Newsletter
- March 2001
Welcome to the Six Sigma Systems, Inc. Electronic Newsletter "The Integrator."
Feel free to forward this to others who might have an interest in the topic.
UPCOMING EVENTS:
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We are excited to announce a
Six Sigma Expert class in the greater Detroit area in the
July through October time
frame:
The workshop will consist of 4 one-week sessions and is designed to
provide candidates with both a technical and practical foundation for improving business processes utilizing the Six
Sigma methodology.
For details
visit: Seminar Registration or
contact us at 913-685-9280.
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Six Sigma Executive Management Workshop
open registration in Connecticut:
The Six Sigma Executive Management Workshop will be conducted in
cooperation with the Connecticut Quality Council in Hartford, CT, April 11,
2001.
For information and registration please visit:
<http://www.ctqualitycouncil.org/classes/six.htm>
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Short Courses:
View our portfolio of new short courses.
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If you have questions, comments, or submissions for this
Newsletter send an e-mail to: <marj.green@sixsigmasystems.com> with "COMMENT" in the
subject line.
If you have topics that you would like to see
covered in future issues please let us know.
Click here to contact us or call us at 913.685.9280.
Be sure visit
the Discussion Forum.
Be involved by posting questions and getting in discussions or
post any tips you might have learned in doing related work. If you have ideas and opinions we welcome you to post responses and
helpful comments.
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Newsletter
- January 2001
Welcome to the Six Sigma Systems, Inc. Electronic Newsletter "The Integrator."
At some time you visited our web page at http://www.sixsigmasystems.com and signed up to receive our newsletter. Feel free to forward this to others who might have an interest in the topic.
Upcoming Events:
For details please
click here.
We still have a few openings in our Leadership Seminar in Phoenix, AZ February 6-7, 2001. This 2-day event is designed for CEOs, Presidents, VP of Operations, CFOs and any leader that owns the improvement of production systems and processes. The course will clearly demonstrate the integration of Six Sigma and Lean tools as well as look at the Organizational Design & Leadership components of creating sustainable results. Different options and models for implementation will be discussed as well. One round of golf at the Hilton Tapatio Cliffs will be optional.
Business Assessment Tools - Baseline:
Would you let your doctor prescribe medication without first diagnosing your illness? Would you let him or her perform surgery without determining the potential impact and understanding the recovery process? Most of us would not, yet when it comes to prescribing business solutions we often fail to diagnose and understand problems adequately before launching "solutions." Even worse, we often do not fully understand what these solutions will and will not do for us.
The equivalent of a good medical diagnoses prior to surgery is a baseline in business. During a baseline all critical elements of the business are evaluated in the scheme of the overall system, the business. This type of assessment allows for an unbiased evaluation. A baseline is not performed from the viewpoint of individual departments or functional areas but from a "customer touch to customer touch" perspective. This perspective is advantageous for several reasons:
It is unbiased. Any assessment performed from a departmental viewpoint is bound to be biased towards the best interest of the department versus the business as a whole. It ensures that the "critical path" of process improvement for the overall business is determined. It forces a fact based assessment versus a politically based assessment.
Several key areas should be evaluated during a comprehensive baseline: Operations, People Systems, Finance, Information and Knowledge flow.
The outcome of the baseline, or physical, is a clear understanding of leverage points in the organization and a sequence of future actions to most efficiently improve business performance.
Recently we have conducted several baselines yielding results far superior to the originally proposed "solutions" to the business problems. These baselines have been conducted by internal resources, primarily trained in "Six Sigma" and "Lean" methods. A typical baseline takes between 1 and 4 weeks to complete depending on the size and issues in the organization. The tools of "Six Sigma" and "Lean" practitioners lend themselves very well to this type of assessment and it can in fact provide more useful information than traditional consulting reports.
If you are spending money on major capital expenditures, hiring new resources to increase capacity or to manage high turnover, or if you are implementing programs without a comprehensive physical of your company to understand the leverage points you may want to reconsider. Within a week your team can be trained to conduct a baseline and begin assimilating the information needed to help you build comprehensive solutions. Later this same team can lead the implementation.
Click here to read a full-length
article on baselines.
Industry Observations:
We are observing a change on the "Six Sigma" front. While "Six Sigma" is becoming a mainstream commodity, some organizations are becoming increasingly wary of one-size-fits-all "cookbook" implementations and problem solving methods. See our next newsletter for a discussion on differentiation and implementation options regarding "Six Sigma" and "Lean." We will also discuss measures of success for "Six Sigma" and "Lean" programs.
Contact us:
Visit our contact page
or call us at 913.685.9280.
Thought for the day: "Think like an owner - about your job and your life. Owners focus on results regardless of who's watching."
Excerpt from "Nuts!" by Kevin & Jackie Freiberg.
If you have questions, comments, or submissions for this Newsletter send an e-mail to
marjgreen@sixsigmasystems.com
with "COMMENT" in the subject line. If you have topics that you would like to see covered in future issues please let us know.
Be sure visit the Discussion Forum.
Be involved by posting questions and getting in discussions or post any tips you might have learned in doing related work. If you have ideas and opinions we welcome you to post responses and helpful comments.
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Newsletter - November 2000
Upcoming Events:
Click
here for details.
EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP SEMINAR in Phoenix, AZ February 6-7,2001.
This 2-day event is designed for CEOs, Presidents, VP of Operations, CFOs and any executive that own the improvement of
production systems. The course will clearly demonstrate the integration of Six Sigma and Lean tools as well as looking at
the Organizational Design & Leadership components of creating sustainable results. Different options and models for
implementation will be discussed. One round of golf at the Hilton Tapatio Cliffs will be optional.
Integration News - Beyond Six Sigma:
WE ARE SEEING SPECTACULAR BUSINESS
results by helping companies leverage their existing six sigma resources on large-scale
projects. Examples of projects include the redesign and simultaneous improvement of entire plants to improve service
levels, reduce inventories and eliminate defects. Others have been conducted in administrative settings to decrease defects
while simultaneously improving retention rates (Call Center type environment).
This approach is gaining popularity as it leverages and enhances
existing employees. Training on topics such as proprietary economic inventory modeling under constraints is delivered as
required by the project. This project work is led by existing Masters. Technical support, project management coaching and
supplemental training is provided by our experts.
In addition to the project benefits, this model takes your
existing skilled resources and your improvement program to the next level!
Thoughts on Managing Change:
Have you ever wondered why so many people say they know how to
do something but then they don't do it? Have you ever been in a meeting proposing a good plan that was based on data and would
improve things significantly and had someone tell you that wouldn't work?
Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing are programs that have driven
significant business results for many companies for the simple reason that they required doing project work. In fact reputable
six sigma and lean programs require a certain level of business results associated with project completion be achieved to attain
certification. Where have these kinds of programs been most successful? At companies that had clear leadership direction
and where people were focused on doing things. We have seen many good ideas stopped prior to implementation inside
companies that were focused more on knowing than doing. Furthermore, these companies are very demoralizing places for those with a
bent to make things happen. In order to be effective, leadership must recognize the role they play in driving business
results. If the systems are not designed to support improvement no amount of knowledge can close the gap. Yet even in companies
where the knowledge is relatively low, great performance can be seen when management provides an environment to foster
improvement.
So what should leaders do to foster this culture?
- First they need to understand what the culture is and is not and understand
the gaps in the culture. This requires a very honest assessment, which often cannot be done from inside the
organization. Sometimes the gaps are technical, sometimes they are leadership related and sometimes they are both.
- Look at performance metrics. Do they give a clear picture of the
results achieved given the resources deployed? This is one of the best ways to see if your performance is really improving.
- Look at your organization chart compared to the process flow;
typically the organization is 90 degrees to the product
flow. This leads to organizational dysfunction and sub-optimization,
which is often reinforced by conflicting metrics.
The bottom line is this. If you want to drive sustainable
business improvement in an organization you must close the knowing doing gap.
- If you would like to learn more about this
gap read "The Knowing Doing Gap"
by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton. The book takes a look at the habits of
companies today around knowing the right things to do but not executing them.
- Another paper you may like can be accessed
by clicking here.
If you would like help identifying and closing your gaps contact us. We can
help you whether you have never implemented an improvement program or whether you want more from your existing programs.
To contact us via
email click
here.
Or call us at
(913) 685-9280.
Thought for the day:
"Progress is not created by contented people."
Frank Tyger
If you have questions, comments, or submissions for this
Newsletter send an e-mail to marjgreen@sixsigmasystems.com
with "COMMENT" in the subject line.
If you have topics that you would like to see covered in future issues please let us know.
Be sure to visit the Discussion Forum by clicking
here.
Be involved by posting questions and getting in discussions or post
any tips you might have learned in doing related work. If you have ideas and opinions we welcome you to post responses and
helpful comments.
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