Six Sigma Implementation Process
Posted by: meikah | 10 November 2010 | 8:47 pm
Filed under: Deployment, Six Sigma, Six Sigma References
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4 Qualities That Identify a Successful Six Sigma Belt Candidate
Posted by: meikah | 27 October 2010 | 11:54 pm
When you launch a Six Sigma initiative, you would survey your people and form a Six Sigma team. Of course, in so doing, you check out every employee and his potentials to carry on with a Six Sigma project.
- Learning Ability. A candidate must be able to understand instructions and underlying principles with the ability to reason and make sound decisions possessing an analytical mindset.
- Leadership. A candidate must demonstrate leadership in a team environment with the ability to mentor team members to achieve a level of knowledge that fosters cultural growth and individual project success.
- Desire. A candidate must possess the trait of motivation that has been demonstrated in past performance.
- Determination. A candidate must devote full strength and concentrate attention to achieving results in the short and long term.
Filed under: Deployment, Six Sigma, Six Sigma Jobs, Six Sigma Team
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3 Methods to Sharpen New Deployment Champions
Posted by: meikah | 15 June 2010 | 8:11 pm
An article on iSixSigma shares three methods to sharpen new deployment champions.
- Provide Early Training – Investing in workshops gives a company’s executive leadership insight into LSS and why organizations invest in a LSS program.
- Apply Little’s Law - Little’s Law, one of the fundamental principles taught in most LSS training curricula, formula: Lead time (LT) = Work-in-process (WIP) / Average completion rate (ACR).
- Establish a Robust Project Selection Process – have a rigorous process in place to ensure that project work is in constant alignment with the LSS program and organizational goals.
Filed under: Deployment, Deployment Champion, Six Sigma, Six Sigma Training
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Top 10 Tips for Implementing Six Sigma
Posted by: meikah | 17 May 2010 | 9:09 pm
It’s Tips Day!
Let me share with you the top 10 tips for implementing Six Sigma from Mediaverso Network.
- Engage senior leadership
- Go Six Sigma, go Lean (all the way)
- Don’t expect training alone to fix your problem
- Develop a suitable infrastructure
- Don’t forget the change leadership
- Get your measurement systems right
- Leverage the technology
- Understand the wider environment
- Establish a robust project selection process
- Deliver quick wins
Filed under: Deployment, Six Sigma
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How to Sell Lean Six Sigma to Your Organization
Posted by: meikah | 10 May 2010 | 10:31 pm
Rick Hayes of Practitioner’s Toolbox is a Master Black Belt student and he shares that in one of his classes, he learned that you do not sell Lean Six Sigma. Instead, sell the idea about needing to implement Lean Six Sigma in your organization.
Hayes went on to say:
This is a technique that I learned during my attendance of a sales training program. When you lead a discussion with the benefits of your Lean Six Sigma, the listener is wondering why they should care. A more successful approach is to initiate the discussion with a discussion of their work issues. Lead them to bring up a chronic or long standing issue that they have been dealing with. You may already know what it is, but you let them bring it up.
Ask questions like:
- How the issue is going?
- What are they doing to work the issue right now?
- Do they expect these current efforts to succeed?
- Is that frustrating?
- How big a drain on your resources and budget is it?
Filed under: Deployment, Lean Six Sigma, Master Black Belt, Six Sigma
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How to Choose and Begin a Six Sigma Project
Posted by: meikah | 29 March 2010 | 11:02 pm
In several Six Sigma workshops that I’ve been to, the most common question that participants ask during the open forum is how to begin a Six Sigma project.
Not many actually know how to begin despite the available mountain of info about DMAIC, statistical tools, among other things. So, I’m sharing here a first of a series of how-to’s. I stumbled upon this article on eHow.com. The article cites six ways to begin a Six Sigma project:
- Train the team. Train executives, champions, black belts and green belts. Training takes up to four months as a black belt and employees will often need to leave their daily duties.
- Define an opportunity. Decide what is most important for the customer. Collect any background information pertaining to the process.
- Collect data to measure the performance of the process. Use parameters set when the opportunity was defined.
- Use statistical tools to analyze the data. Use the procedures learned during Six Sigma training.
- Implement solutions. Use what was learned from data analysis. All levels of the team need to support the solutions and believe in them.
- Check the improvements. Don’t take anything for granted. Don’t get frustrated because progress is slow.
But the crucial part actually before beginning a Six Sigma project is choosing a project. This is often asked, too: how do we choose a project?
For that, I suggest the following:
- Evaluate your existing processes. Find out which of the process works, which slows down the whole system, or which process is repetitive. Those that don’t work is a good candidate for a Six Sigma project.
- Do a value stream mapping. The basic idea behind Value Stream Mapping is this: if the underlying process is right, the outcome will be reliable. To get the process right, you have to understand the sequence of activities that provide value to your customers. In other words, it tells you if you are reaching your customer and are satisfying them. After all, it’s the customer who is in the best position to tell you if you are successful or not in your business.
Filed under: Deployment, Six Sigma, Six Sigma References
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Using FMEA in the Different Six Sigma Project Phases
Posted by: meikah | 29 March 2010 | 9:12 pm
FMEA or failure mode and effects analysis tool may take many variations, but it has only one fundamental purpose, that is to identify, evaluate, and take actions to reduce risk of failure.
These variations of the FMEA have many uses for the tool within Six Sigma projects. Though it is introduced in the Improve stage of training, FMEA has a place in other phases of Six Sigma as well.
An article on iSixSigma has a good discussion on this.
In Measure, for example, the FMEA can be used as a prioritization tool to understand and fine tune the focus of a Lean Six Sigma project. In addition, it also can be used to determine what can go wrong with the process, and what data the team should collect as part of its process metrics.
Example: A team launched a project to reduce reprocessing of materials in a sterilization line. To determine where to focus the initial efforts, the team created a detailed process map, followed by an FMEA to identify failure points in the process that resulted in re-sterilization. Once the FMEA was created, resulting in severity, occurrence and detection estimates, the team focused their project on four areas to eliminate or mitigate failure points.
Filed under: DMAIC, Deployment, FMEA, Six Sigma
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The SixSig Roundup
Posted by: meikah | 22 March 2010 | 8:02 pm
It’s time again for some link-loving and see what other blogs are saying about Six Sigma, Lean, Lean Six Sigma and other quality improvement processes.
Over at You Can Be Great If You Want To blog, Tony Jacowski shares some basic characteristics of Six Sigma deployments.
The Innovation World shares how the merging of Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing principles can be a powerful combination.
Listen to Chuck Overbeck talk about Six Sigma and Sales Process or Sales Sigma at Medical Sales Recruiter – Tips & Quips.
Lean Manufacturing Blog shares a video on how to use BPM with Six Sigma and Lean Methodologies.
Over at The Latest Tech News for Tech Geeks blog, the writer shares with us how to understand Lean Six Sigma principles with a simple illustration.
Check out those links and learn!
Filed under: BPM, Deployment, Lean, Lean Manufacturing, Lean Six Sigma, Six Sigma
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Applying Six Sigma to Web Development, Design, and Usability
Posted by: meikah | 2 December 2009 | 8:48 pm
As I was doing a Google search on applying Six Sigma to e-commerce, I stumbled upon Eric Long’s blog, EBUSINESSBLOG.ORG.
Eric raises some interesting points about why Six Sigma has not been applied yet to web development, design, and usability. He compares web development to manufacturing, and he arranges his observation to the following points:
- Can Six Sigma be applied to web development, design, and usability?
- Why Six Sigma is difficult to achieve in web development today.
- Accept the variables in web development, and apply the concepts of Six Sigma
Filed under: Deployment, Six Sigma, Software/Technology, Web Development
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6 Tips for Six Sigma Implementation
Posted by: meikah | 17 November 2009 | 11:03 pm
Sourcing Innovation shares six tips for Six Sigma implementation.
- Go Six Sigma, Go Lean All The Way
- Don’t Forget The Change Leadership
- Get the Measurement Systems Right
- Understand the Wider Environment
- Don’t Expect Training Alone To Solve Everything …
- … But Don’t Forget the Training!
