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Notes from the deployment frontline Why does this stuff work? For those of you who don’t know me, I work in the land of Laverne and Shirley for a fine 100 year old company that is trying to change without losing what makes people want to spend a career here. I am five months into […]

Xerox has a successful history applying Lean Manufacturing techniques in their operations since the early 90s. In 1998 Six Sigma was introduced in various manufacturing and supply chain operations. Although these operations achieved efficiencies, the scope of the deployment was limited. In 2002, Six Sigma and Lean were integrated and driven as a corporate-wide strategy. […]

Autoliv makes the world a safer place. Simply put, their products save lives. They are a leading manufacturer of auto safety products, and supply all the leading auto makersthroughout the world. Quality is vital when it comes to life and Autoliv is living up to their name. Modeled after the Toyota Production System (TPS), Autoliv […]

It does not matter how small the business, Six Sigma can help improve any process. Even a niche bed and breakfast business can profit from Six Sigma principles. Case in point: Al O’Donnell, who runs a Six Sigma program for Southern Clay Products in Gonzales, Texas, USA, wrote us this note. “My wife owns the […]

Avery Dennison began using Six Sigma in the Fasson Roll operation in 1998. It didn’t take long for the initiative to stick, and it soon spread throughout the company. Today, Six Sigma and Lean manufacturing are the foundation for driving productivity improvements across the company. The annual reports and press releases continually highlight the impact […]

The Consumer Products industry sector containsa wide array of industries: Apparel, Home Equipment and Furnishings, Household and Personal Products, Textiles, Tobacco, Toys and Sporting Goods. Listed below are Fortune 1000 companies in these industries (broadly labeled “Consumer Products”) that are using Six Sigma. 3M Alberto-Culver Clorox Colgate-Palmolive Estée Lauder Kimberly-Clark Masco Newell Rubbermaid Procter & […]

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

I had the pleasure of being invited to the Northwest Quality Forum on Wednesday (3 Aug 2005). It’s an informal group of like-minded peers (deployment champions and regional leaders) in the Seattle area that get together every other month to discuss Six Sigma, Lean, management, leadership, change management and related issues faced by their organizations. […]

Barclays is just starting out on their Six Sigma journey. They began their initiative just over a year ago and were recently recognized with a Six Sigma Excellence award in the category “Best Defect Elimination in a Service & Transaction Project.” Chris Lorimer, Head of Supplier and Service Improvement at Barclays International and Private Bank, […]

LG Electronics (LGE), part of South Korea’s LG Group, was the first LG company to embrace Six Sigma back in 1996 (about the same time as GE). As shown in the timeline below (2000 Annual Report), LGE has a solid history of innovation activities and quality improvement activities dating back to 1989. Since 2000, LGE […]

McKesson is the largest pharmaceuticals distributor in the United States. While they do not manufacture drugs or supply healthcare services, they are the leading provider of supply, information, and care management products to the entire healthcare industry. In the words of McKesson’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, John Hammergren, “McKesson is helping transform healthcare into […]

The Healthcare Sector includes the following Fortune 1000 industries: Medical Products & Equipment, Pharmacy and Other Services, Healthcare-Medical Facilities, and Wholesalers-Healthcare. The Healthcare-Insurance industry is included in the Insurance Industry List. Fortune 1000 Healthcare Companies practicing Six Sigma: Bausch & Lomb Baxter International Becton Dickinson Boston Scientific Cardinal Health McKesson Medtronic Quest Diagnostics St. Jude […]

James McNerney hints at what’s to come at Boeing duringyesterday’s Second Quarter 2005 Earningsconference call with analysts and journalists: “Boeing has very strong pockets of process improvement, quality, technology sharing and leverage, sourcing, management development and more. We plan to take those that have the most company-wide impact on growth and company productivity and drive […]

In 2001 Countrywide Financial launched an internally developed, proprietary program called FASTER. The six step methodology (Flow, Analyze, Solve, Target, Execute, and Review) is modeled after Six Sigmaand specifically designed for the financial services environment. FASTER as well as the customer satisfaction program PACE (Proudly Achieving Customer Expectations) are both helping Countrywide improve all aspects […]

If you get Executive Decision magazine, check the recent issue (July/August 2005)on page 35 (article: “Don’t Let Company Growth Stall: Innovation is the key factor in charting a course of long-term sustained growth”).

In an interview in 2004 with Alsom’s Cindy Kortebein, VP of Business Processes, Environmental Control Systems (ECS), James Works, President, George Group, learns how Six Sigma is working its way through Alstom: “JW: Tell me about Six Sigma deployment at Alstom. “CK: Alstom has really made a concerted effort to step up the deployment especially […]

An engaged Project Champion can be a significant factor in the success of a project. This cartoon evolved fromastory from a GBwho shared an experience while at a project team meeting. The Champion had not really paid attention to the problem the project team was working on solving, even though they had worked on building […]

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

Well, the folks at iSixSigma have seen it fit go give me a blog site. After consulting with my youngest of two daughters, 15 going on 25, she tells me that this is a cool thing (my words not hers). So here goes blog #1… I plan to use this site to keep in touch […]

All well-trained Six Sigma professionals know that variation is the root of all evil – at least concerning the customer experience. I understand this all too well myself. I usually experience it when it is least appreciated – in the early morning. Many nights I find myself up late programming some new feature on iSixSigma (yes, […]

SixSigmaCompanies.com is going global! With the release of Fortune’s 2005 Global 500 list, I am now posting reviews of Six Sigmacompanies world-wide. As Six Sigma deployment models differ from company to company and corporate culture to corporate culture, they also differ country to country, culture to culture. Steve Crom has written two articles on the […]

Six Sigma has been growing slowly but surely over the years at HSBC . The Six Sigma deployment model of the United Kingdom based banking corporation is best described as the “middle-out” approach in Michael Cyger’s blog entry, “Are All Six Sigma Deployment Models Created Equal”. Recently, HSBC won the Six Sigma Excellence award for […]

Hesh Reinfeld, a Pittsburgh-based business columnist and humorist wrote a column yesterday about improving the quality of his columns: “When my readers question the quality of my columns, I don’t look to the subjective evaluations of an editor. No, I call my six sigma black belt, Harry, for help. “Harry has worked on process improvement […]

Yesterday I ran my second 5 kilometer running race in about 7 years, causing me to contemplate the difference between causation and correlation. It was Bear Paw 5K Classic inEagle River, Alaska (USA), the last day of my week vacation in Anchorage. Eagle River is a small town about 20 minutes north of Anchorage. My […]

Do all Six Sigma deployment models return the same results – proportionally – to the resources and time invested? The topic of deployment models can be a thorny issue among Six Sigma practitioners. Many claim that the best model is to initiate a Six Sigma program from the “top-down” (ala GE’s Jack Welch, who mandated […]

Lean Six Sigma surfaced at Brunswick in 2003. Since then it has not merely been sailing along but is powering throughout the company like a Maxum 2400SR3 cruising atop a pristine body of blue. The boating, billiards and bowlingindustriesare very competitive. With noroom toscratch or throw a gutter ball, Brunswick isusing Lean Six Sigma to […]

Yesterday, Bank of America employees gathered for the third annual “Best of Six Sigma Expo” to celebrate and recognize the teams that completed the best Six Sigma projects in 2004. “This was how Bank of America praised employees who last year carried out its 15 best ‘Six Sigma’ projects, designed to increase revenue and cut […]

Michael Marx and I had a discussion yesterday about the opening of the recently launched iSixSigma Blogosphere to additional bloggers. What’s amazing is not that we came to a similar conclusion, but that the entire conversation took place through instant messaging, or IM. (Since I’m in Alaska this week on vacation I find that the […]

Each week the iSixSigma Blogosphere newsletter will feature a blog entry from a guest blog. I read several different business related blogs each day and I amconstantly searching for new ones. I have been visitingDecker Marketing for over a year now and always enjoyreading whatSam Decker has to say. He is insightful, understands businesses from […]

…We are now accepting all boarding passes for flight 777 departing 3M and arriving at Boeing… Jim McNerney’s recent travels have caught the attention of many including the Six Sigma community. The question we are asking ourselves is, “can he do for Boeing what he did for 3M?” Michael Cyger, CEO and Publisher of iSixSigma, […]

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

Cummins Inc. began using Six Sigma and Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) in 2000. In April 2004 they completed their 2,000th Six Sigma project and in the same year began working on Six Sigma projects with customers. Cummins is featured in the Corporate Leadership section of the July/August issue of iSixSigma Magazine. In the article, […]

Hal Macomber and Joe Ely have decided to blog about Everyday Lean Examples.They have each made their first post in a series that will last through July. In his post titled Everyday Lean — “Jugban”, Joe describes how he leaned out his contact lens cleaning process: “I wear gas-permeable contact lenses. Though the parents who […]

Stephen Turnipseed, Lean Sigma Process Advisor, presented an overview of Chevron’s Lean Sigma activity in the San Joaquin Valley Strategic Business Unit (SJVBU). Although he said Chevron Corporation is only two and a half steps into enterprise-wide deployment of Six Sigma, the SJVBU has benefited from the tools since its first project at a water […]

Michael Slocum of Breakthrough Management Group (BMG) presented a workshop on Six Sigma and Innovation.  He began with a stream of quotes from innovation authors such as, Gary Hamel, David Kirkpatrick and Peter F. Drucker.  (He said Hamel was his favorite). “There are no strategies for creating wealth in the long term that are not driven […]

On Wednesday, June 29th, Jean O’Connell of 3M shared a presentation titled “Six Sigma for Growth: The Customer Project Approach”. 3M is currently focused on engaging their customers in Six Sigma projects. To date they have jointly worked 400 plus projects with customers such as Estee Lauder, Grainger, The Home Depot, Toyota, Wal-Mart, Motorola, Procter & […]

I have been drawing the Cox-Box cartoons from personal experience and would welcome stories from you. Your personal experiences in the application of Six Sigma methodologies and tools could become a future cartoon. This cartoon came as the first real experience I had creating control charts in Minitab. The only data I had available was […]

William Swanson delivered a high energy keynote address packed with insight into Raytheon Six Sigma. Aside from the details of the tremendous progress they have made since 1999, his advice on leadership was the highlight of his remarks. Bill said there are four qualities of leadership: Confidence: Confidence is knowing your strengths and weaknesses and […]

Daniel Burnham brought Six Sigma to Raytheon from AlliedSignal in 1998.  Their enterprise-wide deployment has prospered and is known as Raytheon Six Sigma.  They follow the unique Raytheon Six Sigma Process, six steps that guide projects to completion: visualize, commit, prioritize, characterize, improve, and achieve. They have also customized the titles they give the Six Sigma workforce: Specialists (Green Belt), Experts […]

This is my first post from the ISSSP 6th Annual Six Sigma Leadership Conference. I’ll be attending the four-day event in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA mingling with the Six Sigma community and, of course, blogging. Today, Steve Zinkgraf and Debby Sollenberger of Sigma Breakthrough Technologies (SBTI) delivered a workshop called “Program Revitalization – The Next Evolution […]

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

Visteon, steeped in Lean Manufacturing since 1996, began integrating Six Sigma with Leanin2000.Today Visteon continues to leverage the combined strength of the two methodologies.Although the 2003 and 2004 annual reports fail to mention Six Sigma or Lean there is ample evidence thatthe two methodologies are part of the way they do business. Lou Whitlock, the […]

Leslie Behnke, Vice President Six Sigma Business Excellence, is leading the Six Sigma initiative at CIGNA. She joined CIGNA in 2002 from Motorola where she led Six Sigma activities for over a decade. The initiative is called “Six Sigma Business Excellence” and includes the standard DMAIC and DMADV methodologies. CIGNA annual reports do not mention […]

Fortune 500 companies in the Insurance industry using Six Sigma: American International Group, Inc. (AIG) Berkshire Hathaway Allstate Prudential Financial Aetna CIGNA Northwestern Mutual UnitedHealth Group USAA Principal Financial Lincoln National Conseco

Whirlpool started to investigate Six Sigmashortly after GE and at least a full year ahead of Maytag. Named Operational Excellence, the initiative went corporate-wide in 1997 and involves a blend of methodologies. Just like clothes need a washer and dryer to get clean, Whirlpool has been using Six Sigma and Lean to scrub away inefficiencies. […]

The Last Word from the July/August 2005 issue of iSixSigma Magazine, entitled “Designing for Perfection: Six Stories of Innovation with Six Sigma.” One of my pet peeves is when people refer to Six Sigma as a cost-cutting or productivity methodology. That definition tells only half of the story, focusing on the DMAIC improvement methodology and […]

Six Sigma for Dummies has been getting a lot of press lately in the news. I had the chance last week to meet with Craig Gygi, co-author of Six Sigma for Dummies, at his office in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA.The only thing difficult about Craig is trying to say his last name, Gygi (pronounced “gee-gee” as […]

American Standard has been using Six Sigma to improve just about everything in the business from reducing energy costs to building a better toilet. Five years into their program Six Sigma has grown to include Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) and supplier training. And they are serious about their suppliers getting trained in Six Sigma […]

Jacobs Engineering Group is a diversified provider of professional technical services. They work on construction and engineering projects for the Automotive, Chemical, Petroleum, Pharmaceutical and Technology industries. They also do work for the Aerospace and Defense industry including the US Department of Defense, NASA, and US military operations. Savings and Benefits Jacobs Engineering Group uses […]

Maytag coined the term LeanSigma® and has been utlizing the two methods in tandem since 1998.LeanSigma is a methodology that draws on the symbiotic relationship between Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma to eliminate waste and reduce variation.The dual initiative at Maytag has grown to include their suppliers and Design for LeanSigma (DFLS).The basic tenets of […]