software development, the most feared and hated sort of variation you’ll come across is scope creep. It […]

Any instance in which Lean and Six Sigma are matched, like in areas like healthcare, you know there is going to be some major changes taking place. With the Six Sigma methodology already capable of making sweeping changes across different industries like healthcare, it was only a matter of time before Lean Six Sigma began […]

When processes are fundamentally broken, you aren’t left with many choices. You can try to tweak and improve them incrementally. However, this only serves to spin the wheels, wasting resources and manhours. If a process isn’t working, you have to make the change, and that often means leaning on BPR to make things work. Business […]

When you think about Business Process Reengineering, you might be thinking about a strategy to organize a business or organization’s workflows better. The goal is that if you are able to reengineer business processes, you are going to find a clearer path toward eliminating waste, which in turn leads to increased profits. Rest assured that […]

A defect in Six Sigma is defined by the tangible. These are your marred surfaces, late deliveries, bugs in the code, or measurements that fall outside the Upper or Lower Control Limits. Black Belts hunting variances make use of the DMAIC roadmap, fairly standard practice for regular readers of our site. As we venture further […]

In the world of business methodologies and project management, Lean has quickly become one of the most focused and popular. Based on the history of Japanese manufacturing techniques, Lean thinking is a concept that can be applied to various industries worldwide with outstanding success. The best part is that Lean thinking is a proven system […]

For many organizations, service operations are growing steadily out of control. Increasingly complex and verging on inefficiency, these processes often start with the best of intentions behind them. However, over time, process improvement measures, compliance mandates, and hacky ad-hoc solutions can turn fairly straightforward workflows into a convoluted nightmare. When service operations reach this point, […]

Streamlining and optimizing processes lead businesses to adopt known, trusted methodologies for continuous improvement, such as Six Sigma, Lean, and Kaizen. Over time, teams root out waste, guarantee consistency, and climb closer toward process excellence and overall stability. However, when margins begin tightening, you might see those gains start to plateau, and those incremental changes […]

In Lean Six Sigma, hard, actionable data is king. We obsess over capability indices, take stock in p-values, and make use of structured improvement cycles under the likes of DMAIC. If you follow the data, so we are told, then the solution will be self-evident. However, that isn’t the whole of the story when it […]

If you’re not keeping up with the latest threats, your overall security posture is at risk. Cybersecurity is a central concern for any organization’s operational strategy. Managing security initiatives is inherently complex, owing to the sheer scale and scope of even minor networks. Further, threat landscapes are constantly changing, along with shifting compliance requirements. Teams […]

The world of Hoshin planning, also known as Hoshin Kanri or more simply as policy deployment, is often considered one of the world’s foremost frameworks for tying together the short-term actions of an organization and its long-term goals. If this sounds pretty simple, it’s because it’s all pretty clear how it should work, but making […]

The world of cybersecurity and data management rarely stays still, but that doesn’t stop some organizations from relying on large, sweeping initiatives, usually following an audit. This might see organizations making changes based on a quarterly audit, rolling out tools gradually, and seldom taking the time to practice breach or incident response. That’s fine for […]

It won’t come as any surprise to learn that your organization, like hundreds of thousands of others, has the primary goal of making a profit. Whether it’s your business and your goal, or that of individuals who are several levels above you on the hierarchy ladder, generating profits is what’s going to help a company […]

In today’s fast-paced environment, it doesn’t matter if you are the head of an IT desk or someone who works in customer support. Incidents can and will happen. Whether it’s a system crash that impacts inventory management or an angry customer call over a refund or return, these things can snowball and escalate if they […]

Data is everything for a Six Sigma project. Before you can define a problem, analyze root causes, or confirm that improvements are taking hold, you need actionable data from a measurement system. Reliable numbers aren’t just a nice thing to have, but an expectation if you’re looking to have any effort take off. As such, […]

Even the most well-conceived strategies can fall short without proper execution. Across many industries, leaders spend months or years crafting bold plans, only to see those fade away in the face of daily operations. Why does this happen? There is a persistent execution gap, where organizational strategy fails to connect with the activities that drive […]

Recently, many organizations have started name-dropping Lean, with the notion being that it helps to reduce cycle times, lowers inventory levels, and leads to improved throughput as a matter of course. However, these organizations aren’t sticking to the principles and teaching, and as such, fail to sustain gains or deliver value to customers time and […]

Security operations centers (SOC) are under a great deal of pressure. Threats continue to evolve and change, with attacks growing more sophisticated, and bad actors getting more refined in their deployment of such attacks. Despite the prevalence of cutting-edge tools and skilled, trained analysts, many security operations centers will struggle with dealing with inefficient practices […]

Imagine for a moment that you’re in the middle of a major presentation to stakeholders. The dashboard you’re looking to showcase goes dark. Something your team has spent months tuning up to reduce human error has become the point of failure. Automation, as you’ve intended it, isn’t functioning as it should. A bot is churning […]

When looking at modern markets, speed is relentless. Customer demand means shorter development cycles, faster product launches, and fierce competition. That said, customers expect quality as well, not just speed. In turn, this has led to organizations seeing reliability and performance soar. The tension found between speed and quality isn’t a paradox, but rather a […]

In today’s fast-paced business world, there is no shortcut for effective project management, and to say that it’s crucial for success would be an understatement. It’s for this reason that there are multiple business methodologies on the market that organizations, large and small, are turning to to shore up business practices and increase profits. One […]

For modern manufacturing, efficiency and precision are just part of the equation when it comes to profitability. That said, despite the technologically advanced production environments we see in manufacturing, defects and rework are still a pressing concern. Both can erode profit margins, delay deliveries, and test customer trust. As such, manufacturers are asking themselves what […]

Incremental and continuous improvement is the backbone of methodologies like Lean, Six Sigma, and even standalone Kaizen implementations. These methodologies hone in on minimizing waste, improving quality, and refining processes over time. Such an approach works well, especially if an organization is working with an otherwise mature, effective system. What happens when continuous improvement doesn’t […]

The promise of AI revolutionizing the modern workplace is a rather seductive one. You feed it your data, find patterns that might have been missed, and optimize your decisions based on said findings. You might even find the ability to automate those processes, freeing up valuable man-hours for other work. For the most part, this […]

As the end of the year approaches, it won’t come as any surprise to learn that businesses all over the world are donating lots of time to strategic planning for the next year. These plans are part of critical efforts, especially in a volatile economy, to look at how to break through any ceilings that […]

Have you wondered how some of the best-known startups have scaled up so efficiently? There is a pretty good answer to this question, and it’s generally through Lean Methodology. Companies that have embraced this methodology worldwide have given rise to a whole new way for entrepreneurs to scale their businesses early in their development. Whether […]

Compliance is a central part of any business’s operations, especially given how highly regulated the landscape is today. As a strategic necessity, organizations are facing increasing pressure to show transparency, accuracy, and fit within the regulatory requirements necessary, regardless of whether they’re in finance, healthcare, public services, or any other sector. Adhering to these compliance […]

When calculating the business case for a Six Sigma project, the cost of poor quality (COPQ), which is the cost caused by producing defects, is a commonly used concept. Within the total amount of quality cost, however, COPQ represents only a certain proportion. Costs do not result from only producing and fixing failures; […]

A missed deadline often is a symptom of a bigger problem centered around planning, communication, or execution. Regardless of your organization’s industry, whether you’re in software development or manufacturing, delays erode stakeholder confidence and increase costs. As such, the challenge lies in aligning multiple teams with dynamic requirements under tight delivery windows. Scrum, an Agile […]

It should go without saying that in the grand scheme of corporate life, whether your business is big or small, innovation can be your lifeblood. Whether it’s standing out from the competition or continuing to innovate on a product customers already love, there is so much to be said about consistently coming up […]

Few things will send a customer to the competition faster than waiting. Whether it’s a client on hold with customer support, someone waiting on a delivery, or even a patient sitting in a doctor’s office, waiting represents one thing: inefficiency. The modern era is a fast-paced, high-tempo environment, and expectations are shaped by […]

Few industries require the same sort of precision, efficiency, and need for continuous improvement as automotive manufacturing. Building vehicles at any sort of scale is a massive undertaking involving thousands of parts, a network of suppliers, and assembly lines running around the clock. The global market isn’t exactly forgiving when it comes to […]

One of the most popular tools in corporate arsenals for looking at how everything is working is Value Stream Mapping. Basically, a way to diagram every step that is involved in bringing something to market, it has quickly become fundamental in helping organizations, large and small, identify and eliminate all kinds of waste. […]

No matter what type of business you run and who your customers are, anything you can do to increase overall customer satisfaction is going to work in your favor. Whether it’s delivering faster, offering increased product reliability, or simply providing customer service, all of these can lead to increased loyalty and, in return, […]

Manufacturers are facing uncertain economic conditions, which result in a paradoxical problem: costs are rising across the board, but customers haven’t tempered their expectations when it comes to quality, price, and delivery speed. Manufacturers have a fair amount of pressure on them these days, and the usual standbys of cutting corners through the […]

The best news you can scream about if you are in business is when you have a clear vision of where you want the company to go and how you want to get there. The problem is that even the clearest vision might fail if you don’t have the right amount of planning […]

In the rapidly evolving world of cybersecurity, threat detection has become a vital need and a persistent challenge. Companies face a deluge of unrelenting alerts with intrusion detection systems and endpoint monitoring solutions, creating an environment that makes it difficult to distinguish real threats from false positives. False positives act as a drain […]

In the world of Six Sigma, you have a strategy and methodology that have helped countless businesses grow and achieve more success than they ever thought possible. As one of the best-known quality improvement methodologies, Six Sigma is arguably one of the most common terms in the world of process management. Of course, […]

In today’s enterprise environment, IT security isn’t a technical function. Instead, it is a critical business enabler. That said, some organizations struggle with aligning cybersecurity initiatives with long-term goals. Misallocated resources, fragmented teams, and missed opportunities are just a handful of the symptoms that result from this misalignment. Hoshin Kanri, a structured planning […]

DevSecOps is built around the principles of speed, automation, and iteration, resulting in a flexible security environment. You can take the standard operations done under DevSecOps and create a far more powerful and versatile hybridized approach by implementing tools, principles, and concepts from Six Sigma. While the industry is still focused on shifting […]

One of the most important lessons anyone can pick up in the business world is that having an efficient warehouse and inventory management system is a strong sign of success. On the flip side, if your inventory system is running inefficiently, it likely means you are leaving money on the table and have […]

Waiting weeks for a simple approval is just one example of how red tape and unnecessary procedures stifle productivity. That isn’t to say that bureaucracy is the bane of all businesses, but being able to cut through the fat and get the work done is vital for maintaining efficiency. Delays cost time, money, […]

When considering the various business methodologies available today, you have the option to implement Lean, Lean Six Sigma, Six Sigma, Value Stream Mapping, Kaizen, and Hoshin Kanri. The latter is quickly becoming one of the most popular, having originated in Japan during the 1960s and 1970s. It’s quickly become a popular choice over […]

If you’re new to the business world, you might see the term Six Sigma bandied about. You’ll see certifications, job postings, and even articles espousing the methodology and ways to make improvements to workflows. That said, if you’re fresh to the concept, it can seem somewhat daunting at first glance. Six Sigma itself […]

Organizational culture is the very foundation of your services, goods, and other outputs. As such, embracing a culture that prides itself on continuous improvement isn’t just a good idea, but a vital one. These are rarely something that springs up naturally as you build a business, but something that has to be encouraged […]

It should go without saying that there are fans of both Lean and Agile in manufacturing, and for all the right reasons. Both of these business processes are well-loved in various circles for reasons that have been shown to work across hundreds, if not thousands, of businesses over the past few decades. The […]

Theory of Constraints vs. Lean: what’s better for optimizing processes and increasing profitability? I’ll admit that these are two wholly distinct and separate methodologies for use in any workplace. That said, you’ll often find some crossover between the two, especially where the notion of process improvement comes into play. Understanding the synergy and more varied […]

At any moment in time in business when you are looking for a business philosophy that can help you figure out how to enact a strategy, Hoshin Kanri has to be at or near the top of any list. When you think about this process, try to imagine back to when you were […]

Modern cybersecurity practices require speed, something that traditional ways of managing departments like Waterfall won’t accommodate. However, by utilizing Agile sprints and other tools from the methodology, you can set a rapid cadence that is focused on security, stability, and minimizing downtime. Further, you can make it so your security team is constantly […]