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.
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.
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 United States, Europe, etc. and be thanked for doing so by the governments of those countries. Such is the odd nature of international trade these days.
The Chinese government is going to tax textiles being exported by China. Therefore when an American picks up a shirt at the mall it will include a new tax to the Chinese government and this is seen as a good thing by the American government. An alternative would be for the American government to tax imports. Then the tax paid by the American consumer would go to the United States government instead. It seems odd that the American government thinks it is better to pay a tax to the Chinese government than to the American government but that seems to be what their policy and statements support.
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 might the initiative morph and evolve in order to remain relevant going forward? This paper suggests that several emerging trends will continue, such as migration to financial services and healthcare, standardisation of Design for Six-Sigma (DFSS), and further globalisation. Longer term, a key challenge appears to be integration into normal operations, rather than managing Six-Sigma as a separate initiative.
Roger Hoerl, leader of the Applied Statistics Lab at GE Global Research, is one of the leading lights in the Six Sigma movement – in my opinion. He has also co-authored several excellent books:
You can also view more articles by Roger Hoerl via the Curious Cat Management Improvement Library.
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:
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.
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 organizations have combined their lean initiatives with six sigma and are progressing well, while others with poor implementations and abandoned programs risk being left in the dust.
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 do with their reason for not feeding the wall street analysts.
Google’s IPO is another example of their decision to take a different path than other companies. Also the stories I have read about how the founder’s reacted to venture capital requests (demands is probably what the venture capitalists thought they were until they capitulated) showed the founders tendencies to go their own way. They could get the money they needed without having to go along with the rules others wanted to impose on them. It is a great benefit to Google that management can focus on more important things, but it will likely become an issue again when the incredible growth of profits Google has been achieving eventually slow.
Second I disagree that what Google does is arbitrage. They do have a great money making machine. But what they did was provide a service that people liked. Then they found a way to get those who wanted access to their users (to advertise) to pay Google well for the privledge. And Google did a good job of finding a solution that those paying the bills liked. That it has worked for those paying the bills shows the advantage of designing a system that benefits you and your customer. Many internet companies got their customers (other companies) to pay them lots of money but when their customers failed to make money (and many then went out of business) then you had fewer (or no) customers left. Just like teaching someone to fish provides a greater benefit than giving them one fish, a customer that is able benefit from your service and prosper and continue to be your customer is better than a customer you lose (because they don’t benefit from the relationship with you).
Then Google expanded the market by modifying their technology to provide other web sites a way to be paid by advertisers. The system Google had developed did a great job of getting advertisers to bid against each other to increase Google’s revenues. And Google then modified their display of ads to reflect their analysis of the page content to again take great advantage of their existing technology. In this case, Google took some of the money the advertiser pays for the service that Google provides.
For Google to be using arbitrage they would have to, for example, pay your site some amount each month to run ads and then sell that right to someone else. Since they don’t, in fact, pay you to run ads on your site with the hope they can charge others more for the right to use the ad space they bought from you. Google takes a percentage what the advertisers pay, that is not arbitrage.
Google, to use a internet bubble phrase, is doing a good job monetizing eyeballs. However, that is not arbitrage it is just doing a good job of maximizing revenue and profits. Yes Google is able to make money because they are paid more by advertisers than it costs them to deliver what the advertisers want. But I don’t see how that is more like arbitrage than Toyota selling a car for more than it costs them to make the car.
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 helped ensure that we reduced the distance traveled by each spindle during the manufacturing process. At one point we even had a person walk the entire production cycle of the spindle manufacturing process so we could track the actual distance that each part traveled from start to finish.
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 feature is complete, and regression testing should be run on the integrated code daily or perhaps weekly.
From the Poppendieck web site, authors of Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit for Software Development Managers.
