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Business Improvement with Six Sigma by Dr Anirban Basu (Express Computer, India IT weekly):
Related Posts:
Spreading the Lean Gospel by Rebecca Reid:
Great article - The Lion of Lean: An Interview with James Womack by Francis J. Quinn, Supply Chain Management Review:
As Deming said page 31 of the New Economics: “A numerical goal accomplishes nothing. Only the method is important not the goal.”
Topic: Management Improvement
How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers, Sarah Jane Johnston interview of Steven Spear.
The main difficulty is not a knowledge gap, but a performance gap. Most of what Toyota does has been published in numerous books (The Toyota Way, The Machine That Changed the World…) and articles (see see Curious Cat links to books and articles on Toyota’s management ideas). Reading that information is wise, but that is the easy part. The difficult part is actually managing more effectively. Some of the concepts can be difficult to accept but they really are not too difficult to understand.
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SPC: From Chaos To Wiping the Floor by Lynne Hare (who also was the 1997 Hunter Award winner)
Setting control limits at 3 standard deviations is a decision based on experience. Shewhart, Deming and others determined it was sensible to take resources to look for a special cause was most effective for results more than 3 standard deviations from the mean - it is not a mathematical conclusion but a empirical conclusion.
Americans’ Dirty Secret Revealed by Bjorn Carey
See also: Google News on washing hands - Soap and Detergent Association press release
A study released recently spawned a flurry of articles on washing hands. I have seen such reporting before and again I find it interesting (as sad as that might be). The stories repeatedly say things like: “Men’s hands dirtier than women’s.” The study actual was focused on the percentage of people who washed their hands. While there is likely a correlation, making such leaps in reporting data is not wise. This example is often found in the data used in organizations. Where interpretations of the data are given as the facts instead of the data itself. However that is not what I find most interesting.
Instead I find the lack of operational definition interesting. In many of the articles they have quotes like:
Only 75 percent of men washed their hands compared to 90 percent of women, the observations revealed.
The Google blog has a new post on: Googlebombing ‘failure’
Basically they explain that Google is not making a judgment that the result top results for “failure” represent Google’s opinion of who is a failure. The top result is the Biography of President George W. Bush on the whitehouse.gov web site, and the second result is Michael Moore’s home page.
As Google explains:
That explanation makes sense.
I think here their post gets a bit tricky. I think it makes sense that they say they don’t condone “the practice of googlebombing” but exactly what the difference between that and the “collective wisdom” of the web that they tap to determine what words people use to link to a web page is tough to say. If a bunch of web authors think the photos of Olympic National Park on our web site are worthy of linking to that is exactly the type of information Google takes advantage of to provide relevant search results.
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Everybody Wants It, Toyota’s Got It by Grant Robertson, Globe and Mail (Canada):
People often look for the secret new idea instead of just executing well. So much improvement is available just using ideas that have been known for decades. But instead of doing that people keep searching for new magic bullets.
25 New MacArthur Fellows Announced
press release
overview of fellows
I think the fellowships are a great idea: give money to people who have done excellent work. I am not sure of the motivations of the MacArthur Foundation, but if it were me I would trust by providing funds to those people they would (as a group, not every single person) take advantage of those funds to create great advances for all of humanity.
As I have mentioned before I also like, Trickle Up. While different in actual, to me there is a similarity: money is given that provides opportunity that I trust will make for a better world. The fellowship site does mention: “unrestricted fellowships to individuals across all ages and fields who show exceptional merit and promise of continued creative work” which indicates they do expect conduit creative work even though the fellowship is unrestricted.
It is great to see examples of those doing work worthy of such high praise.
Solectron Corp: IW Best Plants by John Teresko
Solectron has long been a company focused on management improvement: Baldrige, Six Sigma, Process Improvement, Lean etc. Their stock value sure has not done well however. Partially this is due to the very difficult contract manufacturing competitive landscape.
Healthcare Costs Spike Again by Jeanne Sahadi, CNN/Money:
This is not sustainable. I feel like Brad Setser talking about the USA trade deficiets (by the way if you have any interest in economics, or international trade, or investing you really should read his economics blog - it is great). Deming noted excessive health care costsas a deadly disease to the American economy and the news just gets year after year. This system is obviously broken and in need of fundemental change.
Related Health Care posts:
Health Care improvement articles and studies via the Curious Cat Management Improvement Library.
Edson Puts The Squeeze On Waste by Ron Richardson
“Our mantra now is unless we have an order for it, we don’t build it. That and some multi-skilled plant people - for which we pay them extra for the additional skills have made us more effective.”
Accepting lean ideas is not always easy. Lean thinking requires a new way of viewing the world. The system must change for the methods to work.
Advanced technology is great, but as a hammer is not always the best tool, similarly the most technologically sophisticated solution is not always the best solution.
Using Lean and Six Sigma in Project Management by Derrell S. James, Quality Digest:
However, the quality of that velocity is forever tied with reducing variation–thus the innate and required linkage with Six Sigma tools.
This is my response to the Deming Electronic Network message on measurement.
I find it useful, to assure that data collection is a wise use of resources, to ask what will be done with the results. If you don’t have an answer for how you will use the data, once you get it, then you probably shouldn’t waste resources collecting it (and I find there is frequently no plan for using the results).
I have found it helpful to ask: what will you do if the data we collect is 30? What will you do if it is 3? The answer does not need to be some formula, if 30 then x. But rather that the results would be used to help inform a decision process to make improvements (possibly the decision to focus resources in that area). I find, that asking that question often helps reach a better understanding of what data is actually needed, so you then collect better data.
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Keeping High-Tech Valley Jobs by Ed Taylor, East Valley Tribune (Arizona) via Lean Manufacturing Blog:
Engineers achieved that by changing the layout in the fab and reducing losses in the manufacturing process, Hall said. And employees were trained in Six Sigma quality improvement techniques, he said.
Topic: Travel Photos
I finally have posted photos from my June 2005 trip to North Cascades National Park. See more photos from the same trip: Mount Saint Helens, Olympic National Park, North Cascade National Park. Photos from other trips: Curious Cat Travel Photos.
My message in response to messages on Six Sigma on the Deming Electronic Network:
I think the DEN members criticizing the problems with Six Sigma make valid points. However, I personally think they often go too far. That is my opinion, and each of us have our own views.
While some (probably even many) of the Six Sigma exhortations for Six Sigma quality would properly be seen as a slogan or a target without a method I don’t think it is fair to say they all are. Six Sigma includes a method to improve.
I think we may have gone to far, when we get to the point where: Deming said some things against Six Sigma, therefore Six Sigma is bad. Deming questioned what TQM meant, therefore TQM is bad. I agree aspects of Six Sigma are bad. I also think some aspects of Six Sigma are good. And I think the same things about TQM.
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Six-Sigma Pitfalls by Marc S. Morrison, Industry Week.
In a word, yes.
While an amazingly simple idea, people seem to forget this quite often. When people say “Six Sigma is great” or “Six Sigma is a waste” often they are talking about different things. But because in both instances “Six Sigma” is used people believe that the meaning must be the same in both cases. It often isn’t. While I find some Six Sigma efforts, books or consultants very useful many others (that also use the words “Six Sigma”) do not offer much of value.
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Topic: Management Improvement
Thinking About in-car Navigation Systems by Robert Scoble:
While Toyota is doing great things they still have things to learn. As the quote above indicates they don’t think like software companies. Software companies have learned to take every advantage of the internet to collect feedback. And those used to such system will find fault with any company that fails to do so, as shown above. And for good reason, failing to collect such feedback is a poor practice.
Why can’t the system learn after a few times that you’re a Starbucks freak and just permanently put that in the memory. Dave even went further. He’d like the system to say “you’re near a Starbucks, wanna go there?”
Having to type out the entire word over and over seems like a poor design.
And this statement is still true. While certain aspects of the current system could be improved this is likely an innovation that will become an expected feature in cars in the future. Hopefully with a better mechanism for collecting feedback.
Katrina - the landline - Telecom’s Response by Stuart Henshall via Scobleizer
Good idea. If Bell South doesn’t want to be innovative immediately, then regulators should require land line companies to allow Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) companies to provide solutions. To me the key is to allow the land lines to be converted to a solution that will work for customers now. VoIP seems like the best alternative, for all those in temporary lodging.
For such a plan to work companies will have to provide the VoIP service in a very easy to use way. My guess is if this idea is tried, they will make it work.
Another post with more details on this idea: A Brilliant Idea for Helping Katrina Victims.
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