Lean and Six Sigma Conferences @ GoingToMeet.com

GoingToMeet.com has featured relevant Six Sigma conferences for you. Below are the ongoing and upcoming events on Lean and Six Sigma. Hope you can join in one of them.

Filed under: Defense, Events/Announcements, Healthcare, Lean Six Sigma, Mining, Pharmaceuticals

1 Comment |

A BPO Bags Six Sigma Awards

Firstsource bags two Six Sigma awards

Mumbai-based BPO Firstsource Solutions has bagged top Six Sigma honours from the International Quality and Productivity Centre for this year.

Firstsource has won two awards, one for “Best Defect Elimination in Services & Transaction” and the other for “Best Design for Six Sigma” in the IQ Six Sigma Excellence Awards in Singapore last week.

Source: Economic Times as featured link of Six Sigma Zone

Filed under: Awards, Call Center/BPO, FirstSource, Six Sigma Organizations

1 Comment |

Lean Six Sigma at Nutritional Laboratories International, Inc.

The Nutritional Laboratories International, Inc. or NLI, is a premier manufacturer and provider of laboratories services such as encapsulation, tableting, tablet coating, and bottle packaging/labeling.

Recognizing the need to produce high-quality product and services, the company sent 11 employees to a Lean Six Sigma training from December 2005 to April 2006. The training provided tools that would deploy Lean, gather current situation data, and develop problem-solving techniques for data analysis and trend identification.

NLI’s initial Six Sigma project ended product rework, which accordingly swallowed up resources and at the same time impaired productivity.

For example, if 50Kg of tablets out of a 2,000Kg order don’t meet hardness specifications and have to be reground and go back to the tablet press, then time, labor, and cost are added to the product which weren’t included in estimated manufacturing production costs. That takes a bite out of expected profits.

By reducing such rework, Team A created cost savings, improved customer response time and freed up operator and machine time to respond to additional sales. Management estimates that a 25% reduction in rework will yield up to $100,000 in labor savings per year as well as freeing up capacity to generate significant revenue. Estimates at the company’s standard margins are expected to exceed $4 million annually.

Read more…

According to Andy Roche, Continuous Improvement Manager, “Using disciplines like Six Sigma for continuous improvement, companies achieve measurable excellence not only internally but also for processes involving customers, partners and suppliers.”

Source:
NPI Center, NLI Takes Quality to the Next Level with Lean Six Sigma, a featured link of iSixSigma

Filed under: Lean Six Sigma, NLI

No Comments » |

The Six Sigma Change Agents

Thomas Pyzdek, a consultant in Six Sigma and author of The Six Sigma Handbook, believes that Six Sigma is successful if you have full-time change agents who are the catalysts that institutionalizes change in your company.

I believe so, too. Without a sound structure any Six Sigma undertaking will be futile.

The Six Sigma change agents are:

Click on the image for a clearer version.

Read about the roles of each agent here.

Pyzdek also writes the monthly column Six Sigma Nuts & Bolts for Quality Digest magazine.

Filed under: Deployment, Thomas Pyzdek

No Comments » |

Nine Sigma, anyone?

I’m sure that got your attention, as it did mine.

If Five Sigma means 233 defects per million opportunities (DPMOs) with 99.9767% success rate, and Six Sigma is 3.4 DPMOs with 99.99966% success rate, what is Nine Sigma? Zero defect?

Maybe. But the Nine Sigma in BusinessWeek Online refers to NineSigma, a company that helps companies take advantage of “open innovation.” Open innovation is the practice of companies that go beyond their R&D departments and tap thousands of independent inventors, university researchers for solutions.

Paul Stiros, Nine Sigma’s president and CEO, proudly recalls:

It was NineSigma that, by sending a request out to its network of 1.5 million experts (who are free to forward the request to still more experts), found the semiconductor expert who solved P&G‘s cotton wrinkling problem, and the company tackles similarly tough problems for companies such as Unilever, General Mills, and Johnson Controls. Many companies come to us out of frustration.

Continue reading about Jessie Scanlon’s interview with Paul Stiros and learn how NineSigma can help you meet the challenges of innovation, especially open innovation, and how to make it work in your company.

I visited the company’s website in the hope of learning about why they chose to name their company NineSigma. I didn’t find the answer there.

Does anyone know?

Filed under: Benefits and Savings, Innovation, R&D

3 Comments |

Chrysler Adopts Design for Six Sigma (DFSS)

Since Asian automakers, with Toyota leading the pack, has been slowly eating up the American market, many American automakers have begun rethinking their design and management strategies.

Chrysler is one of those American automakers that needs to do some rethinking, especially after its Chrysler Sebring and Dodge Nitro last year failed to get the consumers’ attention. But these duds won’t be for long as the company goes Six Sigma.

Chrysler began working with ASI Consulting Group in Livonia about 18 months ago. The firm, which previously worked closely with Hyundai Motor Co. to improve its vehicles, has helped Chrysler use a system called “Design for Six Sigma” to help engineers better determine upfront what features and qualities customers want in new vehicles.

The firm was hired to help “make a cultural change to move that needle to be proactive,” Klegon said. “We’re taking this on as an extreme change in the way we do predictive quality from the standpoint of customers. It’s embedded in our vehicle teams and it’s embedded in our components team.”

Read more…

Rethinking strategies should be the order of the day for all businesses. Six Sigma or DFSS may or may not do the trick. But it’s a good start. I took a peek at Chrysler cars and they are all beautiful. Why they didn’t hit the mark is a mystery to me.

Source:
Autos Insider, Chrysler rethinks design after duds, a featured link from iSixSigma.

Filed under: Chrysler, DFSS, Manufacturing, Tools/Toolkits

2 Comments |

Innovation of the Week: A Computer in Your Wallet

It seems like the future of mankind is going ultra mobile. And technology plays a major part in this mobility trend.

The latest of this innovative technology is a computer so small that you can carry it in your wallet. Unbelievable?

Locutus of iToolBox blog will tell you that it’s for real.

Via has developed a motherboard that is small enough to fit inside of your wallet or billfold. That’s right, a complete motherboard including processor that is not much larger than a credit card. At about the same size as a name card you get at all of those geek conferences you attend, Via has done yet another industry first.

It is not just a bare bones system either. All it needs is a RAM module and it is ready to go. From Via’s own website here is a comparison picture of the motherboard and an ordinary playing card.

Continue reading…

Filed under: Innovation Update

No Comments » |

Six Sigma Blogs Roundup

It’s time to do the rounds and read about useful management concepts on the blogosphere.

Mike of Got Boondoggle? invites us to look at handoffs in your process for waste and hidden opportunities for improvement.

Rob of Learn Sigma has a good discussion going about the latest review of ISO 9001.

Ron of Lean Six Sigma Academy features an interesting video titled “One-Piece-Flow vs. Batch Manufacturing.”

Laura Gibbons of iSixSigma Blogosphere points a finger at hold time as the real hidden factory of waste.

Very interesting insights. Check out the blogs!

Filed under: Mike Wroblewski, Robert Thompson, Ron Pereira, iSixSigma

No Comments » |

How Six Sigma Improves Innovation

A couple of months ago, The Corporate Innovation Blog gave a shoutout for a webinar, titled “Unleashing the Power of Strategic Six Sigma for Innovation and Growth.” The speaker was Bob Carter, a senior consultant at Raytheon USA. The goal of the webinar is to give people an idea on how to combine Six Sigma quality initiatives with the creativity of innovation.

Although the webinar happened last month, May 10, I believe the theme is still relevant today, especially after 3M’s controversial shot at Six Sigma for not driving innovation in their company.

If you missed the webinar, don’t fret. You can still download it from PureInsight.

Filed under: 3M, Bob Carter, Innovation

1 Comment |

Six Sigma and Project Management

One thing admirable about Six Sigma is that its tools can be integrated with tools of other quality methodologies. One fruitful marriage is Six Sigma and Project Management.

Using Six Sigma tools throughout the project life cycle adds a series of troubleshooting tools and methodology to the project management system. Project management contributes tools to monitor and track the progress of the project and also adds controls to the problem.

According to Daniel Zucker writing for iSixSigma:

The Six Sigma methodology DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) offers a structured and disciplined process for solving business problems. Six Sigma uses tools designed to identify root causes for the defects in processes that keep an organization from providing its customers with the consitent quality of products the customers require on time and at the most reasonable cost. The Six Sigma work is normally done through cross-function teams that manage the project. Yet the methodology does not address the management of the project itself.

Project management’s tools and techniques focus on attributes of a project such as development, execution, control and closing. There is an assortment of tools that are used throughout the project to manage the project to completion.

Below is an example.

Continue reading…

Filed under: DMAIC, Deployment, Processes, Project Management, Tools/Toolkits, iSixSigma

No Comments » |