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  “Invention is 2 percent inspiration, and 98 percent perspiration.” – Thomas Edison How much productive and creative potential of its personnel does a business utilize today? An informal poll across a wide range of industries suggests it is less than 20 percent. Why? How people are led, managed and supervised is part of the […]

ROI On Six Sigma Programs Directly Related to Investment Size, Survey Shows

Major changes in the business environment are forcing organizations to revisit and revamp business strategy on a more frequent basis. To stay competitive 20 years ago, a six- or eight-year strategy cycle may have been sufficient. Today, thanks to globalization, increasing shareholder pressures, enhanced corporate governance, shorter product and service lifecycles, and the exponential growth […]

One of the keys to successful deployment of Six Sigma are Green Belts and Black Belts who are well-trained and equipped to overcome any hurdles in the execution of projects. While Master Black Belts, Champions and sponsors may decide the overall strategy of an organization’s Six Sigma initiative, it is the Green Belts and Black […]

Many a company has gotten caught up in the enthusiasm that comes with a great-sounding new idea. It is great when that idea turns into a profitable new product or service. But it can be a disaster when a lot time and money is invested only to end up with a dud. How great would […]

Process owners are a vital part of successful DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) and DFSS (Design for Six Sigma) projects. Process owners are responsible for the management of processes within the organization. In some cases process owners are current leaders/managers, and in other cases process owners may be taken from non-leadership positions. They are the […]

Juran Institute and Thinking Dimensions Group of South Africa Sign Strategic Alliance Agreement

Six Sigma Software Plugs MINITAB® into Factory Data inRealTimetm

Lean Six Sigma Consulting Firm Enters the Small Business Administration’s Business Development Program

Perot Systems and Six Sigma Advantage, Inc. Team to Provide Process Improvement and Six Sigma Services

New Version of Crystal Ball Gives Quality Practitioners Capability Metrics Alongside Simulation and Optimization

While it is essential for a company to create familiarity with Lean and Six Sigma disciplines by training employees, it is even more important to integrate Lean Six Sigma into the company change culture. Lean Six Sigma should be a key component of the organization’s change infrastructure supporting all projects and change initiatives from the […]

Breakthrough Management Group (BMG) a global leader in performance excellence devoted to helping organizations systematically improve their processes and increase innovative capabilities today announced its Founder and CEO, David Silverstein, has joined the ranks of Inc.com’s Experts-In-Residence as the Innovation Expert for its “Operations Resource Center.”

The power of the test is the measure of how good a hypothesis test is. A “good” test should reject a null hypothesis when it is false and accept it when it is true.

MoreSteam Declares Independence

Several documented approaches are available for business and IT leaders to use when considering implementing the best practices of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), or the Software Engineering Institute’s capability maturity model integration (CMMI) or Lean Six Sigma as individual methodologies or frameworks. There also are some references that suggest how to use the […]

Bankers and Marines Train Together

The theory of constraints (TOC) is relatively easy to understand. It is a philosophy of management based on the idea that to improve a system or process one must find and address the one aspect of the system that most limits the entire process from being optimum. But getting from the theory to application is not […]

Since the start of the information technology age, software quality has been an ambiguous term, meaning different things to different people. It has been defined internally from the viewpoint of software developers; and it has been defined externally from the viewpoint of end users of the software. But either way, early in the history of […]

Many consultants remember the hypothesis testing roadmap, which was a great template for deciding what type of test to perform. However, think about the type of data one gets. What if there is only summarized data? How can that data be used to make conclusions? Having the raw data is the best case scenario, but […]

Robert Pirsig’s 1974 book about the metaphysics of quality entitled Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance relates a father’s journey with his son, during which are delivered ideas of quality, philosophy and formal dialogue against the backdrop of a good old American road trip, all from the seat of a motorcycle. His allegory for […]

Breakthrough Management Group Announces Its Newest Problem Solving Skills Course: Innovation Tools for Black Belts

The Six Sigma DMAIC roadmap can provide a disciplined process for creating and executing successful business strategies.

One of the key success factors of Six Sigma is the ability to set up and run an interdisciplinary, multi-skilled and management-supported process improvement team. A Six Sigma project team – like any small team of workers asked to effect change in their organization – is expected to help promote a culture of innovation and spontaneity […]

Little more than five years after launching an ambitious, system-wide Six Sigma improvement initiative, Virtua Health in New Jersey, USA, is now considered a high-performing healthcare organization and a model for others to follow.

Most companies do a good job of selecting Black Belts candidates, however, many overlook psychological aspects of candidates. This factor is important because deployment Black Belts, in particular, have an unusual amount of stress put on them.

While Micropump, which manufactures small-volume, precision-flow, sealed pumps, has been in business for 46 years and has been owned by IDEX Corporation for 11 years, it is in the last several years that innovations in its product line have accelerated rapidly. The reason is because now there is more cash to finance research and development […]

When Berkshire Medical Center found its emergency services stretched thin and the community began feeling the impact, the hospital decided to launch a Lean Six Sigma initiative and implement a series of innovative solutions.

Online Six Sigma Training – Exclusive iSixSigma Magazine Research

Thinking of starting a Six Sigma initiative this year or next year? For any adventure, the first few steps can set the mood for the rest of the journey. The same is true for a Six Sigma deployment, in which thoughtful planning can make the difference between respectable returns or a quality quagmire. This exclusive […]

Tools and methodology will only get a person so far. Experience gained from the practical implementation of Six Sigma solutions is priceless. A list of tips, tools and suggestions for Six Sigma practitioners can help avoid many project pitfalls.

Six Sigma: A Global Affair – Exclusive iSixSigma Magazine Research Six Sigma is being practiced all across the globe. With more than 190 countries in the world and even more cultures, the likelihood that deployments would enjoy a local flavor is high. This study looks at aspects of a deployment from a geographical perspective. While […]

Three years ago many best practices already were in place at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. The hospital was providing bedside registration, advanced triage protocols, point of care testing and real time radiology. A robust and comprehensive continuous quality improvement program had been established and as a result, higher patient satisfaction scores, […]

GW PLASTICS sees Success with Six Sigma

Much of the Six Sigma DMAIC methodology is concerned with finding differences: Do people do a certain job the same way or are there differences? Will a particular change make a difference in the output? Are there differences in where and when a problem occurs? In most cases, the answer to all these questions is […]

The Canadian government unveiled a plan in 2001 to create an interoperable electronic health record (EHR) for half of the country’s population by 2009. The plan is aimed at increasing healthcare efficiency, hereby helping to address Canada’s critical human resource shortages and potentially saving billions of dollars annually. As part of this effort, many hospitals […]

Many times when Lean and Six Sigma are introduced to an executive management team, there will be an individual who makes the statement: “This is just common sense. Why do we need to go through all this methodology, training and the statistics stuff to execute a simple project?” A large segment of thought leaders in […]

As a set of state-of-the-art tools for solving operations problems, Six Sigma can be used for both continuous and breakthrough improvement. What separates the two is the structure by which they are managed. When managers confuse the two types, the result is usually below-par performance. Even worse, such confusion could result in yet another dead-end […]

“What do you mean, special handling is waste? We can’t stop doing that! Eighty percent of our invoices require special handling!” — Medtronic accounts payable employee, May 24, 2005 Lean Six Sigma at Medtronic Medtronic has combined Lean and Six Sigma to achieve impressive results. In the last two years, Medtronic has graduated 579 Lean […]

University Medical Imaging successfully implemented a Lean and Six Sigma transactional process improvement and training program when delays and other issues began to affect patient satisfaction.

For a software company to make a case for process improvement, reliable measurement data is needed. Unfortunately, that data normally comes from an improvement project. Learn how to address this chicken-and-egg dilemma.

Digital check processing. Fraud detection. Compliance monitoring. Trading floor analytics. These are all integral functions for many modern financial service institutions. And all have one thing in common – they require a huge amount of computing power. One approach to providing fast responses even with highly complex computations is distributed computing, or creating a shared compute […]

Here is a provocation: Quality practices in the pharmaceuticals industry today are what they were in other industries 15 to 20 years ago. It is time to catch up. The regulators recognize it. Pharmaceutical business leaders recognize it. Six Sigma is an opportunity for operations and quality professionals to modernize quality practices. Those who get […]

Project Champions ensure that organizational systems are in place to support the Six Sigma initiative. As managers, they provide exposure of the program to their functional reports and endorsement of the program as a management initiative.

i-nexus Secures Investment

Read any Six Sigma article, attend any Six Sigma conference or talk to any Black Belt and the message is clear – the voice of the customer is a core value of Six Sigma. When Six Sigma is applied with a strategic perspective, the voice of the customer is indeed the necessary starting point. Six Sigma […]

A directory listing of Six Sigma Consultants In India.

iSixSigma’s 2004 Salary Survey for Six Sigma Professionals: Europe This section of iSixSigma’s 2004 Salary Survey for Six Sigma Professionals provides an overview of the average salaries in Europe. 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 […]

Drawing more than 250 – double the number who attended last year’s initial conference – the second annual conference on Six Sigma in Healthcare offered “Reducing Medical Errors and Improving Quality of Care While Keeping Costs Down” as its theme.

Six Sigma has been adopted by some of the world’s leading companies as a mechanism to improve bottom line results and delight customers. But though the companies have made spectacular gains in some areas – millions of dollars in increased revenue or reduced costs – success has not been uniform. Deploying Six Sigma in areas of […]