• Online Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Training Released

    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…

  • Toyota Announces Quality Committee

    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.…

  • The Toyota Media Feeding Frenzy

    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…

  • AT&T Stumbles with Its Customers Again

    PC World reports That AT&T’s wireless service has once again fared badly with its customers. This time with its business customers. AT&T has scored poorly in a wireless carrier satisfaction survey of small and medium businesses and large companies, mirroring an equally dismal performance among consumers last month. AT&T scored at or near the bottom…

  • Poor Quality Malaria Drugs Causing Problems

    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…

  • Lean, Six Sigma, and Lean Six Sigma Elevator Speech

    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…

  • Massive Johnson & Johnson Recall

    More than a week after a big recall of tainted Tylenol and other non-prescription drugs, a battle has erupted between drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and makers of a shipping component the company blames for the problem. An undisclosed number of containers of Tylenol, Motrin and other over-the-counter drugs were recalled earlier this month after consumers…

  • Carbon Cycle Feedback Effect Adjusted Downward

    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…

  • Management Is Broken

    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…

  • Toyota Experiencing Quality Problems

    One Wall Street Journal headline shouts Toyota Sales Halt Raises Quality Questions and a WSJ blogger opines that this incident could be a crippling blow to Toyota’s mystique. Certainly this episode is one of the darkest in Toyota’s history. The scope of the shutdown is staggering and includes suspending sales of eight of its most…

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