Innovation of the Week: DSM’s Winning Strategy Through the Years
Posted by: meikah | 29 May 2009 | 12:26 am
Mr Sijbesma says, “Innovation, coming up with new products and launch concepts and business models is one of the main drivers of our strategy. The whole idea about our business education starts with our strategy … You need a lot of technical knowledge but you also need to change the company in terms of culture and behaviour.”
Filed under: General, Innovation, Innovation Update, Mining
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Wordless Wednesday: The Beachfront
Posted by: meikah | 27 May 2009 | 4:38 am
Filed under: General, Wordless Wednesday
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Six Sigma Companies News: Troubled NBC calls on exec Angela Bromstad
Posted by: meikah | 26 May 2009 | 10:32 pm
Here’s another edition of Six Sigma Companies News. The complete title of the news article was Troubled NBC Calls on exec Angela Bromstad to revive prime time.
If we may recall, in December 2008, another news article had the headline NBC Six Sigma Retooling. According to that news, NBC was using Six Sigma to improve its processes in the TV network space and has positioned itself for a transformation versus its peers.
Fast forward to April this year, Los Angeles Times carried the story of a troubled NBC:
Angela Bromstad is NBC’s survivor.
Two years ago, Bromstad, then president of NBC’s television production studio, made what was seen as a suicidal career move. After losing a power struggle over control of the network’s programming, she walked away from her job.
Fast-forward to last November. NBC’s fall prime-time schedule had collapsed, Bromstad’s nemesis at the network was long gone, another rival was about to be shown the door, and NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker desperately needed to restore order to NBC after two tumultuous seasons with Ben Silverman in charge.
Continue reading…
About Six Sigma Companies News:
This is a new feature on SixSig that will highlight news about Six Sigma Companies. So always stay tuned!
Related post:
Six Sigma at NBC Universal?
Filed under: NBC, Six Sigma, Six Sigma News, Six Sigma Organizations
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Six Sigma and Branding
Posted by: meikah | 26 May 2009 | 8:48 pm
Your brand differentiates you from others. It also because of your branding that customers seek you out amidst piles of other similar products. Brand strategy therefore is crucial to your business.
Thus, companies think of ways to develop a brand and sustain it. Perhaps, not many know that Six Sigma is also a versatile, effective framework for connecting executive goals (business strategy), marketing communication (brand promise) and management (operational activities).
An article on iSixSigma discusses how Design for Six Sigma’s DMADV for brand strategy.
| Table 1: Adapting Design for Six Sigma’s DMADV for Brand Strategy | |
|
Design for Six Sigma |
Brand Six Sigma |
| Define the project goals and customer (internal and external) deliverables. | Ensure that operational activity is delivering on the competitive advantage and customer expectations created by the brand promise. |
| Measure and determine customer needs and specifications. | Determine the measurable extent and scope of competitive advantage and customer expectations created by the brand promise. |
| Analyze the process options to meet the customer needs. | Work back from the brand promise through brand associations and tangible brand attributes/CTQs to ensure that operational building blocks – business goals, organization, processes, administration and metrics – are producing the competitive advantage and delivering on customer expectations generated by the brand promise. |
| Design detailed processes to meet customer needs. | Design and implement the operational building blocks. |
| Verify the design performance and ability to meet customer needs. | Use measurement to verify that the operational building blocks are producing the tangible brand attributes/CTQs contributing to the brand associations and brand promise. |
Filed under: Brand Strategy, DFSS, DMADV, Six Sigma
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Healthcare News: Preventable Medical Errors Still Kill Thousands, Cost Billions as Employers Foot Bill
Posted by: meikah | 26 May 2009 | 7:46 pm
Errors are the things that Six Sigma tries to reduce or eliminate altogether. However, not all organizations see the value of Six Sigma or the other quality management strategies that can help them go zero defects.
This news on WorkForce Management is quite alarming really. What makes it so, is that the medical errors are preventable, yet because of a lack of effort on the part of management, these errors continue to kill people and hurt the coffers of the employers.
The article features a report on the health system’s efforts to reduce preventable errors. Still according to the report, the country has failed to:
- Reduce medication errors because hospitals have not widely adopted computerized prescribing and dispensing systems; the FDA has not done enough to help consumers and health practitioners avoid medication errors that stem from similar-sounding drug names and labels.
- Establish a national system suitable for reporting and tracking medical errors.
- Empower the Agency for Health Research and Quality to track national progress on patient safety.
- Raise professional standards and accountability of doctors, nurses and hospitals that commit preventable and widespread medical errors.
These preventable errors cost the country $17 billion to $29 billion annually. More than the cost, I think it’s more meaningful to look at it from the service side. These preventable errors kill thousands!
Filed under: Healthcare, Quality, Services
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Company Politics and Six Sigma
Posted by: meikah | 24 May 2009 | 10:12 pm
The biggest challenge in deploying Six Sigma is getting people to believe in it and support it. Some of the reasons cited as barriers are:
- personal resistance to change
- inflexible company policies
- incompatibility with existing organizational methods and goals
I remember during the Six Sigma Best Practices and Benchmarking Forum, one of the speakers said that if you had to hold meetings outside office hours or at lunch break, then it’s a sign that management is not supportive of the initiative.
True! Management must treat Six Sigma activities as part of the order of things in the company.
Peter Peterka, writing for Voters Unite, has a good discussion going on how company politics can hinder Six Sigma deloyments. He cited the common barriers and how these can be resolved.
Not surprisingly, all of the factors mentioned above also affect business processes of any kind. They are not unique to Six Sigma. This is one of Six Sigma’s strengths: realistically acknowledging the way politics work in an organization. Six Sigma is not just number crunching. It understands the importance of and encourages the involvement of people throughout and at all levels of the organization working together toward a common goal. Six Sigma encourages planning, communication, and openness about processes, procedures, and information.
Read more…
Filed under: Politics, Six Sigma
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The SixSig Roundup
Posted by: meikah | 24 May 2009 | 9:19 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.
Anak Melayu shares a secret, and that for sometime now, he has been applying Six Sigma in his daily activities. He is even tempted to call it Sha Sigma. 
Library Excellence Blog announces how the Los Alaminos National Laboratory Research Library won the Baldridge Award. How does understanding and using the Malcolm Baldrige criteria impact library organizational change?
Six Sigma Green Belt blog tells us that Six Sigma is more than just number crunching. The numbers can be tempting but Six Sigma is more than a data-capturing, number-crunching process. It is a philosophy and a methodology; it is a way of looking at business and a way of doing business processes.
Over at The Lean Thinker, Mark says that before embarking on trying to solve the problem, know first what is the problem. What is the evidence of the problem?
Learning about Lean shares what is called the structural waste. I’m sure many of you can related with his frustration on having to buy two dome lights, when you need only one each time.
Filed under: General, Lean Six Sigma, Six Sigma
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GE Pushes for Lean Manufacturing
Posted by: meikah | 24 May 2009 | 8:45 pm
Quality people are now looking at Lean manufacturing as one of the strategies that can help manufacturers ride the current storm.
An article on Charleston Business Journal says that American manufacturers can compete with cheaper and sometimes faster foreign companies.
Dan McDonnell, manager of GE’s lean initiative in the company’s transportation division, says, ““We absolutely can compete. It doesn’t matter that they have an unfair advantage. I really believe that lean is North America’s bridge to the future.
As an example of the value of lean manufacturing, McDonnell showed a piston pin created for locomotives built by GE’s transportation division.
Producing the pin before lean manufacturing costs the company $107 per pin. The best quote for the same pin from China was $59. After implementing “kaizen†— a waste-reduction, continuous improvement philosophy that’s the foundation for lean manufacturing — GE produced the pin for $69.
Filed under: GE, Lean, Lean Manufacturing, Manufacturing, Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations
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Innovation of the Week: Stream Computing from IBM
Posted by: meikah | 22 May 2009 | 3:46 am
The software enables massive amounts of data to be analyzed in real time. The new software is called IBM System S.Big Blue is making System S trial code available at no cost to help clients better understand the software’s capabilities and how they can take advantage of it for their business. This trial code includes developer tools, adapters and software to test applications.
Filed under: Data, Data Analysis, Data Quality, IBM, Innovation, Innovation Update
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Wordless Wednesday: e-Vehicles
Posted by: meikah | 20 May 2009 | 4:39 pm
Click on the photo to know more about the e-vehicles.
