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 ... [Read More]

Today I received a sales call from a person interested in becoming a certified Six Sigma Black Belt. He had what I call a "can't do" personality. This is the diametric opposite of the ... [Read More]

In a recent post on the Evolving Excellence blog, Bill Waddell tackles one of my pet peeves: activity-based costing, or ABC. Few things do more harm to lean Six Sigma than this method of ... [Read More]

The quality and process improvement professions tend to rely heavily on statistical information. The very science of quality control can be said to have begun with Walter A. Shewhart’s development of the control chart and discovery of the concepts of special cause and common cause variation. But few would argue with the statement that there is a downside, and a dark side, to statistics. I ... [Read More]

Although I’ve spent my entire career working in the quality and process improvement fields, my undergraduate degree is in economics. I learned that economic cycles are normal. Economic downturns result when there is an imbalance in the economy. Past recessions have developed when businesses overestimated future demand and overproduced. When businesses realized their inventory was large ... [Read More]

John, Acme Corp.’s new CEO, just heard a brilliant idea for making his numbers this quarter. He needed it. During a conference call with the financial press last month, he made certain promises. If he couldn’t keep them, the company’s stock would surely take a hit. The trouble is, John’s estimates assumed that Acme’s biggest customer, We Be Widgets, would place its usual large order ... [Read More]

We’ve heard it before: “______ won’t be around long. It’s the flavor of the month.” Fill in the blank with the latest management fad: zero defects, quality circles, SPC, TQM, systems thinking, balanced scorecards, reengineering, and most recently, Six Sigma and lean. What exactly is meant by tagging something the flavor of the month (FOM)? Should practitioners even care when their ... [Read More]

The gold standard for modeling the future in a business environment is the designed experiment. Design of experiments (DOE) is a well-developed approach to planning and executing controlled manipulations. Somewhat less respectable are models derived from historical data. It makes sense to utilize as much of this information as possible, but caution is required. Problems you may encounter ... [Read More]

Over the years I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard the lament, “We don’t have management support!” I sympathize. Lack of management support is without a doubt one of the prime causes of failed process and quality improvement efforts. Without leadership backing, any organizationwide initiative is ultimately doomed. This column will explain why it’s not enough to ask for ... [Read More]

Recently I called a friend, Ethan, to catch up on things. Ethan is a former student of mine who now holds a senior leadership position. He has been “tainted” by process excellence in the sense that because he understands the importance of processes, he can no longer practice traditional management by results. When an employee announces that he intends to reduce costs, Ethan wants to know ... [Read More]