All Features
Praveen Gupta
Corporations have been implementing improvement programs as far back as I can remember, at least since my first job at Motorola in 1981. I’ve noticed that more and more organizations—whether it’s Motorola, Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., Delphi or smaller, privately-held companies—measure…
Craig Cochran
Internal auditing is one of the most routine improvement tools available to organizations. In fact, it’s so ordinary that auditors sometimes forget the underlying principles of auditing. Auditors must be periodically reminded of these underlying truths or the entire audit process can begin to…
Steven Ouellette
“The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.” Herbert Spencer (1820 – 1903) What’s distance learning? Six Sigma Black Belt training has long been the realm of the elite. It used to be so expensive and required so much time that only companies with the cash and resources to…
Ken Levine
Lean Six Sigma and other continuous improvement initiatives require effective teamwork, and effective teamwork requires good meetings. Ineffective meetings are the reason many organizations fail to improve continuously. Therefore, effective meeting management should be an integral and early part…
Denise Robitaille
Some ISO 9001 requirements simply don’t get as much attention as others. One such example is found in clause 6.4, which relates to work environments. It states: “The organization shall determine and manage the work environment needed to achieve conformity to product requirements.” What…
Bill Kalmar
You see and hear them everyday--signs and commercials heralding “Customer service is No.1,” “We treat you like family,” or “The customer is always right.” The other day I came across a particularly revealing motto: “We’re better than we used to be!” Whatever the slogan or motto is, people expect…
Praveen Gupta
A major misunderstanding regarding Six Sigma is its fabricated definition, (e.g. “Six Sigma is a fact-based decision-making methodology…”). I’ve seen people willing to attack anyone utilizing common sense to make decisions without facts. One of the reasons for taking such a strong position…
Praveen Gupta
A major misunderstanding regarding Six Sigma is its fabricated definition, (e.g. “Six Sigma is a fact-based decision-making methodology…”). I’ve seen people willing to attack anyone utilizing common sense to make decisions without facts. One of the reasons for taking such a strong position…
Craig Cochran
Customer focus doesn’t evolve on its own. It’s carefully cultivated over time through a variety of processes. At the forefront of this effort is leadership. The organization’s leadership has the primary responsibility of making every decision and every action based on customer focus.…
Praveen Gupta
During the last couple of years, I’ve interacted with several United Auto Workers (UAW) associates. Irrespective of what the former Big Three do, they’re all trying to do a good job.I’ve had the chance to teach some classes to UAW members. It always amazes me how people make money in the auto…
Russell T. Westcott
Early on you recognized the economic effect of shipping defective products to customers and/or providing inferior services. You countered this deficiency with elaborate inspection proceduresIn more recent times, you’ve focused on improving your organization’s processes and decreasing inspections.…
Denise Robitaille
Time is arguably one of the most precious and least quantified resources that organizations possess. It’s a uniquely intangible, yet indispensable, feature of any process or activity. Things occur over a span of time. It’s an indisputable characteristic of our universe and is so self-evident that…
"Es ris!" (“It’s snapped!”) This apocalyptic line from Richard Wagner’s Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) referred to the thread of fate or destiny that the three Norns, or Fates, had woven since the dawn of time. This ill omen portended the opera’s inevitable tragic conclusion. This year’s…
The purpose of process data analysis is to answer the question, "May the observed data fluctuations reasonably be attributed to common-cause variation?" The principal use of the Shewhart control chart is to guide efforts for process improvement by assisting in the discovery of peculiarities in the…
Thomas R. Cutler
Many organizations are turning to outside operations-expense management companies due to the recognition of billing scrutiny as a key quality control and quality assurance issue. “When performing bill-auditing and rate-analysis services, many utilities in the United States have errors on at least…
Cheryl Ajluni
In today’s fast-paced electronics industry, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) design, manufacture and service a broad range of products that include fuel cells, pacemakers and wireless devices. In addition to the technical challenges associated with designing such diverse and complex…
Ken Levine
Engaging your workforce is a major obstacle in a lean Six Sigma implementation. Only a limited number of employees will initially participate in Six Sigma improvement projects. It can also take one to two years before all employees participate in a lean kaizen event. It’s best to encourage…
Denise Robitaille
It’s been my experience as an auditor and as a consultant that the overwhelming majority of corrective actions originate from customer returns. The good news is that the corrective action request (CAR) process is being utilized to address the cause of these problems. Unfortunately, CARs that arise…
Praveen Gupta
Our minds continually perform root cause analysis, which is a way of answering our questions about our surroundings and quenching our curiosity. We establish cause-and-effect relationships between what we see and what we do, or what we get and what we do, or what we want to get and what we need to…
Tim Postema
The Dutch public health care system is being transformed in various ways. With an increasing focus on efficiency and consumer driven care, health institutions in The Netherlands are forced to critically evaluate their actions and processes. With recent political developments creating a more liberal…
Praveen Gupta
Teamwork has always been considered a critical component of completing complex projects that require significant improvement. The process of teamwork has been well-documented, but teamwork is still often elusive. Why?
When teams succeed, it’s often for the following reasons:
Strong leadership
Well…
Denise Robitaille
How is it possible to ship customers the right product, on time, and still fail to fulfill their requirements? Most organizations do a pretty good job of determining what product the customer wants. Based on what I’ve observed during surveillance audits, they’ve also improved their processes for…
Daniel S. Munson
The Empire State Building in New York City, with its 103 stories, 73 elevators, 2,500,000 feet of electrical cable and 6,500 windows, was built in 405 days. The framework rose at a rate of four-and-a-half stories per week. That’s nearly a floor a day. Most impressive was that the project came in…
Thomas R. Cutler
In repetitive manufacturing, it’s possible to apply statistical process control (SPC) techniques to purchased components and manufacturing quality as well as scrap and yield. Statistical analysis is acceptable if a company mass-purchases or mass-manufactures the same product to the same standards…
Denise Robitaille
A recurrent theme that dominates discussion on the establishment of corrective action programs is the practice of channeling problems through multiple conduits for assessment and resolution. Organizations inadvertently fragment their corrective action process by trying to address problems and…