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Special radiology procedures can be some of the most difficult to manage in healthcare. Their production relies on the chorus of a multidisciplinary team working within a limited time frame. Ancillary department performance can directly affect outcome performance for the unit. Defects such as missing orders, missing history and physicals or problems with patient flow […]

An enhanced voice of the customer (VOC) data collection process can improve Lean Six Sigma project execution and make the project leader’s job easier. During many Black Belt training sessions, the instructor teaches the class that it needs to develop statements on critical-to-quality elements (CTQs) that summarized the customer requirements in specific and measurable terms. […]

Through the years, there have been many different notions about what business process reengineering (BPR) is and its success as a process improvement approach. In the early 1990s, Michael Hammer and James Champy authored a best-selling book, Reengineering the Corporation, in which they promoted that sometimes radical redesign and reorganization of a process by wiping […]

Process improvement. By now anyone involved in any type of manufacturing or service industry is familiar with this term. Although there may be a vast array of particular meanings that may be assigned to the term, everyone agrees process improvement is a necessary part of maintaining a viable business. While most of the readers of […]

At a high level, there is usually agreement on the big issues in any healthcare organization. Through observation and feedback alone, key stakeholders may realize there are problems with excessive wait time in the emergency department, or that the first surgical case of the day rarely starts on time, or that it is taking too […]

Many organizations that deploy Lean and Six Sigma eventually hit what is referred to as the “performance measurement wall.” These organizations begin with the right intentions, however, the bottom-line results from their Lean and Six Sigma initiatives are often illusionary because they are focused on the wrong targets. One of the major reasons for this […]

Value stream analysis is one of the easiest methods to analyze a process and identify areas that can be improved. Even someone inexperienced can find the low hanging fruit. But what do you do when you want to conduct a value stream analysis and the boss tells you that he is not going to buy […]

Department of Defense Conducts First Enterprise-wide CPI/LSS Deployment Leader Workshop

During the last 35 years, software development and technology processes in general have evolved at a rapid, even chaotic, rate. These processes range from small, Lean, agile (sometimes labeled iterative) development pockets to large, bureaucracy-laced legacy projects of tremendous scope (sometimes labeled waterfall development) and everything in between. Many organizations have undertaken attempts to classify, […]

Six Sigma projects in various industries often deal with experiments whose outcomes are not continuous variable data, but ordered categorical data. Analysis of variables (ANOVA) is a technique used to analyze continuous experimental data, but is not adequate for analyzing categorical experimental outcomes. Fortunately, many other methods have been developed to deal with categorical experiments, […]

In an interview with iSixSigma, J.D. Sicilia, director of the Department of Defense Lean Six Sigma Program Office, shares about the purpose of the office, his deployment strategy and how the office will interact with the services.

In a production and development environment, Six Sigma attempts to reduce rework from the start, cutting down on costs and development cycle time. Compared to the try-fail method, in which practitioners usually generate thousands of ideas before finding a really useful concept for developing a new product or service, Six Sigma’s systematic approach may be […]

This directory highlights the features, as well as format, language and price specifics, of several statistical analysis software programs.

Prior to and during the launch of Lean Six Sigma (LSS), the intent of the program and how it will be beneficial to the company must be communicated to all employees, else the organization risks confusion and disenchantment from the outset. Sometimes, even when the effort gets a good start, difficulty arises in maintaining the […]

When conducting the 2-sample t-test to compare the average of two groups, the data in both groups must be sampled from a normally distributed population. If that assumption does not hold, the nonparametric Mann-Whitney test is a better safeguard against drawing wrong conclusions. The Mann-Whitney test compares the medians from two populations and works when […]

Six Sigma offers a variety of powerful tools that help organizations make data-driven decisions. Yet most people in an organization do not hold a degree in statistics and may feel that filling out endless data forms is pointless. When first starting a deployment, it is best to make things as easy and painless as possible […]

$4 Million Secured for Industry Leading Software Provider

i-nexus Announces Pro Bono Educational Workshops

Kaizen events are deceptively simple. The tools used are often considered to be less rigorous than the more analytical tools that are the hallmark of Six Sigma. But in practice, Kaizen events can be challenging to facilitate effectively because participants are pulled from their regular roles, requiring the events to be short and focused, and […]

U.S. Army Graduates Fifth Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt Class

Acuity Institute Achieves IACET Authorized Provider Status

Breakthrough Management Group International Hosts 2-Day Innovation Workshop for Executives — Seminar Targets Senior Leaders Looking to Enhance Organizational Innovation Efforts

Breakthrough Management Group International Launches New Webinar Series

Excessive – and often redundant – documentation can often be found in organizations handling outsourced projects. To overcome this waste, follow a simple plan for leaning existing documents, and for creating new Lean documents.

As more organizations expand their efforts into multiple process improvement methodologies, choosing the methodology to solve a particular problem can be as difficult as solving the actual problem. While simply using a problem solving methodology significantly increases the success rate of a project, choosing the correct methodology optimizes the solution process to achieve the best […]

PowerSteering Announces Upcoming Webcast: ‘Merck Sigma – A Prescription for Corporate Health’

A SIPOC (suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, customers) diagram is a standard part of most Six Sigma projects for good reason: It helps a team to pose and answer important questions about customers, suppliers, requirements and dependencies. In many cases a SIPOC table and a simple process map can go a long way in discovering the […]

Some practitioners mistakenly believe that it is not necessary to transform data before creating an individuals control chart when the underlying process distribution response is not normal. An individuals control chart, however, is not robust to non-normally distributed data. Therefore, it is important to use an alternate control charting approach. Necessary Transformation Consider a hypothetical […]

The question is simple: What type of projects should a Black Belt be conducting or considering? There are only so many hours in a day. And there is an abundance of demands, requirements and deadlines, coupled with ever-present and growing resource constraints. Black Belts are expected to complete projects that save money, as well as […]

Christopher Paret Joins MoreSteam.com

Six Sigma Corporate Recruiting Now Offered by iSixSigma

iSixSigma’s 2004 Salary Survey for Six Sigma Professionals: Worldwide This section of iSixSigma’s 2004 Salary Survey for Six Sigma Professionals provides an overview of the average salaries worldwide. Salaries for Black Belts (BB), Master Black Belts (MBB), Champions (CH) and Deployment Leaders (DL) are broken down by levels of education and experience, as well as […]

iSixSigma’s 2004 Salary Survey for Six Sigma Professionals: U.S./Canada This section of iSixSigma’s 2004 Salary Survey for Six Sigma Professionals provides an overview of the average salaries in United States/Canada. Salaries for Black Belts (BB), Master Black Belts (MBB), Champions (CH) and Deployment Leaders (DL) are broken down by levels of education and experience, as […]

Six Sigma is a data-driven approach for eliminating defects in any process. The use of data is a key foundation of Six Sigma. Yet, when Six Sigma is being implemented organization-wide, the use of data diminishes, almost to the point of disappearing.

In the Six Sigma methodology, the equation Y = f(x) shows that the output (Y) is dependent on several variables (x). The same can be said about cycle times for process improvement projects. The correct variables mean improved project cycle times.

Launch of iSixSigma Conferences and iSixSigma Magazine

A lengthy and inefficient process for discharging in-patients is a common concern of hospitals, as well as patients and their families. A solution to that problem can be found in the application of Lean Six Sigma methodology.

An internal audit by a team using Lean Six Sigma tools solved the mystery of what happened to about $1 million of a liquid chemical “misplaced” at a global chemical company. Case study shows how the team used a Kaizen event and DMAIC methodology.

The Six Sigma coach must be able to provide feedback on every Green Belt to that employee’s daily job supervisor in order to help bridge the gap of business-as-usual job performance, and that of the Green Belt’s performance on their project.

How many times has a Six Sigma project “crashed and burned” – abandoned a few months after kickoff? Or worse, just twisted in the proverbial wind without any progress as the months tick by? This is arguably one of the most frustrating experiences a Six Sigma practitioner can face. And for a quality program, it can […]

Six Sigma DMAIC and DFSS roadmaps provide the guidance needed for using facts and data to understand problems, opportunities and solutions to get results in a wide variety of project settings. For the routine cases, they give practitioners what they need. There are some situations, though, that can benefit from a broader view of Six […]

Lean and Six Sigma generally tend to be viewed as methodologies that are most successfully applied in a manufacturing environment. In the last several years, however, companies also have had notable results in transactional and administrative processes. Recently Medtronic, a global leader in medical technology, has successfully adapted Lean Six Sigma to apply even to […]

Many of the attendees at a recent Lean Six Sigma conference were investigating how to start a Lean and Six Sigma program in their organization. Most were very excited about Lean and Six Sigma and how it could help them introduce process improvement and customer focus to their organizational cultures. Of course, some also were […]

Although information technology (IT) organizations can share commonalities at a general level, each has its own, unique set of characteristics interacting in ways that result in their own performance signatures. Even performance measurements are not identical. Each is its own system, its own environment supporting a specific company’s needs. Just as companies are diverse in […]

After a rocky start developing the project’s primary metric, a Six Sigma team was able to increase the accuracy rate of dispenser maintenance calls, resulting in potential savings for the company of more than a million dollars.

One of the hardest decisions teams and their sponsors make is picking the right scope for a project. Those who choose easy, bite-sized projects often have a high success rate – but the impact sometimes is so small that the general reaction is “so what” or “is that all that Lean Six Sigma can do […]

Fast Start to Lean helps companies quickly – and dramatically – demonstrate the value of Lean methodology and get Lean teams up to speed.

Two New Rath & Strong Publications, Guide to MINITAB® and Whose Fault Is It Anyway?, Now Listed on the Minitab Website

Rath & Strong Develops Lean BoosterSM to Supercharge Six Sigma – Fast!

Is Six Sigma for real? Is it the factor responsible for improvements? How much Six Sigma is really necessary to get positive results? Doesn’t any quality improvement method yield similar results? These questions are always in the minds of people in every organization – sometimes out in the open, sometimes not. In a thoughtful response to […]