Six Sigma Black Belt Certification at Ateneo De Manila University
Posted by: meikah | 30 September 2007 | 8:18 pm
Six Sigma is now being included in the university curriculum, especially in the graduate school.
Under its Continuing Education Program, the Ateneo de Manila University Graduate School of Business is offering a Six Sigma Black Belt certification program starting this week, from Oct. 4 to Nov. 17.
Course Name: Six Sigma Black Belt Program
Discipline: Certification
Faculty: Anamaria M. Mercado
Description: The Six Sigma Black Belt is the key change agent for the Six Sigma process – leading teams to organizational and financial improvement where it is needed most.Six Sigma Black Belt Certification Training is an intensive training program in quantitative and qualitative analytical skills, project management, group dynamics, team building, and change management.
Six Sigma Black Belt Certification is conferred to participants who successfully pass the examination and project.
Schedules
Date: October 4, 2007 – November 17, 2007
Day Schedules: 9:00 am-5:00 pm; Thursday, Friday, Saturday
Check it out!
Filed under: Six Sigma References, Training
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Innovation of the Week: Wiki City Rome
Posted by: meikah | 28 September 2007 | 12:13 am
Mobile phones find another use in Rome aside from making calls and sending text messages.
These phones are being used in the map project, known as Wiki City Rome.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reports:
A futuristic urban map, featuring the dynamics of the Italian capital in real time, made its debut at the weekend.
The map project is continuously fed data through wireless technology such as mobile phones and global positioning systems on city buses and taxis.
Developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the project was launched during Rome’s Notte Bianca (White Night), an all-night festival of 400 events, which drew about 2.5 million people onto Rome’s streets.
This is a good way to check on traffic and perhaps untoward incidents, which can be tracked real time.
Filed under: Innovation Update, Telecommunications
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Lean Government Day in Iowa
Posted by: meikah | 27 September 2007 | 8:22 pm
If Fort Wayne City in Indiana is a Six Sigma city, then Iowa State is the Lean State. Iowa began using lean as a business improvement methodology in 2004.
Two years later, the State established the Office of Lean Enterprise within the Iowa Department of Management. The office is to promote and facilitate continuous improvement in Iowa state government through the use of a specific set of proven tools and methodologies collectively known as Lean.
Since then the Iowa has transformed service agencies by achieving double-digit improvements in time savings, quality, costs, and service levels.
According to a recent press release:
Iowa Governor Chester J. Culver has declared October 2nd as “Lean Government Day” to raise public awareness of the benefits of “Lean” productivity improvement techniques for state government agencies and to acknowledge the State of Iowa’s commitment to streamlining public services through the Lean culture. The proclamation will be presented on October 2nd in Des Moines during the Lean Government Exchange, hosted jointly by the State of Iowa and Guidon Performance Solutions, a TBM Consulting Group company.
Other cities and states or governments in general can learn from Fort Wayne and Iowa. It’s time that governments be run systematically and eliminate bureaucratic red tape.
Filed under: Benefits and Savings, Deployment, Lean, Lean Six Sigma, Public Sector, Services, Six Sigma Organizations, iSixSigma
1 Comment |
OpenSource Six Sigma™ Releases New Products
Posted by: meikah | 26 September 2007 | 6:58 pm
OpenSource Six Sigma™ is adding six new products to its successful first release, the DMAIC v8.1. The new products will include the individual Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control phases as stand alone products.
Open Source Six Sigma™ will introduce DMAIC by phases for $29.99 ea. and Process management v6.0 for $49.99. All other rates will remain the same until our introductory rate of $34.95 expires July 16, 2007, when DMAIC v8.1 will increase to $99.99.
Source:
Finance Visor, a Six Sigma Zone featured link
Filed under: DMAIC, Deployment, OpenSource Six Sigma™, Six Sigma References, Six Sigma Zone, Software/Technology
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DFSS Improves Processes at Masco BCG
Posted by: meikah | 25 September 2007 | 8:26 pm
An article on Hartford dBusinessNews talks about how Design for Six Sigma is improving processes at Masco BCG, leading designer and manufacturer of kitchen cabinets.
More importantly, DFSS opened the eyes and widened the understanding of executives at Masco on how to report, review, and manage financial, business, and operational metrics.
Different executives and managers are now able to drill down performance data from the company, plant, department, and product line levels. They can access relevant and accurate information very quickly and with fewer key strokes. More importantly, these different views come from the same “one set of numbers” – there are no discrepancies in how numbers are reported, recorded, and viewed across the entire company.
That’s what Six Sigma or Lean Six Sigma does to an organization—revolutionizes it and brings its mission to fruition.
Source:
Hartford dBusinessNews, a Six Sigma Zone featured link
Filed under: Benefits and Savings, DFSS, Deployment, Masco
2 Comments |
Implementing Six Sigma in the Service Industry
Posted by: meikah | 25 September 2007 | 12:12 am
It is quite clear that Six Sigma has gone beyond the realm of manufacturing and has landed on the service industry.
I’ve written about Six Sigma in services, but I think this Quality Digest article, written by Praveen Gupta summarizes well how it is actually done.
One good thing about the article is that it compares the processes and thus the tools we need to use for manufacturing and services. It’s very useful, indeed!
Comparison of Inputs to Manufacturing and Service Operations
Manufacturing Inputs Service Inputs Material Information Machine Tools/Systems Method Approach Technical skills Inter-personal skills Quality measurements Time measurements Physical environment Work environment
Filed under: Deployment, Processes, Quality Digest, Services
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Six Sigma Church
Posted by: meikah | 23 September 2007 | 11:53 pm
I am not being blasphemous, but yes, you read it right. As I was researching for something to write about today, I came across an old blogpost at Connectedness. This 350-year-old church in Cambridge, Massachussets claimed that it would adopt Six Sigma to better serve its customers, that is parishioners.
The church wanted to make sure that people would flock to the church, and attend masses even without alarming world events.
I find the post really interesting! I have a feeling that this church is being run like a business organization, and that it doesn’t just wait for parshioners to come.
Harry Snyder, the Six Sigma expert tapped by Mitchelson to lead Six Sigma Church, explained just how Six Sigma works: “Six Sigma is a totally unique and revolutionary system that will achieve not 10% gains, not 20% gains, but incredible breakthrough gains for First Church, Cambridge! Six Sigma makes every other system you’ve heard about obsolete! When you are ready to take your church to the next level, then you are ready for my Six Sigma Transformational Workshop! Hallelujah!”
What is your take on this?
*Photo from StockXchng
Filed under: Services, Six Sigma Organizations
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iSixSigma Interviews Nick Brownrigg, CEO of Masterlease
Posted by: meikah | 19 September 2007 | 8:14 pm
In that interview, Nick Brownrigg, the chief executive officer of Masterlease Group, shares his views on managing for results through Lean Six Sigma and Line-of-Sight™ strategy deployment.
Background: Masterlease Group has over 40 years of experience in the leasing market. Today, it has around 16,000 customers and manages more than 200,000 vehicles.
Highlights:
- The company decides to start its Lean Six Sigma program to establish a common (organization’s) language backed up by a set of methods and tools to help them communicate across the business and help to bring about improvements.
- Lean Six Sigma has changed their organization’s view of control. For them, control is now about the quality of their processes, inputs and outputs. The connections are visible.
- With Lean Six Sigma, the company’s stakeholders have recognized that their quality framework drives business effectiveness helping them become a world class leasing company.
- Lean Six Sigma means to them a complete culture change.
Lesson: Lean Six Sigma revolutionizes your entire organization to be better and more effective.
Filed under: Benefits and Savings, Interview, Lean Six Sigma, Services, Six Sigma Organizations, iSixSigma
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Six Sigma Blogs Roundup
Posted by: meikah | 18 September 2007 | 8:40 pm
It has been a while, I know. Well, here are good insights from my fellow Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma, and quality bloggers.
Last week, Mike of Got Boondoggle? shared his experience during the APICS Chicago Chapter Monthly Professional Development Meeting. Praveen Gupta was the speaker and Mike learned that to sustain profitable growth we need three things: (1) any process improvement approach like Lean, six sigma, Lean/Sigma, etc.; (2) a business scorecard to measure what we value; (3) growth not dependant on Mergers and Acquisitions, but driven on innovation.
Ron of Lean Six Sigma Academy posed a question: Do companies in Japan use Six Sigma? I know the Japanese have developed their own quality improvements, most of which are practical concepts and doable, but I also know that there are Japanese companies who is using Six Sigma and enjoyung the benefits. Join the conversation!
Over at LearnSigma, Rob challenges you to take a quiz and find out how much you know about the Toyota Production System. I got 6 out of 10! Whoa… Not bad, I guess, for someone who only has the book The Toyota Way and has read it halfway. Take the quiz now!
An interesting concept is put out by Sue Kozlowski on iSixSigma Blogosphere. It’s the concept of Hands of the Customer. Sue is right that we often hear Voice of the Customer, but with Hands of the Customer, you consider your processes and decide which part or how much of it can you pass on to your customers to do. It has been tried in restaurants where customers are asked to mix their own drinks or mix and match their food. Yeah, we should try out this hands-of-the-customer concept.
Over at Curious Cat Management, John Hunter quoted a passage from Deming’s book, Out of Crisis. Let me share it with you, too.
Best efforts are essential. Unfortunately, best efforts, people charging this way and that way without guidance of principles, can do a lot of damage. Think of the chaos that would come if everyone did his best, not knowing what to do.
Well, Mr. Deming, I’m guilty as charged! (._.)
Filed under: John Hunter, Lean Six Sigma, Mike Wroblewski, Robert Thompson, Ron Pereira, Six Sigma References, iSixSigma
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Six Sigma and CQI for Patient Care
Posted by: meikah | 16 September 2007 | 10:58 pm
At Therapeutics Daily is an interesting article on employing Six Sigma in patient care. Six Sigma in healthcare is relatively new, and most of these Six Sigma applications are predominantly limited to business processes.
Some examples:
- Charleston Area Medical Center used Six Sigma to reduce the inventory of surgical equipment and related costs.
- Mount Carmel Health was able to redefine their billing standards, thus reducing bad debts.
- Scottsdale Healthcare reduced the time taken to find a bed and transfer a patient out of the emergency room, resulting in an increased capacity for the emergency department.
- Virtual Health improved patient satisfaction and reduced the length of stay for its congestive heart failure patients by using the Six Sigma principles and tools.
However, Six Sigma has yet to be used for patient care. So according to the same article, if Six Sigma is incorporated with continuous quality improvement (CQI), it can definitely improve patient care.
Much of the CQI structure has been developed from the work of Donabedian, a well-known physician, who developed a model for assessing quality that has become the standard in the health services field. The Donabedian model proposes that healthcare quality should be examined in the three domains of:
- (1) structure;
- (2) process; and
- (3) outcome (Donabedian, 1980).
A close look at these three domains shows a remarkable similarity with the four stages of Six Sigma which are:
- (1) identification;
- (2) characterization;
- (3) optimization; and
- (4) institutionalization.
Source: Six Sigma Zone
