For Motorola, the originator of Six Sigma, the answer to the question "Why Six Sigma?" was simple: survival. Motorola came to Six Sigma because it was being consistently beaten in the competitive marketplace by foreign firms that were able to produce higher quality products at a lower cost. More...
The questions below are from various conferences where I have presented, from reader emails, and from conversations I've had with colleagues and clients. More...
The changes Quality 2.0 brings to requirements has a major repercussion on the quality professional’s role. In the future, the quality professional’s role will be much more proactive. View PDF.
Using "L Mapping" to map core processes to an actionable level, a level where the Process Excellence Leadership Team–the PELT–can identify the critical to quality drivers in the process. More...
Exploring the "new" quality, which includes Six Sigma, lean and traditional quality concepts. View PDF.
Quality 2.0 is the first major revision of the quality mission in more than 200 years. It seeks to define a harmony of stakeholder's interests. More. View PDF.
Leadership is simple, but it is anything but easy. Most leaders wake up each day and hope that the people in their organization will do great things to move the organization forward. The Six Sigma leadership process makes this a lot more likely. More. View PDF.
Many Six Sigma experts have expressed doubt that Six Sigma can be used effectively in small, or even in some medium-sized, organizations. However, while the approach to deployment must be modified, it is possible for small businesses to successfully implement Six Sigma. Here is how. More...
What is small? Not enough data. We’ve all been there before. In a sense, we can never have “enough” data. Despite all of the difficulties, we are forced to deal with inadequate data. Here are a few statistical approaches to help you do this. More...
It’s no secret that we need metrics to manage our businesses; we can’t improve a process that we can’t measure. Most managers and leaders are trying to make sense of an overwhelming number of “important” performance measures often with very limited success. What’s to be done? More...
Dilbert is always good for a laugh. But there's a difference between a cartoon and journalism. In a column published in Nov. 26, 2006 Scott Adams takes aim at Six Sigma, having Dilbert pronounce it a fad that has been "widely discredited." Separate the facts from the humor with this article. View PDF
Are your regression models nonsense? Do variable weights have the wrong sign? Are the biggest weights in the model statistically insignificant? Your problem may be multicollinearity. More. View PDF.
Quality Digest 25th anniversary issue column. After more than two decades, Six Sigma continues to prove it's worth. More. View PDF.
Concise overview of the DEFINE-MEASURE-ANALYZE-IMPROVE-CONTROL project framework. View PDF.
It's not always necessary to execute every step in the DMAIC cycle. Sometimes you can skip directly to the next phase, or even to the end! View PDF.
To many quality engineers and managers, process capability is a jumbled confusion of ideas expressed in jargon that only the anointed can understand. Let me try to clear the air on the subject. More...
Six Sigma is not just a modification of the old engineering idea of three sigma quality levels; it is an entirely new way to manage an organization. More. View PDF.
A quick overviews of Six Sigma projects to provide you with an idea of what Six Sigma deployment looks like at the project level. More...
Microsoft feels your pain. Well, maybe not all of your pain--but at least the pain that software can help alleviate. Specifically, the company feels the pain you experience with information management as you deploy Six Sigma in your enterprise. More... (View PDF Version)
If implementation for its own sake is what you're after--not long-term results--you can devote just as little effort to a Six Sigma program as you want. More...
I try to set the record straight by explaining the true rationale behind this infamous "statistical correction." More. View PDF.
Tried-and-true Six Sigma techniques lead to quantifiable, real-world improvement. More. View PDF.
Fortune magazine featured an article that offered readers risky advice--namely, that Six Sigma could be ignored without adverse consequences. Don't believe it. More. View PDF.
The International Quality Federation is striving to certify Six Sigma Black Belts. More. View PDF.
There are differences--critical differences. And these differences explain why the popularity of TQM has waned, while Six Sigma's popularity continues to grow. More. View PDF.
You can't achieve Six Sigma by simply tweaking the process; it requires creativity. And the greatest enemy of creativity is hierarchy. Don't let your company hierarchy quash innovation. More...
I have an announcement to make: Normal distributions are not the norm. More...
Define, measure, analyze, improve and control your project planning. More...
Itemizing the elements of your Six Sigma projects helps achieve your goals. More. View PDF.
An awareness of Six Sigma parameters allows improved project delivery. More...
Sometimes just determining which projects to undertake isn't enough. Knowing the process constraints also helps us determine what the focus of the project should be. More. View PDF.
Nine key criteria help you identify projects that are likely to succeed and have a big impact. View PDF.
Software helps select the best projects. An exciting computer software product known as Crystal Ball Pro by Decisioneering makes it possible to select winning projects by factoring in all of the relevant factors. It does so by simulating various scenarios thousands of times, then choosing those that perform best. More. View PDF.
If you choose the wrong projects it's possible to make big "improvements" in quality and productivity that have absolutely no impact on net profit. The theory of constraints helps pick winning projects. More. View PDF.
Bill had a problem. His company's baseball team wasn't doing that well, and he was part of the reason. Bill was in a long slump. Frankly, he stunk at the plate. But Bill is a Six Sigma Black Belt. He decided to approach his batting problem just like he would approach any process problem at work--by conducting a designed experiment. More. View PDF.
Have you attributed your results to the right base data? A serious--and common--mistake is comparing the results of a study to the wrong base data. These "apples to oranges" comparisons often lead to poor decisions and, worse still, to inaccurate beliefs that can derail faith in the Six Sigma approach itself. More. View PDF.
Let's define those buzzwords we use every day. More. View PDF.
Unit yields are a misunderstood tradition. Misunderstandings on yields lead to a variety of poor management decisions. More. View PDF.
Who are they and what do they do? What, precisely, is a black belt? Where did the term originate? For that matter, where did the term "six sigma" originate? And, while we're on the subject, what's a green belt or master black belt? More. View PDF.
Which process improvement approach is right for you and your needs? Lean production is based on the Toyota Production System. When properly implemented, a lean production system can dramatically improve productivity (by as much as 95 percent when compared with traditional batch-and-queue production systems.) More. View PDF.
Six sigma isn't just about quality for quality's sake. It is about providing better value to customers, investors and employees. More. View PDF.
To make your customers truly happy, you must go beyond six sigma. Progressive people in the six sigma camp move beyond defining quality in terms of defects and defectives. More. View PDF.
Only when companies stick with it long enough to begin to approach six sigma quality levels do they get the desired results. Too often, "toe in the water" projects scare companies out of the pool before they even start to swim. More. View PDF.
To attain six sigma performance, we must minimize process variability, slack and redundancy by building variability, slack and redundancy into our organizations. More. View PDF.
Six Sigma generates as much improvement by changing things as it does by reducing variability. It's possible to conduct "virtual" experiments using existing data and artificial neural network (neural net) software. More. View PDF.
A manufacturing example illustrates the benefits of data mining and artificial neural networks. More...
We usually stop pursuing knowledge when it is no longer economical to do so. At what point have we learned "enough" so that we can (or should) stop using statistics? More...
X charts can be used to plot percentages, ratios, counts and other nonmeasurement data, even when the assumptions are only approximately met. More...
Is global warming real? Is it caused solely by human activity? These two articles utilize classical process excellence tools to explore these two important questions. Part I. Part II.
5 different ways to compute this common measure of variation. Which is best? More...
A quality consultant accepts the challenge of winning over a skeptical factory worker. More...
Deming's preferred approach to teaching was the Socratic method. A helper from Dr. Deming's seminars tells a story of how the Deming approach forced people to learn for themselves. More...
Doctors tend to focus on the most recent result rather than on patterns and trends. Showing them charts of historical data help them do a better job of providing care. More...
Getting control of a process is only the first step. Once you've managed to create a process that isn't broken, you should systematically break it so you can learn how to improve it. More...
Statistical significance does not equal importance. And vice-versa. So what does it all mean? More...
It is quite simple to check the assumption of statistical independence with a scatter diagram. And to figure out what to do about it. More...
Sometimes, median control charts offer an alternative to using individuals charts. Median control charts fill the vacuum between individuals charts and averages charts. More...
"Do no harm" is harder than it looks. Preventing accidents is no accident. It takes a rigorous approach to prevent negative outcomes. More...
The quality profession must focus on things done right, not just things done wrong. Data mining and Six Sigma can be used together to link customer data to pro-active improvement activities. More...
The "P" in SPC stands for process, not product. What you measure to control and improve your process may have little to do with what the customer is interested in. More...
If you're trying to determine a course of action, your best bet is to acquire knowledge, not to blindly use statistics to guide you. Statistical probability should be used only when we lack knowledge of the situation and cannot obtain it at a reasonable cost. More...
Cargo Cult Six Sigma misses what Six Sigma is and completely focuses on the visible aspects of Six Sigma. More...
Six Sigma's infrastructure creates formally defined change agent positions filled by people who possess technical knowledge about the change process. View PDF.
What I like and don't like about Six Sigma, and management. View PDF.
New paradigms, tools, and perspectives on process excellence and Six Sigma. View PDF.