Tips for a Six Sigma Certification from Knowledge Source
Posted by: meikah | 29 September 2008 | 9:39 pm
How to become a Six Sigma certified organization?
Knowledge Source – Manufacturing Info puts out three ways to do it:
- hire a certification training company
- get the full-time trainings from certified instructors
- hire a training school
Filed under: Certification, Six Sigma, Training
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“Six Sigma provides a sixth sense for company savings”
Posted by: meikah | 29 September 2008 | 9:23 pm
Syracuse.com carries an article titled as such. According to the article, the method of treating business problems as if they were statistical equations to be solved has saved companies billions of dollars. The Six Sigma course offering at Syracuse University-NY is focusing on this.
In the article, the following points are raised:
- Motorola saved $17 billion from 1986 to 2004
- the Six Sigma program, taught online and in classrooms at SU, has saved $4.8 million for local companies; the average return so far is $320,000 on 15 projects
- Adam Gadway, senior managing engineer at Anaren Inc.: the project he worked on cut lead times in a work cell from 13 days to five, saving the company $21,000; it also provided him with a valuable skill
- Crucible Specialty Metals is putting department heads through the program to complement its efforts to become more efficient, said President James Beckman; the company has the potential to save $370,000 on two projects it has done so far, and plans to make Six Sigma part of the Geddes steel maker’s culture
Filed under: Benefits and Savings, Education, Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations, Training
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Vernon County Tries Out Six Sigma
Posted by: meikah | 29 September 2008 | 8:20 pm
Vernon County wanted to streamline their county board, but never got to doing it. So, the Vernon County Board of Supervisors met again and again to find ways to streamline the organization without putting a dent on its processes.
Some quarters were against the idea, and so more discussion took place. As discussions were winding down, committee member David Banner introduced Joel Turino. Mr. Turino works in the field of continuous improvement.
According to the news on Vernon Broadcaster:
Turino is currently employed by Rockwell Automation and uses the “Six Sigma” system of continuous improvement to make processes more efficient and cost effective. Turino said the same processes that are applied to private industry can be used in the public sector to produce “quality processes with no defects.”
Turino said through examining specific processes and modifying them it is possible to make those processes 20 percent more efficient. The committee discussed the option of hiring someone as a consultant to help examine various department processes and find ways to improve efficiency.
Read more…
Yeah, the Vernon County might find the answers in Six Sigma or Lean.
Filed under: Lean, Processes, Public Sector, Six Sigma
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How Well Do You Know Your Black Belts?
Posted by: meikah | 25 September 2008 | 9:29 pm
Black Belts are important in a Six Sigma deployment. So it is important to choose them well, or choose your people to be Black Belts well.
How?
From iSixSigma:
The rigorous criteria can include:
- The expectations from the role.
- The opportunities and benefits from the role and the likely growth that the individual can expect on successful completion of the tenure.
- Superior past performance for several years.
- Prior experience with project activity.
- Minimum years of experience in the business.
The selection process must involve people from senior management, human resources and the Six Sigma deployment. Selection should not be compromised to accommodate the speed of implementation – taking time here, particularly in the initial years of deployment, sends the right message to the organization about the importance of the role. Of course, selecting the right people also ensures that the Six Sigma implementation is successful.
In other words, they must be able to lead the Six Sigma team. And in doing so, they must have the the ability to:
- Lead challenges from the front
- Listen and set the direction
- Manage change and mentor others
All these abilities are put to test during the tenure of a Black Belt. For example:
- Black Belts are assigned to challenging projects that do not have a known solution. Often, several teams have tried to work on such projects with little success.
- They lead cross-functional teams and are required to manage change issues without any real authority.
- During their tenure, they motivate and mentor Green Belts, who in turn juggle between working on projects and meeting the demands of their routine work.
- Black Belts engage with the leadership (Champions and executives) and also with peers and juniors to get their projects to succeed.
Filed under: Black Belt, Deployment, Six Sigma, Training
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Chi Solutions Inc.’s “Lean Lab Design” approach
Posted by: meikah | 25 September 2008 | 8:33 pm
In the recently concluded 2nd Annual Lab Quality Confab, Wayne D. Mercer, PhD, a senior consultant in operations management with Chi Solutions Inc. presented their “Lean Lab Design” approach.
Dr. Mercer went:
A specific example of our services is how we routinely assist our clients in developing plans for automated laboratories that can provide an absolute turnaround time of 30 minutes or less. Our comprehensive design approach emphasizes the value of all stakeholders by using a balanced scorecard approach that maximizes patient and physician/nursing staff satisfaction (consistent and improved service levels), minimizes costs (administrators/CFO’s/CEO’s), and maximizes employee satisfaction (a lean and ergonomically designed work environment that optimizes teamwork).
Our portfolio of consulting services is uniquely robust. Chi’s core competencies include a range of services and expertise, including: Strategic Planning, Outreach, Operations Improvement, Compliance, Benchmarking, Lean/Six Sigma, Outsourced Sales, Management Services, as well as Joint Venture Facilitation.
Filed under: Lean, Lean Six Sigma, Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations
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Six Sigma Company News Feature: Boeing Co.
Posted by: meikah | 25 September 2008 | 7:38 pm
Everyone knows that Boeing Co. is a Six Sigma company. Yet, right now it’s sailing through rough waters: employees on strike, production backlogs, thus resulting in financial crisis.
Here’s Boeing’s Six Sigma story.
So, how did the company ever come to this?
Filed under: Boeing, Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations
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Decatur Memorial Hospital Continues with Six Sigma
Posted by: meikah | 24 September 2008 | 12:02 am
A couple of years ago, I featured one Six Sigma project of Decatur Memorial Hospital. That was about how the hospital used a Six Sigma approach to analyze the hospital’s medication-use process, and then looked for automation approaches to help streamline the process.
You would wonder how they Decatur has been doing since it launched Six Sigma in 2001. Well, it’s our luck as iSixSigma shares with us the Decatur journey with Six Sigma:
- 2001 – launched Six Sigma
- then trained Green Belts, Black Belts, Master Black Belts
- toward the end of 2003 – Six Sigma a project on reducing nosocomial infections in three key operational areas – intensive care, intermediate care and the cardiovascular unit
- in August 2004 – Six Sigma project on on the reduction of surgical site infections
Filed under: Decatur Memorial, Healthcare, Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations
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EQUATE Petrochemicals Continuing with Six Sigma
Posted by: meikah | 23 September 2008 | 8:52 pm
At the end of last year, Hamad Al Tekait, President and CEO of EQAUTE Petrochemicals, delivered his inspiring speech. In his speech he made mention that EQUATE is big on human resource:
On business side, we crossed one Millon tons of sales once again and earned record profit this year. The prevailing petrochemical market helped us; and our business folks, supply chain and all supportive departments made the best use of it. Consequently, 2007 will be a New Record for EQUATE in its Net Profit since start up! This is great news!
Collectively all our people, supportive departments, our contractors and partners in business attributed in making 2007 much more successful year for EQUATE. Reflecting our company commitment to focus on people development, we continued to train our employees, our new hires, and introduced the latest technologies and management systems such as six-sigma tool. We are proud to have many of Green Belt Six Sigma holders in EQUATE who will drive for more efficiency and cost saving projects in all areas. Continue reading…
That was December 2007 last year, and a year before (2006), EQUATE had launched Six Sigma. Fast forward to June 2008 and EQUATE had honored 10 employees who finished Six Sigma training and certification.
Adopting the Dow Chemical Six Sigma training and certification program, EQUATE requires a candidate for Green Belt Project Lead Six Sigma status after working on a qualified actual project from his department.
Each project must demonstrate a number of criteria to qualify as a Six Sigma project and must generate saving or quantifiable improvement to the organization.
So far, the certified projects generated over USD 7 million in savings on annual basis. EQUATE has also set a target to reach USD 20 million dollar of saving through Six Sigma projects by 2010.
Way to go, EQUATE!
Source:
EQUATE Petrochemicals Website
fibre2fashion
Filed under: Dow Chemical Co., Green Belts, Petrochemicals, Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations
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A Six Sigma Review
Posted by: meikah | 21 September 2008 | 10:01 pm
Do you need to brush up on the basics of Six Sigma?
Here’s a good discussion on the basics of Six Sigma.
In essence, six sigma is a management plan geared towards producing better results, better products, and better service. Developed by Joseph M. Juran and Peter Senge in conjunction with Motorola, six sigma is technically an objective of quality. This objective very specifically defines how variable a process needs to be in terms of product specifications in order to meet and exceed customer demands in terms of product quality and product reliability.
Filed under: Six Sigma, Six Sigma References, Tips
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Samsung Continues with Six Sigma
Posted by: meikah | 21 September 2008 | 9:02 pm
For Samsung, Six Sigma is the key to their continuing success. They have a Samsung Six Sigma Model that has been improved and worked through these years.
Over at Business Today-India, R. Zutshi, Deputy Managing Director of Samsung India, is facing a challenging time in the face of an economic slowdown. To survive the crisis, R. Zutshi is making sure the following are working well:
- manage costs more effectively in the face of rising input costs
- manage cost by sustaining volume growth through increased productivity
- keep track of margins through sustained channel enhancement
- further enhance marketing – I know this for a fact, that Samsung has been all-out, 100% in their marketing.
- keep the The Samsung way alive: (1) launched up to 100 new product variants this year; (2) set up 30 new branch offices across the country; (3) optimising on specs of components in CTVs; (4) getting its vendors to apply Six Sigma in their production processes; (4) working to push sales volume by 30 per cent
