I recently wrote a blog article for GoLeanSixSigma.com on the merits of having both an MBA and a Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt certification. That blog, published in April 2020, was written from the perspective of my teaching Business Process Improvement to MBA students at Hamline University School of Business.…
Project Summary The Challenge: Production was unable to keep up with customer demand The Discovery: Lots of waste and a lack of standardization The Improvements: Reduced wasted transportation, created parallel processes and standardized the processes The Results: 58% increase in production capacity and a $263K reduction in annual energy cost…
When customers are satisfied with their first purchase from your company, they patronize you again and your business records higher sales. They tell their families and friends, and they may also choose to buy your products and services. That first experience with your product and your service matters. Customer satisfaction…
Teresa Dickey and her team saved hundreds of work hours and $400,000 in soft savings after using DMAIC to identify and eliminate waste in a process in this Lean Six Sigma Success Story. The Challenge Kern County, California had a juvenile probation violation problem. The problem wasn’t the kids—it was…
By eliminating bottlenecks and promoting innovations in your business processes, you can propel your business to lasting organizational growth and increased revenue within a short time frame. When you build your business using Lean Six Sigma, it becomes easy to share initiatives, handle projects, track deliverables, and pay attention to…
You may run into process improvement enthusiasts who prefer one camp over another—the Lean camp uses Plan-Do-Check-Adjust (PDCA) and the Six Sigma camp uses Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control (DMAIC)—but which one is better, DMAIC or PDCA? For years now, organizations looking to implement process improvement have had to wrestle with which method to…
Surely everyone knows that process improvement has changed dramatically over the last 20 years, and certainly there are generational differences in the practitioners then and now. The first post in this series, The Next Generation of Lean Six Sigma (Part 1): Then and Now, was about the generational shifts in…
Have you ever worked with individuals named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody? I have. Here is how the story unfolds. “There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about…
The DMAIC problem-solving method may seem like a stranger to the A3 but they actually make a great pair. This continuous improvement combo brings much-needed clarity to Kaizen Events, Projects or any process opportunity. But first, a bit of background. We all may know DMAIC as it was born from…
If Bill Smith was the father of Six Sigma, Mikel Harry, in his words, was the godfather. We lost Dr. Harry in 2017 but this month would have marked his 68th birthday. Dr. Harry worked with pioneer Bill Smith at Motorola to refine the Six Sigma method and spread it…