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It is a common problem. Every year, hospitals lose millions of dollars when items used in the course of a patient’s care somehow slip through the system without ever being charged or reimbursed. At Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut, a Six Sigma project team decided to look at the opportunities related to patient charge capture. […]

The term “business process management” (BPM) is often encountered in conjunction with Six Sigma and Lean initiatives. Typically it refers to identification of core business processes, assignment of process ownership and definition of measures (and perhaps benchmarks) that indicate the health of a particular process. These measures are often influential in selection of Six Sigma […]

Initially Six Sigma process improvement projects followed four phases: Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control. Today, some companies still omit the Define phase because a project’s definition is seen as mainly management work. Following this logic, the same might be true for Control: ensuring that the process improvements are implemented and monitored is only a business […]

MoreSteam.com Launches New Project Management Course, and Awards PDUs

How much can Black Belts save your company? This research benchmarks over 800 company data points and shares the hard and soft savings being achieved around the world.

Organizational Culture – Exclusive iSixSigma Magazine Research

While most Six Sigma project charters address a fairly standard list of issues, two areas critical to the long-term success of projects should be added — how a project might detract from or add to the value a company is providing to its customers.

Effect teamwork does not happen by magic. Becoming a better Six Sigma project team – no matter what the starting point – only takes a little discipline and a lot of practice. Here are some principles help provide the needed structure

Process improvement teams at Virtua Health system’s 95-bed Virtua West Jersey Hospital Berlin achieve notable results by using Lean to make visual and operational improvements in the emergency department, operating room and central sterile supply.

Finalists Announced for Prestigious 2006 Six Sigma Excellence Awards

Design for Six Sigma Research — When, where and why companies use DFSS and the financial benefits it delivers

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 […]

CIOs and CTOs are faced with a plethora of issues ranging from corporate realignment to growth to shrinking budgets. Many have heard about Lean Six Sigma but given their busy state of mind, it is difficult for them to dedicate the time required to translate Lean Six Sigma successes in top manufacturing company’s to its […]

There is usually a strong belief that a validated analytical method, either partly automated or fully manual is simply perfect and cannot generate any defect since it complies with highly demanding regulations. Thus, any apparent variation in a production process is automatically attributed to the manufacturing process or raw material suppliers. The latter being also […]

Because of information technology’s unique role as a support function in most organizations, process improvement means improving both the processes of its internal management system and the business it supports. As a matter of fact, for most organizations today information technology (IT) infrastructure and management is the backbone of all critical processes. Combine that with […]

Instantis, the number one provider of software for managing top-down performance improvement initiatives like Six Sigma, announced the immediate availability of EnterpriseTrack 5.0.

Innovation has broad appeal. Businesses see it as a key to survival, and most individuals enjoy being creative – at work or anywhere. At first it might seem that the discipline called for in the workplace would take all the fun out of being creative. But actually, innovation coupled with Six Sigma discipline and data […]

Emagia Raises Third Round of Financing with $7 Million from Timeline Ventures, Sigma Partners and WestBridge Capital Partners

Many Six Sigma companies experience challenges in their effort to calculate and allocate benefits from throughput projects. This is a complex process, especially when the throughput capacity profile includes several different processes that behave independently, and where bottlenecks shift from one process to another. Employing the theory of constraints provides an effective solution. At BHP […]

You’ve got data. You’ve got a hypothesis. You’ve got Minitab… but you don’t have statistical significance at a p-value equal to or less than 0.05. You must have missed the critical Xs in the Define phase, right? It’s time to go figure out what variables you missed and collect more expensive, time-consuming and team-irritating data, […]

One branch of computational intelligence tools, neural networks, is worth surveying as part of the extended data mining and modeling toolkit. The focus here is on a specific kind of neural network applied to empirical model-building – comparing and contrasting its capabilities and performance to more traditional tools like regression analysis. Neural Networks Mimic Biological […]

Every sales force has a few outstanding sales representatives, who always deliver on or above target. What is it, in their way of working (process), which makes them so outstanding? If we identify these processes and give them as tools to the rest of the organization, our belief is that we will increase sales force […]

SBTI Announces Second Generation of Design for Six Sigma (DFSS)

Effort accounting is needed in software and IT for the simple reason that labor is generally the most important controllable element of cost. Labor cost (effort hours times prevailing labor rate) is an essential and fundamental element of efficiency measurement. Six Sigma projects in software and IT (especially DMAICs) are often focused on driving down […]

Six Sigma is about organizational improvement, with its focus on process improvement, design and management. But, it is as much about people’s behavior as it is about the behavior of processes. These two behaviors cannot easily be separated.

Six Sigma is not for the feint of heart. It takes courage to attack chronic problems no one has been able to solve. It takes true grit to define and collect the data needed for new insights. And, it takes staying power to see solutions become the new way of working. Is every company ready […]

Some common messages are beginning to emerge from several software-relevant areas – Six Sigma for software, Agile development and Lean thinking. The links between Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) and Agile have been explored recently, but now a broader view yet can illustrate the way that Lean thinking, evolved from just-in-time manufacturing, aligns well with […]

Voice of the customer (VOC) is a central concept within the Six Sigma methodology. Process performance can only be measured if an organization is aware of the critical customer requirements. But customer preferences are often unbalanced (everything is important), vague and unstable. With the help of conjoint analysis, it is possible to derive individual customer […]

Should companies hire ready-to-go Black Belts, develop them internally or use a Black Belt from a consulting company? It is a question that many companies wrestle with during the early stages of deploying Six Sigma. The obvious trade-off is between the time it takes to develop one’s own talent and the time it takes to […]

The application of Six Sigma to marketing should be the most obvious use in the world. Where else does there exist such a direct connection between the wants and needs of the customer and the products or services a company offers? However, at first glance, there would seem to be very little hard reliable data […]

The quality of a product or service is a key element in creating customer satisfaction. The level of satisfaction is ultimately dependent on the fulfilment of customer needs. The Kano survey is a valuable tool for capturing the voice of the customer (VOC), providing critical information on the importance of products and services and the […]

During the last several years, there has been a tremendous amount of discussion relating to the offshore outsourcing of software development work to achieve significant cost reductions. This has been an emerging trend for about a dozen years, but one that has been recently accelerated and subject to wild variations in success and efficiency. A […]

Most of the difficult situations Black Belts face in their day-to-day work are not related to the application of a specific Six Sigma tool, but rather to change or project management issues. For example, issues such as:  How to involve a stakeholder that is very negative about the project. How to get commitment from the […]

The ideal approach to deploying Six Sigma is to begin by improving current processes, followed by ongoing monitoring and managing of these processes, and eventually establishing process-oriented management. However, successful deployments can vary.

The fishbone diagram is the most commonly used cause-and-effect analysis tool in Six Sigma. Cause-and-effect analysis is one of the key tasks in any Six Sigma DMAIC project because half of the game is won when the correct root causes of the problem (the Y) are found. However, poor use of the fishbone diagram is […]

MoreSteam.com Sets Big Ten Attendance Record — More Than 110,000 Six Sigma Professionals Trained

Minitab Inc. Announces the Release of a Japanese Language Version of MINITAB® 14 Statistical Software for Windows®

Managing an integrated European company with variety of national cultures is tough enough. But a little guidance is helpful when a pan-European business is seeking to deploy any organizational change such as Six Sigma or Lean across the business.

One of the big benefits of Six Sigma is the discipline it brings to the use of facts and measures to guide significant and predictable results. At first glance, that discipline might seem to fly in the face of the flexibility and creativity that also are very important in development and problem-solving. One potential collision […]

MoreSteam.com Introduces Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) Online Training

Emagia Announces Free Webcast On Six Sigma Approach to Accounts Receivable Management at Volt Information Sciences Inc.

Juran Institute Moving To New Headquarters In Southbury, Connecticut

Many companies which choose not to utilize Lean and Six Sigma as key components of how they implement change in their organization say it is because the methodologies are too complicated for their business environment. They claim that they do not have the time to build an infrastructure, train Black Belts and Green Belts and […]

Estimating potential improvement project benefits unfortunately have not always been subjected to same level of analytical rigor that practitioners insist on applying in typical Six Sigma work. The fault lies in the lack of an analytical methodology. Project teams can help themselves over this hurdle with a straightforward method for calculating potential and actual benefits. […]

Leaders invest a significant amount of time in meetings. Whether one-on-one or in larger groups, meetings offer a chance to discuss or launch a project, share ideas, consider solutions and reach consensus. Unfortunately, much of this time may be wasted without the use of a few basic management techniques. Along with a well-designed agenda, it […]

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For many Black Belts, the biggest challenge is not learning the data tools – it is learning the managerial skills needed to run an effective team. And one of the most difficult of skills is dealing with commitment conflicts that team members face.

Cummins Inc. showcased its best quality improvement work of 2004 at the Company’s fourth annual Six Sigma Project Expo from on Tuesday April 5, 2005.

The lack of a robust voice of the customer (VOC) process, no proper training in applying VOC in project selction and evaluation, and VOC systems that focus on voice of the business issues keep many Six Sigma companies from being truly customer-driven.

iSixSigma Research Shows That Strategy, Discipline and Six Sigma Drive Innovation Effectiveness