Six Sigma Creating Needed Healthcare Improvements

Over at Healthcare Transformation blog, a post is discussing about how Six Sigma can create the needed improvements in healthcare.

According to the post, Six Sigma can definitely do that, but not the kind that involves some breakthrough. Because a breakthrough performance improvement needs the following:

• Leadership has to accept that it does need help.  It is difficult to separate true desires versus the lip services.  Note that in spite of all the quality and process improvements, research shows that the reduction in avoidable injuries and deaths in the hospitals have been close to nil.
• The processes in the healthcare sector are mostly legacy.  Using lean six sigma may improve them, but they are not capable to delivering the break through results.  It is like you take your care of 60s and expect it to give performance of 90s.  No matter how much you rebuild, it is still going to be not up to the mark.  That is the reasons, they make new cars using new technologies.
• For groundbreaking performance, then healthcare NEEDS DFSS.  Design for Six Sigma.  A real program that can help redesign the processes and systems.
• The sector has to be careful of DFSS experts who have read books or have experience. But they do not have the competencies. It is very difficult to screen the real ones from the posers. Continue reading…

Filed under: Healthcare, Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations

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The SixSig Roundup

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.

Business Key shares insights on how Six Sigma can improve product design. “Six Sigma helps improve product design by providing a measured value based on customer input and supplier capability.” Read on…

SixSigmaz asks, “is Six Sigma the ultimate management tool?” “Today, Six Sigma covers a very wide range of industries such as healthcare, banking, manufacturing and construction, to name a few.” Read on…

Pencil Sense has a good discussion about Six Sigma and upper management. “The nature of derived benefits may vary but the main criterion applied during these implementations is that the end result should be in accordance with the aims and objectives of the senior management.” Read on…

BB Articles features an article that talks about the five common fallacies about Six Sigma. “Oddly, thousands of businesses choose not to deploy the strategy because of misconceptions about it.” Read on…

Here’s a new site to watch out for: Lean Human Capital. On its homepage is a very relevant topic, which is “how can lean help your recruitment organization?” Head on over to the site now and find out.

Filed under: Lean, Lean Six Sigma, Six Sigma

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Lean Six Sigma and BPM

Two management executives, David Lyneham-Brown, BPT Group CEO, and Richard Aldous, head of sales and marketing for Rethink, believe that Lean Six Sigma (LSS) and Business Process Management (BPM) go hand in hand.

Both complement each other, and thus companies that aim to improve processes should work with these two strategies.

Here are some of what Brown and Aldous say about LSS and BPM together.

• Lean Six Sigma (LSS) methodologies can be used as the weapon to solve problems BPM uncovers.

• LSS and BPM are about creating a new culture and a new way of working that doesn’t rely on the fractured, political relationship of departments, but rather on the back of people who understand from a customer perspective what is needed for customer fulfillment.

• LSS is an effective and proven methodology that can and should be used with BPM. BPM leads to the identification of problems and business opportunities while LSS is the methodology used for addressing the problems and opportunities.

Read more…

Filed under: BPM, Lean Six Sigma

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Getting the Most from a Leaner Organization

One of my favorite quotes on management is this:

“The conventional definition of management is getting work done through people, but real management is developing people through work.”  Agha Hasan Abedi

I believe in empowering people and help them develop their full potential. But this is easy to say, and in my experience with managing people, there are times that I go overboard. I zealously oversee to the point that they can no longer decide for themselves. What makes me take a step backward and leave them alone is when they would always consult me for even the littlest thing.

However, there is a way to do it. BNET features five companies that get the most from a leaner organization. That is their secret to managing efficiently.

These five companies “pushed power, information, and authority down the organizational structure, sometimes in sharp opposition to the corporate culture. In every case, the lighter managerial touch produced more-motivated workers, cost savings, higher productivity, happier customers, or fatter profits.”

Read about each one of them.

Filed under: Lean, Team Dynamics

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4 Basic Truths about IT-Six Sigma Integration

Not many are convinced that Six Sigma and IT integration will succeed. or if there is a need to in the first place.

An article on iSixSigma Software shows us that it can be done. The iSixSigma Magazine once published the results of their survey, which were analyzed by Michael Marx, and they pointed to the strong possibility of a successful integration of Six Sigma and IT.

1. Overall, Six Sigma is not frequently used to improve IT processes.
2. The extent to which Six Sigma is applied to IT has to do with the role IT plays in a company – staff function or strategic component.
3. The longer a company has been using Six Sigma, the greater the likelihood that the company has integrated Six Sigma with IT.
4. Technology is not always the solution, and when it is, the solution is often not implemented.

Read the discussion HERE.

Filed under: IT, Six Sigma, Software/Technology

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SixSig Reference Feature: Lean Thinking Influencing the IT Culture

Today, an IT department has many reasons for adopting “lean” practices; saving costs is only the most obvious. Other objectives are to reduce time to market, offer more competitive products and services, increase capacity, and simplify solutions. There are a myriad of ways to accomplish this: streamline project-planning practices, use open source applications, opt for solutions that avoid bureaucratic approvals and delays, etc.

Read the whitepaper.

Filed under: IT, Lean

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Six Sigma for Mobile Workforce

Over at ArticlesInAClick is a good discussion on how Six Sigma can be used in mobile workforce. It may be challenging but it can be done.

Here are some suggested ways to do it:

• Identify critical Ys.
• Support (or have a support for) field staff.
• Leverage technology.
• Get a good grasp about change management.

Read more…

Filed under: Mobile Workforce, Six Sigma

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Lean Accounting at Watlow Electric

From the word, Lean, we can assume that Lean Accounting is putting lean iniatiatives to accounting tasks or better yet, incorporating lean principles with accounting principles.

An article on IndustryWeek online discusses how Lean Accounting is making a big difference in the operations of Watlow Electric. The company calls it value stream management.
Some of which are:

• A simpler accounting methodology
• Business units have been identifying their value streams and posting simplified operational and financial data for each value stream on a weekly basis.
• Even though right now the economy is down, Watlow-Hannibal is growing the business because people understand the costs better.

Read more…

Ed Grinde, business unit controller for Watlow Electric Manufacturing Co.’s Hannibal, Mo. operations, suggests nine ways to implement Lean Accounting or value stream mapping.

1. Get the support from upper management.
2. Make everyone understand that lean is a growth strategy-not a cost-cutting strategy.
3. Identify properly the value streams.
4. Don’t try to attain perfection before setting up your value streams.
5. Keep metrics and methods simple and manual in the beginning.
6. Do not set hard goals.
7. Value stream leaders need autonomy to be “little general managers.”
8. Put as much of your costs as possible directly into the value streams.
9. Use the five principles of lean as your criteria to make decisions.

Continue reading…

Filed under: Lean, Lean Manufacturing, Watlow Electric Manufacturing Company

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Lean Six Sigma and Sarbanes-Oxley

According to Wikipedia:

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, also known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002 and commonly called Sarbanes-Oxley, Sarbox or SOX, is a United States federal law enacted on July 30, 2002. The legislation set new or enhanced standards for all U.S. public company boards, management and public accounting firms. The act contains 11 titles, or sections, ranging from additional corporate board responsibilities to criminal penalties, and requires the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to implement rulings on requirements to comply with the new law.

An article on iSixSigma narrates a story about a SOX-compliant company that one day finds out that its financial records are all messed up. What got the company panicky was that the mess could have the company end up in jail.

What saves the company is the Lean Six Sigma and the quick action from Six Sigma Black Belts. After the mess has been resolved, these are what the company learned:

• Sarbanes-Oxley requires companies to accurately control their financial reporting and holds executive management responsible for these controls.
• Financial processes are just that – processes. They can be improved using Lean Six Sigma, just like any other process. Statistical process control charts are especially effective ways of monitoring the performance processes, including those in finance.
• Segmenting inputs to financial measures is often helpful in identifying the key suspects in performance variation.
• Some financial measures (like variances and controls) sound like statistical terms though they are completely different. Operational definitions are needed to prevent confusion.

Read the whole article.

Filed under: Lean Six Sigma, Sarbanes-Oxley, Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations

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4 Ways for Six Sigma Teams to Navigate Organizational Politics

There is politics everywhere, and so, it’s always a sink or swim situation. Of course, for the sake our sanity as well as that of the organization we belong to, we devise ways to survive the political current.

Frank Lucer, writing for Business Management on Technology Toolkit, says that there are three ways by which Six Sigma teams can navigate organizational politics.

1. Eliminate employee resistance – For some employees, change can mean learning new skills, perform different tasks, and have new responsibilities. These may not sit well with them who have been used to doing certain things their own way. Six Sigma team can assuage these fears by showing them that change can in fact do them good.
2. Communicate the reason – As in any new thing or change, employees are scared to fail. Six Sigma team should openly explain the benefits of Six Sigma, why it is being implemented, and why it is expected to succeed where others failed.
3. Bypass office policies – One of the hurdles in implementing change is working for or against company policies. This is where management should lend their support. If the Six Sigma team is well supported by top management, the team and the rest of the employees can easily reach a compromise.
4. Manage conflict within the group – Conflicting ideas and opinions within the Six Sigma team is not uncommon. Black Belts or Master Black Belts should encourage everyone to express their ideas and offer creative solutions. “As much as Six Sigma is a discipline that is built upon statistical analysis, it is first a methodology that relies upon people.”

Read more…

Filed under: Politics, Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations, Team Dynamics

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