Category: Leading with Six Sigma

People often see Lean Six Sigma as a method to ‘make a better workplace’ instead of realizing it is equally an important tool for improving employee engagement. Therefore, it’s important to understand that while selecting the right projects is important, ensuring employee engagement is critical to Lean Six Sigma success. As a continuous improvement strategy,…

When organizations today look for ways to get back in the game in this post-recession economy, many realize they lack the processes, discipline, and culture to embrace meaningful innovation continuously, according to the IBM executive brief, “Driving operational innovation using Lean Six Sigma.”  Moreover, organizations that found the most success aimed beyond merely operational improvements…

There are two diametrically opposed answers to the question posed in the title. Here is the first one: a jaw-dropping number of calls completely riddled with errors is totally acceptable in call centers today. Preposterous, you say. Please keep reading. First, the big picture.  In contact centers no one talks about Six Sigma or Five-9s,…

In the past, there have been discussions about the constraints of Lean Six Sigma and caution when applying it to innovation. This stance stemmed from observations that organizations attempting to measure innovation using operational metrics often suppressed the creative process. The misapplication of Lean Six Sigma, treating creativity as a procedural output, was considered a…

The United States Army’s Office of Business Transformation is pursuing a 3 year program to improve its operations, and Lean Six Sigma is a big part of it. According to its web page on Lean Six Sigma, the Army has an award-winning, world-class Lean Six Sigma program that it applies as a core capability in…

February 28, 2011. ASQ Lean Six Sigma Conference, Phoenix, Arizona. Conference keynote speaker D. Lynn Kelley, Vice President of Operational Excellence at Textron, Inc. told the audience of Lean Six Sigma professionals that the key to keeping a process excellence effort exciting is to be sure that it is linked to the leadership’s goals for…

Forbes.com reports that six of the seven worst cars on the road are produced by either GM or Chrysler Corporation, the two auto companies which received billions of dollars in government bailout funds. Sadly, the seventh car on the list is also American made, a Ford product. GM has experienced a surge in sales in…

Quality Digest reports that Toyota Motors Corporation (TMC) has announced the formation of a Special Committee on Global Quality. Toyota Motor Corporation president Akio Toyoda announced the formation of the committee at a press conference in Japan on February 17. According to Toyoda, “I have been eager to keep management decision-making close to our customers.…

Unless you’ve been in a cave, you know that Toyota has been in the news lately for a problem involving “sudden unintended acceleration,” or SUA. This occurs when Toyotas apparently zoom off on their own, without the driver depressing the accelerator pedal. The official definition, according to the NTSB, is “Sudden acceleration incidents” (SAI) are…

While we work to improve quality and efficiency, our leaders manage our organizations into oblivion. Literally. Something is terribly wrong. Leaders of major corporations in virtually all industries do things that causes them to, either accidentally or deliberately, destroy billions of dollars in value in a breathtakingly short time. What could be behind this phenomenon? I’d…