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What was really written on those stone tablets that Charlton Heston held in “The Ten Commandments?” The Ten Commandments For Six Sigma Black Belts in Healthcare I.Thou Shalt Have No other Goal than to Serve the Welfare of the Patient, by Process Improvement using Data Analysis or Lean Tools as Thou Needest. II.Thou Shalt Not […]

For a Fourth of July Six Sigma post, I’ll pay tribute to the Lean Six Sigma efforts in the United States Military operations. Read success stories from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines.

This week in Six Sigma related news around the globe… Read about the new weighing and traceability system, Trac-IT MES, which Maple Leaf Bakeriesin the UK is using to reduce waste in their bagel making process. Now let’s head down under to Linde Australia to read about how Six Sigma in the service division is […]

Nayism 28: So much analysis, so little time. The project needs to get moving – I need a fix now. Ah yes, the analysis paralysis phase of projects can haunt even the best of black belts. Is there ever a time to throw in the belt and call it “enough?” Here’s what I say . […]

There’s a lot of talk about Six Sigma certification these days. I remember being asked by a talent acquisition manager at a previous employer what it meant to be a “certified” Master Black Belt. The question arose because a quick search on Google turned up programs ranging from 3 days (online) to 2 years in […]

Hess, the energy company formerly know as Amerada Hess, got its first taste of Six Sigma from GE back in the year 2000. GE came in and gave a presentation but Six Sigma didn’t stick. Four years later it was introduced in the Marketing & Refining division of the company as a CEO driven initiative. […]

After writing my recent blog, “Physician Heal Thyself,” I attended a review session for the ASQ certification exam. The subject of physicians came up when we were discussing identification of customers in healthcare. One of the attendees reminded the group that physicians tend to be diagnosticians, looking for a way to fit the patient’s symptoms […]

The Cox-Box is Copyright © 2000-2005 iSixSigma LLC and Gary P. Cox – All Rights ReservedReproduction Without Permission Is Prohibited – Request Permission

What makes some physicians so difficult to convince of the need for change? I’m talking aboutphysicians who are extremely unhappy with the current state. They complain to anyone who will listen. They threaten to take their patient volume elsewhere. They tell horror stories about orders they wrote that weren’t filled, wrong items in the orthopedic […]

Here is another example of the use of IT in projects. I would like to describe how useful mapping is in data analysis. I will use a fictitious scenario. Sigma Industries have a fantastic product that VOC research says should be a phenomenal success. But the problem is product sales are not meeting expectations. As […]

Why are we struggling with selecting the “right” Six Sigma Black Belt projects? The “right” projects are the projects that are delivered on time, within the budget and generating or exceeding projected savings in a sustained manner. The “wrong” projects are by default all other. Now think about your own organization. What’s the proportion of […]

Benchmarking results consistently identify examples of Six Sigma success. Even so, getting “naysayers” on board is a continuous challenge. What do you tell them? Nayism 27: Six Sigma is so structured that it stifles innovation and creative thinking. This is a classic nayism which deserves a classic response. So, here’s what I say . . […]

Innovate Forum has posted an interviewwith David Silverstein, President and CEO of Breakthrough Management Group and co-author of INsourcing Innovation. In the interview, Silverstein talks about the TRIZ methodology for innovative problem solving. “Innovate Forum: TRIZ is a methodology that has traditionally been employed in product design. What prompted you to consider applying TRIZ to […]

There are many myths about what happened to that gumball machine. Some say it was sold to another store where it continued to stay on all day and all night and the problem was never fixed and gumballs were sometimes found in dusty corners. And others tell stories of a tool shop opening in the […]

Whatever the organization’s maturity level (go see “week of a black belt part 4-5-6-7”), any improvement initiative needs top management engagement and commitment. Usually, there is enough management attention at the beginning. The CEO or Executive team has announced the initiative and walks the talk for a while. However, there are so many 1000 things […]

It’s a question I hear a lot, except that 30 is sometimes another number. Like 2. Or 8. Or 156. Or 2068.

Time flies! My last “week of a Black Belt” blog dates from May 12th already. Anyhow, when things are busy and interesting things happen, there are lots of ideas to blog about, but no time to actually publish them. Six Sigma’s 20th anniversary will be celebrated soon. Since 1987 and its first success stories, it […]

Are you wondering what happened to this Green Belt Candidate? (Go see Week of a Black Belt part 3). At the end of the last training day, I refer back to the yellow notes on which, the first day of training, the participants have expressed their expectations concerning the training. 95% of the time the […]

The Cox-Box is Copyright © 2000-2005 iSixSigma LLC and Gary P. Cox – All Rights ReservedReproduction Without Permission Is Prohibited – Request Permission

Let me tell you a bit of a story and once you’ve finished reading it now I want you to forget all about it until the right time comes to remember you read it all. There was once a couple who owned a store. The store was in a small village just east of here […]

The latest issue of Harvard Business Review features an interview with Jeff Immelt, chairman and CEO of GE. It’s an interesting article because after years of growth through acquisition,GE has now shifted theirroadmap to that of organic growth. As part of the roadmap, Jeff Immelt lists innovation as one of the six key initiatives that […]

Our health system began its Six Sigma journey about three years ago. We started up in Wave I with three Black Belts at the two largest hospitals (myself among them) who had no real idea of what would come. After a successful round of projects in Phase I, we expanded to hire an additional 12 […]

I have spent the last couple of months banging my head against a wall trying to figure out why one group of employees at one of my implementations just can’t align with a Lean way of life. Each time we 5S an area, it gets changed. Each time we try to implement standard work, it […]

Lean Sigma engagements mean I am frequently travelling around the country with many nights in a hotel. This typically means full English breakfast, canteen lunch and hotel dinner. Unfortunately after 18-months it has started to show and I have gone from lean-mean change machine to chubby-mean change machine. Imagine the shock on returning home after […]

A recent article in Electronic Business Online talks about Lean Six Sigma at four companies in the electronics industry: Celestica, ON Semiconductor, Solectron and Xerox. All have seen an improvement inprofitability over the past five years and each agree that Lean Six Sigma has contributed to the gains. Here are a few snippets of information […]

I do my fair share of venting. OK, sometimes I even go on a rant. I have lots of great horror stories. Unbelievable team members, the Project from You-Know-Where, and the day my computer crashed and I lost 6 hours of data entry. I love swapping these stories, and playing “Can you top this?” To […]

A while back I stumbled on a new part of the Google website called “Google Trends”. You can view this website for yourself here. In Google’s words, the website allows users to “compare the world’s interest in your favorite topics. Enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched for on Google over […]

I started reading “The One Best Way: Fredrick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency” a week or so ago and I’m enjoying it so much I thought I’d do a quick write up for those who might be interested. Tayor is judged rather harshly in some circles today but that didn’t quell my desire […]

The Cox-Box is Copyright © 2000-2005 iSixSigma LLC and Gary P. Cox – All Rights ReservedReproduction Without Permission Is Prohibited – Request Permission

I have spent my entire career in IT and feel privileged to have had the opportunity to work in such a fast moving industry and to see the changes from propriety mainframe to open systems to windows and now the Internet. SoI have a tendency to want to apply IT to the projects I run. […]

As it’s put, “the airline industry doesn’t need a plane crash to learn how to crash planes.” The great majority of learning is extracted from incidents which had the potential to result in accidents, not from accidents themselves. So why does healthcare feel that it must make an error to learn from an error? For […]

Cardinal Health has been busy with Lean Six Sigma. Their second quarter earnings release highlighted their progress to date: “Initiating more than 100 operational excellence projects, bringing the total number of ongoing projects to 200. The company is on-track to train nearly 300 “black belts” during 2006 to manage company-wide lean six-sigma initiatives within manufacturing, […]

Roger Penske expects and gets – perfection, IRL-Live.com, May 23, 2006 Roger Penske talks about preparation for the Indianapolis 500 this weekend. Penske is a Six Sigma company when it comes to business, but as for racing, Six Sigma just isn’t enough: “After qualifying, Penske gave an overview of his preparation plan. “We’ll go back, […]

My favorite quote, from a Manager identified as a Six Sigma project Process Owner: “Well if I’d known that being a Process Owner involved this much work, I would have never volunteered to be one!” In healthcare, we haven’t traditionally discussed the leadership role ofprocess management. In fact, “running healthcare like a business” isn’t usually […]

Last week Michael Cyger and I attended the 7th Annual ISSSP Leadership Conference. I blogged a few of the presentations, but was unable to capture the aura of the event through regular blog entries. Call it not-enough-time-in-the-given-day syndrome or too much wonderful food to eat (which really slowed down my presentation to blog entry cycle […]

At an event where the most common number mentioned is SIX, it was really nice to hear a presentation where being ONE was more important than being SIX. Lance Secretan is inspiring. His presentation, ONE, The Art and Practice of Conscious Leadership, delivered at the ISSSP Leadership Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA, was a welcome […]

In the beginning… there is some valid concern expressed about the people side of lean and how individuals are affected by Lean initiatives in the public sector. There is a common, prima facie response when lean thinking is first introduced in the public sector. “We are about serving people not making cars”, they say. This […]

The general session opened with Chad Holliday, CEO of DuPont. His presentation was titled “Six Sigma from the 9th Floor” (the ninth floor beinghis office). He spoke with confidence, wisdom, energy, and humor. I’m sure it takes all that and more to be a CEO. The main takeaways of his message (two pieces of learning […]

I’m here at the ISSSP Leadership conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA. Not a far trip for me as I live in Phoenix, but to beat the traffic I’m staying at the hotel. The Westin Kierland Resort and Spa is spectacular. I brought my family along with me to enjoy the pool (since I sure wasn’t […]

I’m sure most anyone reading this blog is familiar with Deming’s 14 points. I recall studying them when I first started my Six Sigma journey and though they all have their place, one keeps coming back to me over and over again: Constancy of Purpose. When I first read this one I felt a bit […]

The Cox-Box is Copyright © 2000-2005 iSixSigma LLC and Gary P. Cox – All Rights ReservedReproduction Without Permission Is Prohibited – Request Permission

Benchmarking results consistently identify examples of Six Sigma success. Even so, getting “naysayers” on board is a continuous challenge. What do you tell them? Nayism 26: There are so many Six Sigma projects going on that we are getting distracted from core business. This nayism is frequently heard when Six Sigma gets into full swing […]

I’m sure this never happened to any other Healthcare Black Belts: You’ve been selected as a Black Belt for a team, and you’re assigned one or two Green Belts for the project. Early in the project you notice that one of the Green Belts is pretty weak in a number of areas… basic things like […]

This week I was starting up another green belt training. As usual I kicked it off by asking the participants presenting to each other who they are, what department they come from, if and what they have heard about lean six sigma and most importantly what they expect from the training. I ask them to […]

For a year now I have been running a Six Sigma Deployment on a Rail Project in Rugby (UK). My two main problems as deployment manager are; 1. Implementation of actions 2. Proving the projected cash savings. Both problems are as you can imagine at the back end of the DMAIC process. I also run […]

Malcolm Baldrige was US Secretary of Commerce (1981-1987) and a leader in quality management. He helped create the US Quality Improvement Act of 1987 and in his honour the annual award is named after him (Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award). The US President presents the award. The US is not unique in having a national […]

I’m heading off to the ISSSP 7th Annual Six Sigma Leadership Conference next week (May 16-19) in Scottsdale, Arizona. Michael Marx, our research manager, will also be attending. (It’s not too late to attend if you live in the area or want to book a last minute ticket. Use code LCISSDISC for a $1,499 ticket. […]

I signed off on Measure & Analyse last week which, in the way only a leadership /tollgate review can, lifted the pressure involved in gathering all that data and instantaneously dumped the pressure of delivery onto the team. This project presented such clear problems we’ve been able to go almost straight to delivery. As you […]

In God We Trust, Everyone Else Bring Data This is a nine and a half minute audio excerpt of the KCPW show The Bottom Line, moderated by Lara Jones of KCPW News. Lara speaks with a panel of Army Colonels and gets to the bottom of Six Sigma at the Army Reserve’s 96th Regional Readiness […]

“It’s a people thing,” says W. Michael McBride. It’s a Dr. Pepper and Jelly Bellies thing according to Joe at Learning about Lean. I feel the need to echo (scream) the sentiments of W. Michael McBride’s post “It’s a people thing.” as I have experienced these factors all too closely. As someone who began as […]