• Lean Six Sigma: The Difference Between a Job and a Career

    The principles learned in Lean Six Sigma don’t just help businesses increase efficiency and profitability—they can also transform your career. Earning a Lean Six Sigma Green or Black Belt certification can unlock new career opportunities and higher-paying roles in a variety of industries. Today, Six Sigma Green Belts in the U.S. earn an average annual…

  • Lean Six Sigma in Hospitals Help Patients Receive Faster Care

    In the October 2012 Hospital Impact blog, “Lean Six Sigma and the patient experience,” writer Anthony Cirillo noted that recent reports showed that Lean and Six Sigma efforts reduce costs and improve efficiency. Some reports even praised the models for enhancing employee satisfaction and collaborative problem solving. The question Cirillo raised, however, is whether Lean…

  • Understanding and Applying G and T Charts in Six Sigma: Exploring Rare Event Control Charts

    Welcome, Six Sigma enthusiasts, data analysts, and quality improvement advocates! I’m Tom Pyzdek, an expert in Six Sigma methodology, and today we’re delving into the robust world of G and T control charts. Minitab’s latest additions to their control chart arsenal could revolutionize your Six Sigma project management and process control. So, let’s unpack their…

  • Hospital Payments Linked to Quality of Outcomes

    It has long been recognized that the incentives in the healthcare system are perverse in the sense that hospitals receive compensation for what is essentially rework. For example, a patient might be admitted and treated for an ailment, released, then subsequently readmitted for the same ailment. Another common occurrence is that patients acquire a problem…

  • The Dirty Dozen Quality Challenges

    Lean, Six Sigma and Quality provide a set of tools and a framework for achieving excellence in any process.Quality professionals are able to help organizations determine if customer requirements are properly defined and if the organization is meeting those requirements. Lean practitioners have a set of skills that can be used to eliminate waste in…

  • The Problem with Swiss Army Knife Control Charting

    I’m an advocate of using the I-chart as the default control chart. If I am teaching statistical process control (SPC) and can only teach one chart, the I-chart is always the one that I teach. It’s the only control chart I cover in my Lean Six Sigma Green Belt training. It’s the only chart that…

  • Lean Six Sigma Improvement and Work Design

    This article is an excerpt from a lesson in Pyzdek Institute Lean Six Sigma Black Belt training. Future posts will continue the topic. In previous lessons you learned how to change a traditional batch-and-queue value stream into a lean value stream. Now we will discuss the design of the actual work that will take place…

  • Quality Guru Chosen to Head CMS

    Quality Guru Chosen to Head CMS

    Donald Berwick, a Harvard University professor and leading advocate for improving health-care quality and efficiency, has been named by President Obama as his choice to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS.) Berwick is well-known in Quality circles for aggressively advocating quality improvement in healthcare. Berwick, who specializes in health-care policy and pediatrics,…

  • Medical Missteps: Case of a Nonexistent Pregnancy

    Recently, a case was reviewed by the North Carolina Medical Board where a group of medical practitioners performed labor induction and a Caesarean section on a woman, only to find there was no baby present. The case, as reported by Foxnews.com, revealed that the patient had been convinced she was pregnant and managed to convince…

  • Standard Diabetes Treatment Makes Things Worse

    Ready-Fire-Aim. Once again the healthcare profession finally gets around to looking at data, only to discover that it is actually harming patients by treating them. The Los Angeles Times reports that a major nationwide trial called ACCORD released Sunday show that lowering either blood pressure or cholesterol levels below current guidelines do not provide additional benefit…