Category: Six Sigma

Many companies are investing significant effort into having their employees work harder to create more value for their customers, always striving to stay competitive. However, upon reflection, it’s clear that employees are already working diligently. Indeed, they’re engaged 99% of the time, striving to excel in their roles. The key challenge for a modern company…

Fox News reports that e-mail messages obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that NASA concluded that its own climate findings were inferior to those maintained by both the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) — the scandalized source of the leaked Climate-gate e-mails — and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric…

The Pyzdek Institute has added Lean Six Sigma Black Belt training and certification to its portfolio of online and live courses on Process Excellence topics. The new course is written and presented by Thomas Pyzdek, author of The Six Sigma Handbook and numerous other authoritative works. “We have been teaching Lean Six Sigma to clients…

Kaiser Daily Global Health Policy Report reported that between 26 percent and 44 percent of artemisinin-based malaria drugs sold in Madagascar, Senegal and Uganda “failed quality testing” because of impurities or insufficient amounts of active ingredient, the Associated Press reports. The study, which was conducted by the nongovernmental U.S. Pharmacopeia program and received funding from…

I teach that by itself Lean is a way to redesign a value stream according to certain principles to improve flow in a value stream, thereby reducing cycle time and achieving a number of other benefits quickly. Six Sigma has two modes: project and operational. The project mode involves a framework such as DMAIC or…

In a letter published in the journal Nature (Nature 463, 527-530 (28 January 2010)) entitled “Ensemble reconstruction constraints on the global carbon cycle sensitivity to climate” the authors discuss the processes controlling the carbon flux and carbon storage of the atmosphere, ocean and terrestrial biosphere. These processes are likely to provide a positive feedback leading to…

In a report released today the organization HealthGrades identifies hospitals in the top 5% of the nation for clinical excellence. Healthgrades estimates that 150,132 Medicare lives could potentially have been saved and 13,104 Medicare in-hospital complications could potentially have been avoided if all hospitals performed as well as the top 5%. Lean Six Sigma practitioners…

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) faces a significant challenge: effectively identifying potential security threats while ensuring a smooth passenger experience. This challenge brings into play two types of statistical errors, referred to as Type I and Type II errors. Type II error occurs when a true threat goes unnoticed. This is equivalent to failing to…

A common error of many six sigma and operations research professionals is not properly selecting the correct subgroup sampling technique when constructing a Statistical Process Control (SPC) chart. Incorrect subgroup sampling technique selection has become worse in the modern computing age – perhaps because most practitioners try to “fit” their data into the GUI template…

There are many reasons why Six Sigma projects fail. However, these failures can be avoided if you strictly adhere to the roadmap. I have executed numerous projects, with many being highly successful, but some failing. In every instance of failure, we deviated from the proven path to success, the DMAIC roadmap. As simple as these…