How is Your Quality?
Posted by: meikah | 11 June 2008 | 8:30 pm
When we talk about Six Sigma or Lean, we also talk about quality. After all, it’s quality of our processes that we’re trying to continually improve.
So, how well do we know quality? or How well do we know how to read and interpret data, and associate it with quality?
PQ Systems eLine has an interesting quality quiz made by Professor Cleary. Take the quiz now!
Here’s also a more complete video explanation.
Filed under: Data, Data Analysis, PQ Systems eLine, Quality
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IT Data for Six Sigma
Posted by: meikah | 7 May 2008 | 10:48 pm
Dealing with data is part and parcel of any operation. But how to treat the data in your hands is another question. That is the usual dilemma that CIOs and senior IT team leaders face.
What’s ironic even, is that CIOs and senior IT team leaders often find themselves handling a lot of data, yet they seldom treat these information as something that can help them optimize their organizations effectively. That is because they don’t have the tools that help them sift through and find the relevant data. This is where Six Sigma comes in.
Thus, in the recent Six Sigma in IT conference, this question was asked: “What should we be measuring for our IT organization?”
To know the answers, read IT Measures That Matter.
Source:
Information Week
*Photo from Stock.Xchng
Filed under: Data, Data Analysis, Data Quality, IT, Metrics, Six Sigma, Software/Technology
2 Comments |
Six Sigma and Tennis
Posted by: meikah | 21 January 2008 | 11:50 pm
If there’s one sport that I wanted to learn, it’s tennis. It’s not that there was never an opportunity to learn the sport because for one, my childhood friend’s family was then running a tennis court business. We would often go to their house and play, but not tennis though. Like most little girls, we were addicted to dolls.
I know it’s not too late to learn it. Meanwhile, I content myself with watching tennis live or on TV and see my favorite players execute their almost perfect moves and frustrating unforced errors.
Speaking of unforced errors, I stumbled upon an article on USAToday.com that somehow links Six Sigma with unforced errors in tennis. Of course, we all know that errors of any kind is really detrimental to any kind o f endeavor.
The article, written in 2004, narrates that during a tennis tournament, when players reach the finals, their unforced errors diminish. The winners are those who have the least unforced errors.
Relating tennis to business, any unforced error in transaction is bad for business. This is where Six Sigma comes. After all, Six Sigma is a methodology that help companies examine every little detail in how things are done in order to figure out how to reduce errors to near zero.
I’m enjoying right now the Australian Open, and rooting for Roger Federer and Maria Sharapova.
Update:
Roger Federer gave way to Tennis’s rising star Novak Dyokovic, and Maria Sharapova went on to win her first Australian Open. 
*Photo from MorgueFile
Filed under: Data Analysis, Six Sigma, Sports, Zero Defects
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Alarming Figures that will Need Six Sigma
Posted by: meikah | 6 November 2007 | 10:13 pm
An article on New York Times about a month ago boasted of a 65% decrease in fatal airplane crashes. It’s deemed as the golden age of safety, the safest period, in the safest mode, in the history of the world.
Should we be happy about this? Look at the following figures:
- In 1996, two (2) infamous crashes that together killed 375 people.
- The rate dropped by about 65% to 1 fatal accident in about 4.5M departures, from 1 in nearly 2M in 1997.
- Around the world, there have been 7 crashes this year that killed more than 20 people each.
- The Flight Safety Foundation recently calculated that if the 1996 accident rate had remained the same in 2006, there would have been 30 major accidents last year. Instead, there were 11.
There are however sustained efforts to address the problem.
- improving equipment, like cockpit instruments that help planes steer clear of mountains when visibility is poor, and reliable jet engines
- conducting “unstabilized approaches,” meaning pilots had to fiddle with flaps, throttle and other controls just before landing
- developing better guidance for pilots to follow flight paths precisely and stay farther away from mountains in the area
- better signs on taxiways to prevent planes from moving into the path of other aircraft
Policy initiatives:
- acquire new planes
- more “safety summits”
- a national commission on aviation safety and security led by VP Al Gore in 1997
The trend to watch out for: air and runway traffic will double by 2025
Source:
Fatal Airplane Crashes Drop 65%
*Photo from Stock.Xchng
Filed under: Aviation, Data, Data Analysis
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Six Sigma DMAIC and Business Strategy
Posted by: meikah | 6 August 2007 | 7:25 pm
Yes, you read it right. The DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) roadmap can help organizations plot out their business strategy.
Chris Jordan, writing for iSixSigma, has a good discussion on how to use DMAIC to create a sound business strategy.
Define stage sets the blueprint for the strategy. Executives define the current status of the company and how it is presently operating as well as the current market or economic situation. Companies can make use of many business improvement and strategy tools to help define its current position.
Measure phase confirms the current baseline operation. During this stage, data is gathered to show how the company is tracking.
Analyze phase helps the company do a careful analysis of the business and the market. Opportunities, threats, strengths and weaknesses, which are validated with data from the measure stage, are analyzed in detail. The data is used to help root cause investigation of gaps in performance, competitor strategy, product cycle stage and positioning and market growth.
Improve phase follows by using the information from the Define, Measure and Analyze phases. At this point, it should already be clear what areas of the business need to improve.
At the Control phase, teams closely monitor and manage company performance against strategy. This is to ensure the company follows the path that leadership wants to take. More importantly, the executive team sets a time schedule to meet as a team to review and reassess the business strategy.
Source:
iSixSigma Library
*Photo from Stock.Xchng
Filed under: DMAIC, Data Analysis, Deployment, Processes, Six Sigma Organizations, Team Dynamics, Training
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Six Sigma Reference Feature: Using Six Sigma in Safety Metrics
Posted by: meikah | 16 July 2007 | 6:48 pm
There’s a line that goes, “The way to be safe is never to feel secure.”
Manufacturing plants know this too well. That is why they schedule maintenance check on their equipment a regular basis. More importantly they set up safety measures for their workers. All these because accidents can be costly.
Here’s a good reference on how you can use Six Sigma in Safety Metrics. It is the quality review process at Motorola.
In order to deliver excellence in safety performance, the safety professional must fully integrate with the business. Working in a silo as a service organization with independent initiatives will never provide for your company the outcomes desired. The safety function must prove to be value-added to the business and work toward a world class safety culture that helps to place the business at a distinct advantage among its competitors. The best way to do this is through those systems already in place that the managers monitor that constantly review quality, cycle time and manufacturing costs.
Source:
Adams Six Sigma
*Photo from MorgueFile
Filed under: Data Analysis, General, Manufacturing, Motorola, Six Sigma References, Tips
1 Comment |
Enabling SOA through DFSS
Posted by: meikah | 27 June 2007 | 8:23 pm
In any organization, it always is a conglomerate of people and technology. For an organization to be successful, its processes must be a well systematic marriage of human skills and technology.
SOA or service-oreinted architecture promises a transformation of the information technology assets of a business by making it possible to do more with less.
According to an article by Robert Cardone and Russell Danziger for iSixSigma:
By incorporating the Design for Six Sigma methodology with SOA initiatives, the promise of SOA can be achieved by assuring services are optimally designed from the start. This approach also will result in improved success rates, shorter delivery times and significant savings relative to traditional development approaches.
Filed under: DFSS, Data Analysis, Deployment, Processes, Technology, iSixSigma
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Six Sigma W.O.W.!
Posted by: meikah | 26 June 2007 | 8:19 pm
Gianna Clark of iSixSigma Blogosphere wrote “take a walk on the W.O.W. side.”
Everyone is focused on What’s Needed.
Done On Time is part of what be heeded.
Use Six Sigma to make it stick.
Delivered With Value will seal the trick.
It’s very clever for Gianna to create an acronmyn that captures what a company experience when it adopts Six Sigma.
What I want captured though is the sustainability of Six Sigma and the continuous improvement it will encourage. Sustainablity of a process improvement is to me the ultimate WOW!
I guess to find this out, we’ll have to take on Gianna’s invitation to walk with her on the W.O.W. side.
Filed under: Data Analysis, Processes, Tips, iSixSigma
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How GE Uses Six Sigma to Drive Security ROI
Posted by: meikah | 24 June 2007 | 9:49 pm
That’s the title of the article on CIO. Francis X. Taylor, General Electric’s (GE) chief security officer, explains how to apply process imrovement methods to manage security risks.
Taylor was speaking before an audience of security executives at the CSO Perspectives in March. Here are excerpts of insights from him.
A methodology like Six Sigma requires a change in how you think about your organization and how it works. It requires shifting loyalties from how your organization operates to how those operations affect customers—the people and organizations who determine the value of what you produce. Performing well in this task adds value to your organization, can help security executives anticipate risks and identify resources to mitigate them, and it enables your leadership to pursue new opportunities for growth.
Taylor then presented process gains in policy violations at , background checks, and security alarms. He improved these processes These are real-life experiences when he was still working at the State Department.
The processes are improved through analysis and knowing what each process involves. The lesson learned is that one only needs to know the processes, gather relevant data, and work toward making the processes work more efficiently. Read more…
Source:
CIO, a Six Sigma Zone featured link
Filed under: Benefits and Savings, CIO, Data Analysis, Deployment, GE, Public Sector, Six Sigma Zone
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Six Sigma and Online Banking
Posted by: meikah | 23 May 2007 | 8:54 pm
What does a typical Black Belt project look like?
Do you have the same question? I do. Then we have iSixSigma Q&A to thank.
The project was online banking. The case study reviews how a Black Belt entered a dot-com transactional business, reviewed a process, and came to his own conclusions about process performance.
Check out the case study here.
Using DMAIC, the project was able to uncover and solve issues such as online deposits through post mailing checks and deposit slips, transfers of deposits from the local bank to the central office, and cycle time, and in so doing it helps the online bank gain credibility among depositors.
*Photo from Stock.Xchng
