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Monthly Archives: May 2005
Marketers Are Embracing Statistical Design of Experiments
Marketers Are Embracing Statistical Design of Experiments (site broke link so I removed it) by Richard Burnham. Crayola® conducts an e-mail marketing DOE to attract parents and teachers to their new Internet site. The company discovers a combination of factors that makes their new e-mail pitch three-and-a-half times more effective than the control. (Harvard Business Review, October 2001, “Boost Your Marketing ROI with Experimental Design,” Almquist, Wyner.) … Marketers can’t always be certain what triggers buyers to respond. In the … Continue reading
Posted in Design of Experiments, Management Articles, Six sigma, Statistics
Tagged Design of Experiments, marketing, Six sigma
2 Comments
A Lean Walk Through History
A Lean Walk Through History [link broken, so it was removed] by Jim Womack author of Lean Thinking Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones, 2003 and The Machine That Changed the World The Story of Lean Production by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones and Daniel Roos, 1991. Once you are sensitized to the depth of lean history, along with its many advances and setbacks, it’s easy to begin filling … Continue reading
Posted in Management Articles
Tagged Lean thinking, management history
Six Sigma and the Evolution of Statistical Management Methods
Six-Sigma: the Evolution of 100 Years of Business Improvement Methodology (pointy haired bosses broke the link so I removed it) by Ronald D. Snee. The article includes a nice very quick summary of the development of statistical methods to aid management improvement in the last 100 years. Then the article gives a good overview of Six Sigma. There are four aspects of the Six-Sigma method… First, Six-Sigma places a clear focus on getting bottomline results… Next, Six-Sigma builds on improvement … Continue reading
Posted in Management Articles, Six sigma
Tagged Six sigma
Open Source Management Terms
Statistical Method Helps Boost Bottom Lines, Batting Averages [the broken link was removed] by Jon Van, Chicago Tribune: Using statistical techniques embraced by quality guru W. Edwards Deming, Holland has worked for a generation guiding enterprises large and small to boost efficiency. … Yet getting management support for an MVT project is vital, Holland said, because experience shows that only 25 percent of ideas intended to improve a process will have a positive effect. The others will either have no … Continue reading
Posted in Design of Experiments, Management
Tagged Design of Experiments, open access, open source
5 Comments
Six Sigma at the Kennedy Space Center
The Lessons of Six Sigma [broken link was removed]: Management tool helped refocus priorities, by Napoleon Carroll and Christa Casleton : Process ownership is not a recognizable role in the CFO organization; it doesn’t fit anywhere in the standard position descriptions, and there’s no spot for it on the organization chart. After rigorous analysis, it was clear to us that unclear process ownership was one of our major problems.
Posted in Management Articles, Public Sector, Six sigma
Iran Society for Quality – Blog
Iran Society for Quality – Blog [the broken link was removed]. I can’t read most of the site, but they seem to have a blog.
Posted in Management Articles
China and the Sugar Industry Tax Consumers
China to Raise Tariffs On Clothing Exports, from the Washington Post: The Chinese action would raise export duties on 74 categories of Chinese clothing from token amounts announced late last year to a range of 12 to 48 cents per garment, starting June 1. If the Chinese government must reduce the amount of the world textile trade that their country is taking, or face retaliation from other countries, this is a very smart move. Essentially China gets to tax the … Continue reading
Roger Hoerl’s Perspective on the Future of Six-Sigma
One Perspective on the Future of Six-Sigma by Roger Hoerl. Originally published in the International Journal of Six Sigma and Competitive Advantage 2004 – Vol. 1, No.1 pp. 112 – 119. Six-Sigma has maintained momentum for over ten years now, longer than many pundits expected. However, the key question remains: how long will Six-Sigma remain front-page news? The answer is that it will remain front-page news as long as it delivers front-page results. A second, and related question is: how … Continue reading
Curious Cat Blogs
Topic: Management Improvement We have started a new blog, Curious Cat Management Articles, specifically to highlight management improvement articles on topics like: Lean Manufacturing, Deming, Six Sigma, Continuous Improvement, Innovation, Customer Focus, SPC and System Thinking. We are still working out the best way we can use blogs effectively. Our current plan has several blogs targeted for slightly different audiences (so you may be interested in one, or several or all). The current Curious Cat Blogs: curiouscat.com Blog (this blog) … Continue reading
Posted in Management
Why Go Through the Painful Performance Process
Why Go Through the Painful Performance Process: The performance management blog points to an interesting study by PeopleIQ [the broken link was removed] that says that only 13 percent of employees and managers and 6 percent of CEOs think their organization’s performance appraisal is useful. And 88 percent say their current performance appraisal negatively impacts their opinion of HR. See also the previous Curious Cat posts on Performance Appraisals.
Posted in Management Articles, Performance Appraisal
Tagged Performance Appraisal
The Pitfalls of Six Sigma
The Pitfalls of Six Sigma [the broken link was removed]: Six sigma has strong advocates in the manufacturing world for its ability to help factories get lean, but many companies are feeling that their time and financial investment in six sigma has been wasted. Problems with implementation have caused financial and organizational setbacks. Some companies are strongly suggesting, and at times actually demanding their suppliers to adopt six sigma in their operations or run the risk of losing business. Many … Continue reading
Posted in Management Articles
Tagged Six sigma
Google: Good Service not Arbitrage
My comments on: Seth on Arbitrage from John Battelle’s Searchblog Thanks for the great blog. I have to disagree with this post however. First, I think Google chooses not to disclose more to investors mainly because the founders don’t go along with conventional wisdom. They would rather examine whether something is a wise use of management resources, and if not, don’t just do something just because most everyone else does. I don’t think the keeping trade secrets has much to … Continue reading
Posted in Customer focus, Google, Management
Tagged Google
Thinking Lean
Thinking Lean [the broken link was removed] by Doug Rich and Dave Bassett, from the May 2005 edition of Manufacturing Engineering. The first thing the kaizen initiative did was to simulate the process layout. This was accomplished through a series of steps ranging from AutoCAD and paper dolls to an actual scale model set up on a portion of the shop floor. By going through this exercise, we were able to review the logical flow of all process steps, which … Continue reading
Posted in Management Articles
Competing on the Basis of Time
Competing on the Basis of Time: The way to get rid of the big delay at verification is to move testing closer to coding – much closer. In fact, testing should happen immediately upon coding; if possible the test should have been written before the code. New code should be integrated into the overall system several times a day, with a suite of automated unit tests run each time. Acceptance tests for a feature should pass as soon as the … Continue reading
Posted in Management, Process improvement, Software Development
SEC chief quotes Deming
Security and Exchange Chairman William H. Donaldson Speaks At Chartered Financial Analysts Institute Annual Conference [broken link removed]: This approach will, ultimately, better serve investors, and it will also gradually temper the pressures on some corporate executives to fudge the numbers. It would behoove us all to remember the words of W. Edwards Deming: “People with targets, and jobs dependent on meeting them, will probably meet the targets – even if they have to destroy the enterprise to do it.”
Posted in Deming, Management, Systems thinking
Tagged Deming, Psychology, system thinking, targets
1 Comment
Search for Improvement With Complex Six Sigma
Search for Improvement With Complex Six Sigma [the broken link was removed] by Helen D’Antoni: To understand what companies are doing to curtail costs while improving performance, InformationWeek’s sister publication, Optimize magazine, conducted a survey of 156 business-technology executives, asking them about their company’s business-process frameworks, quality models, and technology standards. … of the 156 business-technology executives surveyed by Optimize Research, fewer than 40% report their company even employs Six Sigma.
Posted in Management Articles, Six sigma
Tagged Six sigma