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		<title>Six Sigma Blogs at the iSixSigma Blogosphere</title>
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		<description>Six Sigma Blogs at the iSixSigma Blogosphere</description>
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			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: State of Maine – CI-P's Visit Lonza.]]></title>
			<link>http://blogs.isixsigma.com/archive/state_of_maine__ci_ps_visit_lonza.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[On Monday June 1, 2009 Continuous Improvement Practitioners (CI-P), from the State of Maine "Bend the Curve” initiative, led by Walter Lowell, conducted a study mission at Lonza in Rockland Maine. To quote from the Lonza web site, “Lonza is one of the world’s leading suppliers to the pharmaceutical, healthcare and life science industries. Its products and services span its customers’ needs from research to final product manufacture.”
Lonza recently began some Six Sigma initiatives including Value Stream mapping and specific Kaizen and Kanban analysis that have reduced waste, lowered required inventory, automated some processes, increased productivity and saved money in most every area reviewed. Jon Kirsh, formerly with MEP Maine has new VSM planned for a number of other areas and is hoping for the same results. 
The most impressive changes according to Jon included a 5S review of the research and develop workshop and the incorporation of KANBAN signs in various production areas to alert staff of lowed inventory or need for other resource ordering. Six Sigma tools have made a significant difference in the work that LONZA does. I enjoyed seeing the practical and economical process changes these tools have effected at LONZA.
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			<author><![CDATA[Stephen C. Crate]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[General&nbsp;,&nbsp;Government]]>
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			<pubDate>Fri, 24 Jul 2009 09:23:44 -0800</pubDate>
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			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: Lean Federal Contract Process]]></title>
			<link>http://blogs.isixsigma.com/archive/lean_federal_contract_process.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Saw an article this week in the Federal Computer Week emagazine about our new President making federal contracting more efficient.  This is great news and about time.  http://fcw.com/articles/2009/03/04/obama-reforms-contracting.aspx?s=fcwdaily_050309
This looks very promising for the Lean Government Champions. Sounds like a job for a Continuous Improvement Practitioner.  Are there any CI-P's in the federal government yet?]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Stephen C. Crate]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[Government]]>
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			<pubDate>Thu, 05 Mar 2009 08:07:57 -0800</pubDate>
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			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: Erie County Saves a Cool 1.5 Mil]]></title>
			<link>http://www.sixsigmacompanies.com/archive/erie_county_saves_a_cool_15_mil.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Erie County’s Six Sigma initiative is set to save 1.5 million dollars by year end. Almost a half million more than the initial goal.  Below is the news reporting the story.  Interviews with Al Hammonds, Deputy County Executive and former Six Sigma Director as well as the new Six Sigma Director Bill Carey.
http://www.wgrz.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=61254&amp;provider=gnews
Yet still Erie has naysayers...in bold is the nayism followed by my thoughts:

Savings could have been found without Six Sigma: True, Al and I both agree on that. But would have the savings been found without any structure, and would have they been able to measure the savings?  I think not. If they could have done it, they should have done it, but they were not doing it. Enter Six Sigma.  See 1.5 million in savings.
Wastes Employees time, taking them off the job for Six Sigma meetings: No one likes a worthless meeting, but if Six Sigma meetings contribute to the $1.5 million saved...we need to have more Six Sigma meetings. Plus for that to be a valid point we’d have to Pareto chart the actual time wasting activities employees engage in... and see where the biggest opportunities for improvement are.  My educated guess is that time "wasted" in Six Sigma meetings is much smaller than say water cooler talk, late to work, sick when your actually not sick...that list is endless. 
Department heads could have found savings themselves: Refer to first bullet. 
Instead of paying Six Sigma Director’s salary of $110,000: Yes, I agree. $110,000 is not what Erie county should be paying the Six Sigma Director.  According to iSixSigma’s 2008 Salary survey, the average salary for a Six Sigma deployment leader in the Northeast is $126,250.  Give this guy a raise.  
Erie County Says Six Sigma Has Exceeded Goals, wgrz.com, October 8, 2008]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Michael Marx]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[Government]]>
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			<pubDate>Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:00:56 -0800</pubDate>
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			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: Erie County Scouting Six Sigma Talent]]></title>
			<link>http://www.sixsigmacompanies.com/archive/erie_county_scouting_six_sigma_talent.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Al Hammonds has been appointed the new Deputy County Executive, which means Erie County is looking for a new Director of Six Sigma.  


“A new director for the Six Sigma program will be chosen within the next three to four weeks, Collins said. The hope is that the new hire will be easier to find than Hammonds was.”
As for Al…“he’s excited about the opportunity to continue implementing Six Sigma business practices within county departments.”

“Beginning to implement Six Sigma in Erie County government has been one of the most challenging, yet rewarding jobs of my career,” said Hammonds.  “I will approach my new responsibilities with the same excitement and drive.”  
Anyone interested in leading the Six Sigma initiative in Erie County, get that resume in.  
Collins appoints new deputy county executive, Tonowanda News, July 8, 2008
Hammonds Named Deputy County Executive, WNYmedia.net, July 7, 2008]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Michael Marx]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[Government]]>
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			<pubDate>Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:58:02 -0800</pubDate>
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			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: Malaysia's fuel price hike]]></title>
			<link>http://blogs.isixsigma.com/archive/malaysias_fuel_price_hike.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[
Last Thursday, 5th June, the Malaysian Government revamped its petrol subsidy system by increasing petrol prices by a steep 41%, from USD0.58 (RM1.92) a liter to USD0.83 (RM2.70). It is low if you guys look at it in US currency, but in Malaysian Ringgit terms it’s a spike in cost of living. Public expectation here is low petrol prices because Malaysia is an oil-producing country. Petrol in Venuezela, by the way, is USD0.05 per litre.
This price hike caused the following to happen in chain-effect:
• Transportation companies announced increases of 35% in trucking and logistic fees (now it’s increased to 40-45%)• Petronas announced gas price increase by 187%• Electricity rates increased 18-26% for commercial and small businesses• Kuala Lumpur stock exchange fell 27 points the next day the price hike was announced• An island-state said that low-cost housing was no longer possible in anticipation of rising building materials cost• Other Government-price-controlled food items such chicken had their ceiling price removed
The main argument for the fuel price increase is that the heavy government subsidies eat into the economy pie and that the Malaysian fuel subsidies flows to its neighbors Thailand and Singapore (in a limited way)- Thailand and Singaporean vehicle traffic into Malaysia is estimated to be above 200,000 vehicles a day across the Thai-Malaysian and Singapore-Malaysia borders. The Thailand and Singapore cars fill-up before leaving for home. Singaporeans are allowed only a three-quarter full gas tank as their vehicles cross the border.
Goldman Sachs estimates a 7% inflation for June while local financial institutions forecast a 5-6% inflation for the whole of 2008, a ten-year high. There are immediate mitigation steps undertaken by the government of course, such as a USD191 and USD46 per annum rebate for small car and bike owners respectively. However, there are huge gaps in the process- people who do not own vehicles are missed out in the picture, left alone to combat inflation. 
The Malaysian Government is expected to realize USD12.23 (RM40) billion in the subsidy cuts this year. With the savings there promises of improving and expanding the public transport system and other public-beneficial programmes. Citizens take this fuel price hike from a political viewpoint as well as the economics of it. There is high suspicion on the utilization of subsidy savings- where is the Government channeling the additional petro-dollars from the realized savings to. Another prolonged fury- the financial statements of Petronas are not made public by law since many years back. 
Public expectation is on the Malaysian Government to improve the public transport infrastructure which they have promised to do but still dragging their feet on it. Yes, the public feels left alone. Public transport is important so we can all leave our cars at home and start using a cheaper means of transport. Meantime, the Malaysian Government slashes RM2 billion of its ministers’ entertainment allowances and promises no further fuel price hikes this year. Pullback in government spending has its effects on the economy, as we know the theory of macroeconomics explains it. The first blood drawn will be on Malaysia’s retail and hotel sector because the entertainment cut affects government seminars and events … the reduction in government spending will result in a contraction and loss of jobs in both industries eventually. 
But frankly everyone hopes this situation does not arrive. Being worked in the hotel industry previously- in times of falling operating profit, the only immediate controllable remedy is to cut and reduce operating expenses. However 4-5 star hotel operators know that cutting costs has a limit before it impacts on guests’ experience. I was lucky to have Six Sigma when trouble hit my hotel in 2003. That year SARs arrived and it hit the hotel industry hard (imagine a hotel having an average occupancy of 90% going down to 8% for three months)- for starters my colleagues and I (senior management) voluntered a 25% pay-cut to immediately reduce costs. Six Sigma was just launched in the Asia-Pacific region and the team quickly hit the boardroom and flipcharts to identify revenue-enhancing and cost reduction lean projects. I particularly championed a laundry project and an electricity reduction program. Six Sigma tools such as process mapping, the CTQ diagram and VOC helped identified critical process areas which mattered to our guests most. Those areas were treated with extreme care if there was a particular cost reduction. We sold our laundry services to nearby hotels; staggered group check-ins and planned chiller starts on half-hour intervals to avoid the triggering the higher band electricity rate and so on. SARs lasted till the end of the second quarter of 2003. Despite of this, the hotel went on to achieve 125% of its budgeted gross operating profit by the end of 2003; increased short term investments to USD4 million, and the paycuts never flowed down to the other managers and staff. I can frankly say that without the timely appearance of Six Sigma in Asia-Pacific at that time, the drastic cost-reduction my hotel took would have been more damaging to the business. 
That’s Six Sigma for you- tested in times of financial turmoil.
Quickfacts
Currency USD1~RM3.27 at time of writing
Per capita (estimated) 2007 USA USD46,000; Malaysia USD14,400
 ]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Vincent Chin]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[Government]]>
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			<pubDate>Wed, 11 Jun 2008 10:49:17 -0800</pubDate>
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			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: Do the Public Policy Guru's get it?]]></title>
			<link>http://blogs.isixsigma.com/archive/do_the_public_policy_gurus_get_it.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Lean government is making public sector inroads through out the US.  It is exciting to see this.  But I am worried.  Some managers seem to see it as a weapon, rather than a tool.   “The legislature is making us more accountable so we have to do something or else”.   “Do more with less”.  “Cut staff so we can lower the budget”.  These attitudes have nothing to do with lean government and everything to do with poor public policy. 
It is important for Lean process analysis to gain some better more understandable public recognition.  This needs to be done by not only the Champions, and Managers but more importantly practitioners who understand public policy language.  The facts show that lean process analysis and implementation can make a difference between a well run efficient and value laden government service and a wasteful bureaucratic mess. 
Are any candidates listening?
 ]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Stephen C. Crate]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[Government&nbsp;,&nbsp;Lean]]>
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			<pubDate>Sat, 31 May 2008 05:09:53 -0800</pubDate>
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			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: Revisiting Henry Ford]]></title>
			<link>http://blogs.isixsigma.com/archive/revisiting_henry_ford.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[I have been re-reading Henry Fords book “My Life and Work”. I got the idea to re-read this from Walter Lowell, the Lean Initiative Director at the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. It is available as an e-book from The Project Gutenberg.(see below)
In this wonderful book Ford talks about how he developed the horseless carriage. In terms of efficiency and lean use of energy, this was one of the first innovative engineering ideas that contributed to the industrialization of America. We all know the story and how it developed including Henry’s idea of interchangeable parts and, I would argue, one of the first Value Stream Mapping demonstrations of the lean use of people using the manufacturing production line. This led me to thinking about our current manufacturing dilemma in America and how my professional training in job analysis and vocational rehabilitation could begin to create some solutions for our manufacturing industry in America. More importantly my client base everyday is growing with 50 something men and women who only know how to use their hands to make stuff.  They find themselves unemployed or underemployed and worn out from $8.00 dollar an hour service jobs and in dire need of some real work and a livable wage. They have worked in construction and manufacturing and now can’t find anything reasonable to do. 
All political rhetoric aside it is a real problem for many American citizens both disabled and able bodied. How can lean thinking utilized by our government and manufacturing sector begin to solve this problem. What would Henry do?
As I read Henry’s book I looked for inspiration to combine all this evolving knowledge I have recently gained with the problem of our shrinking industrial base and my charge to help individuals with disabilities and related barriers find and maintain gainful employment in an integrated and competitive employment environment. This was the first quote I decided to build upon.
“The Government is a servant and never should be anything but a servant. The moment the people become adjuncts to government, then the law of retribution begins to work, for such a relation is unnatural, and inhuman”. 
I guess that means that if the government is creating useless jobs that do not grow the economy then in the end an unproductive dependency is created. But workforce development programs going back to the Conservation Corp have contributed to our economic development in this country including the development of the interstate system and many other infrastructure projects that support and sustain businesses in our country. 
Lean government proponents would do well to combine value stream mapping and other LSS tools with workforce development programming and provide a boost to our manufacturing sector. What an idea… use Henry’s Fords evolved manufacturing ideas combined with job analysis and employability development models and put our citizens back to work making stuff. What stuff? Stuff that comes from natural resources found in America. This is not entitlement but rather building on our historical strengths. 
Lean thinking is a transformational concept that must remain part of our entrepreneurial and public sector strategic planning. Where’s the muda?
Reference. Ford, Henry – My Life and Work, The Project Gutenberg: Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7213] Produced by Marvin Hodges, Tom Allen, Tonya Allen, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks, and the DP Team The Gutenberg Project]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Stephen C. Crate]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[General&nbsp;,&nbsp;Government&nbsp;,&nbsp;Innovation]]>
			</category>
			<pubDate>Fri, 28 Mar 2008 06:05:11 -0800</pubDate>
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			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: Naysayers in Erie County]]></title>
			<link>http://www.sixsigmacompanies.com/archive/naysayers_in_erie_county.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Six Sigma in Erie County is seeing setbacks as skeptic county legislators put a cap on the Six Sigma budget. The initial one million dollars planned has been slashed to $120,000.  

“I’m one of the skeptics, I believe. They didn’t name me Doubting Thomas for nothing,” Legislator Thomas J. Mazur, D-Cheektowaga, said Thursday. “I am glad the control board slowed down this steamroller.”
“I’m not sure we are going to be saving these millions and millions of dollars,” Legislator Timothy M. Wroblewski”
They want to pilot the initiative first, to see what happens…If only the legislators had done their research before making such a hasty decision.  iSixSigma Magazine research from Nov/Dec 2005 outlines the ins and outs of starting up a Six Sigma initiative.  
Finding One: You get what you pay for.  
Fifty percent of respondents (536) from companies that invested less than 500K on Six Sigma the first two years didn’t even see their investment back.  Nearly 75 percent of respondents (260) from companies that invested 500K to 1 million saw an ROI of 2x or more.  As the spending increased, so did the ROI. (Finding 1, Table 1.2, pg. 34)
Finding Three: Companies that begin with an enterprise-wide initiative have a higher ROI than those that start with a pilot program. 
Fifty three percent of respondents from companies who did not make their initial investment back the first two years worked from companies who started with a pilot initiative. Sixty percent of respondents from companies who saw an ROI of 8x or more worked for companies who started Six Sigma enterprise-wide.  (Finding 3 Table 1.2, pg. 38)  
I’m afraid that unless Hammond can really focus his efforts under the budget constraint, the legislators have sowed their own seeds of mediocrity.  Hammond and the Six Sigma team should still be able to save money despite the cuts.  After all, this is a government organization, where like it or not, admit it or not, there are apples, oranges and mangoes just laying around for the plucking.]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Michael Marx]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[Government]]>
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			<pubDate>Tue, 25 Mar 2008 14:13:52 -0800</pubDate>
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			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: Elections 2008]]></title>
			<link>http://blogs.isixsigma.com/archive/elections_2008.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[It’s election time again in Malaysia on 8th March 2008. I picked up this interesting story from Yahoo and wish to share it with the readers here. Held once every 5 years, this article talks about ’dead’ voters in Malaysia.

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia has found nearly 9,000 people aged more than 100 on its electoral rolls as it heads for general elections next month, raising suspicions that the books are "contaminated" with dead voters.
The Election Commission has found the names of 8,666 registered voters with birth dates from a century or more ago, the New Straits Times said on Friday, quoting commission secretary Kamaruzaman Mohd Noor.
They included two 128-year-olds, the daily said.
"As far as the commission is concerned, as of December 31 last year, these voters are still alive," Kamaruzaman said.
Opposition groups have complained for years that the rolls are outdated and vulnerable to fraud.
The Election Commission says it relies on a dead voter’s family or officials to notify it of the death and so rolls can be outdated, but it denies scope for electoral fraud whereby someone casts more than one ballot by impersonating a dead voter.
At the elections on March 8, the commission will for the first time use indelible ink to dye a voter’s finger to ensure he or she cannot attempt to cast a second ballot undetected.
"We suspect that many among them had in fact passed away but that the commission has not yet struck off their names from the rolls," said Wong Chin Huat, of electoral-reform lobby group Bersih, which includes several opposition parties.
"This suggests a high degree of contamination in the rolls, which will make it easy for people to impersonate them on polling day," Wong added.
Malaysia has 10.9 million voters and its population has a life expectancy of about 72 years for men and 76 for women.
Opposition party Parti-Islam Se-Malaysia, which first spotted the names of the two 128-year-old voters on the rolls of central Selangor state, said it was checking if they were still alive.
"We plan to apply to the Guinness Book of Records to list them as the world’s oldest voters if they truly are still alive and kicking," said party spokesman Roslan Shahir said.
I’m just wondering, what is your opinion on this from the Six Sigma point of view?
 ]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Vincent Chin]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[Government]]>
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			<pubDate>Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:49:39 -0800</pubDate>
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			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: Six Sigma Goes to the Pound]]></title>
			<link>http://www.sixsigmacompanies.com/archive/six_sigma_goes_to_the_pound.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[We can add one more U.S. city to the roster of those using Lean Six Sigma to better serve their citizens.  Hattiesburg, Mississippi is following the Six Sigma example of Fort Wayne and Erie County.  
A couple of projects are already underway… 






Hattiesburg city employees Julia Lowe, an Urban Development accountant, and Maj. Billy Lane with the police department were selected to attend Lean Six Sigma training classes.
Lowe’s project addresses simplifying the cost it takes to tear down abandoned buildings.  Lane said the intention of his Lean Sigma Six project is to improve the ways animal control provides its services following a series of complaints from citizens. 

The city sent Lowe and Lane to Pearl River Community College for the training which was done in partnership with the University of Southern Mississippi.  This is a much smaller initiative than Fort Wayne or Erie County, but it’s a start – and sometimes that’s the hardest thing to do.    
So the next time someone argues, “Six Sigma doesn’t apply to my industry…yada yada yada”,  This may be your reply: “Did you know that there is a dog catcher in Hattiesburg, MS that is using Six Sigma?  Tell me again why your business can’t be improved?”
City Adopts Lean Six Sigma, Hattiesburg American]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Michael Marx]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[Government]]>
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			<pubDate>Wed, 13 Feb 2008 13:05:20 -0800</pubDate>
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			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: Six Sigma: The Laissez Faire of Politics]]></title>
			<link>http://blogs.isixsigma.com/archive/six_sigma_the_laissez_faire_of_politics.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[As I’m reading the newspaper, I notice two articles from different countries, Australia and China, both about eliminating plastic bag usage in retail outlets by the end of 2008. The Australian article focused on the benefits and did provide a few statistics, such as the number of bags used annually, estimated % decrease of landfill occupancy, etc. When asked if the government had looked into any alternatives to improve the environment, such as adding a bag tax to reduce consumption, the response was along the lines of “no, because those ideas won’t work”.
You can imagine what has happened since this announcement has been made. Customers are beginning to hoard plastic bags. Retailers are scratching their heads for alternatives (and contemplating additional costs associated with those alternatives). Basically complete micro-chaos has erupted because of a politician’s quick rush to judgment without a plan. 
If there is one area in society that definitely needs an injection of Six Sigma, it’s politics.  Just like the working world of business, people want a silver bullet quick fix that sounds good and will make people feel good. Politicians often open their mouths without performing due diligence and as a result only partially address an issue.
Let’s look at the situation above to determine what went wrong from a Six Sigma perspective. The first step is to Define the problem.  “Plastic bags are bad” just doesn’t cut it. A more plausible definition would be something along the lines of “Country X uses Y plastic bags a year. By reducing or eliminating the number of plastic bags used, environmental problems x,y, and z will be improved.” 
Also, adding a scope would be nice. Are we looking at a viable alternative for plastic bags or do we want to reduce all forms of bag consumption? Do we want to look at non-recyclable plastic bags or will all plastics be considered?
Next, the problem must be Measured. The Australians have made a good start by citing bag consumption and environmental statistics, however quite a bit of information is missing from this phase.  What are the environmental repercussions from using an alternative such as a paper bag, cloth bag, plastic crate, etc.?
Measuring all encompassing data is essential for a successful Analyse phase, something the politicians have definitely left out.  What does the data tell us?  The answers should serve as the foundation for the Improve phase. In the article, the improvement plan is “to eliminate plastic bags by the end of 2008”, however no plan has been drafted on how to achieve this. Had the problem been more clearly defined and scoped, far greater leverage would have existed for improvement ideas. For example, if the word eliminate was replaced by the word reduce; I believe the target would be more realistic. 
If your project doesn’t have an improvement plan other than a government ultimatum, it’s going to be really difficult to get your problem under Control and managed. Will shopkeepers be fined for using plastic bags? Will retailers be able to meet the demands of the government by the end of the year? Will cargo ships be searched and bags quarantined? These questions may seem far fetched, however they prove a point- initiatives, even those backed by the government, are more likely to fail when not thought through.
The most concerning flaw I found with government solutions to plastic bag consumption is that often it does not take into account the voice of the customer.  While I believe most people are concerned to a degree about the environment, not having a plan to give customers viable options in a lieu of a plastic bag infringes on their freedom of choice. The “paper or plastic” question is virtually unheard of in Australia, even though paper bags are recyclable and can emit less greenhouse gasses when being produced. As a consumer, I would gladly pay a small bag tax to reduce usage, however the governments in question do not give me that option because “those ideas won’t work”. I would equate this to making project decision in the corporate world without including all key stakeholders in the department… and we know how that generally turns out.
In summary, if government leaders were to incorporate the Six Sigma methodology into decision making, key initiatives would be better defined, all relevant data would be analysed, and implementation of change would have less unanswered questions because the voice of the customer would be listened to.]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Holly Hawkins]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[Government]]>
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			<pubDate>Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:13:45 -0800</pubDate>
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			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: A quality bubble?]]></title>
			<link>http://blogs.isixsigma.com/archive/a_quality_bubble.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Gianna Clark notes that several hundred companies began their Six Sigma journeys about seven years ago. 
Is Six Sigma the quality equivalent of a stock market bubble? Are we cheerleaders of an irrational exuberance where performance economics do not match the hype we create? Is Six Sigma on the verge of becoming the next TQM - run over by advances in technology and easier approaches to improving performance? ]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Charles McKinney]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[Buzz/Press&nbsp;,&nbsp;Change Management&nbsp;,&nbsp;Conferences&nbsp;,&nbsp;Customer Satisfaction&nbsp;,&nbsp;General&nbsp;,&nbsp;Government&nbsp;,&nbsp;Guest Blog&nbsp;,&nbsp;History&nbsp;,&nbsp;Innovation&nbsp;,&nbsp;Leadership&nbsp;,&nbsp;Lean&nbsp;,&nbsp;Management&nbsp;,&nbsp;Methodology&nbsp;,&nbsp;Podcasts&nbsp;,&nbsp;Research]]>
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			<pubDate>Sat, 12 Jan 2008 12:32:57 -0800</pubDate>
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			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: Hello Six Sigma in Erie]]></title>
			<link>http://www.sixsigmacompanies.com/archive/hello_six_sigma_in_erie.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Chris Collins, the new County executive of Erie County, gave an interview to WNYMedia.net recently where he unveils the details of the Six Sigma initiative underway in the county.  The video below is the Six Sigma excerpt of the interview.  It’s only two minutes long and worth the watch.  



You can tell Collins has got his head wrapped around Six Sigma from the interview.  He states that the initiative will be a self-contained county department and announces the creation of a new position, Director of Six Sigma, to lead the efforts. I like how Collins says that running the Six Sigma initiative would be too much to give to a deputy county executive as one more thing to do.  
Alfred Hammonds Jr. has been appointed the Director of Six Sigma. Working with Hammonds is the Six Sigma implementation subcommittee team. Collins says about a dozen of them are Black Belts or Master Black Belts.  Many of the team members are from Six Sigma companies, including HSBC Bank, DuPont and Moog.  Most notable, retired Motorola Quality Director and Erie County resident, John Lupienski, is on the team.
Collins is showing commitment and providing the right resources.  Just a couple tell-tale sings your Six Sigma initiative will succeed.  How Collins handles the road blocks will also be key to success.  ]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Michael Marx]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[Government]]>
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			<pubDate>Fri, 04 Jan 2008 08:00:00 -0800</pubDate>
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			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: Goodbye to the Six Sigma Mayor]]></title>
			<link>http://www.sixsigmacompanies.com/archive/goodbye_to_the_six_sigma_mayor.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Mayor Richard’s legacy, journalgazette.net, December 26, 2007
Mayor Graham Richard left office last week as Mayor of Fort Wayne Indiana.  The article above describes his many accomplishments over his two terms in office, including Six Sigma:






From major public projects that will distinguish the city’s landscape for decades to the minutiae of using Six Sigma practices to improve snow removal, Richard leaves office Tuesday with an extraordinary track record.

Mayor Richard has been the superstar of Six Sigma for Government.  He liberally shared his knowledge, mistakes, and best practices through public meetings and Six Sigma conferences.  He even wrote a book about how Fort Wayne used Lean Six Sigma.  
Not only did he rally his own troops to Lean Six Sigma, wherever he spoke he inspired citizens to contact their own state officials and encourage them to make improvements.  
Mayor Richard has not only served the city of Fort Wayne, but through his exemplary leadership and business savvy, other cities have followed in his footsteps.  






Many local residents are probably unaware of how highly regarded Fort Wayne – because of Richard – has become in the world of public administration, using analytical tools like Six Sigma to quantify, evaluate and improve how the city delivers services.

The most recent county to declare pursuit of efficiency through Lean Six Sigma is Erie County with County Executive Chris Collins leading the way.  
Goodbye Mayor Richard, your legacy will live on, city by city.]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Michael Marx]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[Government]]>
			</category>
			<pubDate>Thu, 03 Jan 2008 11:54:22 -0800</pubDate>
		</item>

		<item>
			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: Collins Serious About Six Sigma]]></title>
			<link>http://www.sixsigmacompanies.com/archive/collins_serious_about_six_sigma.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Chris Collins, the new Erie County executive, is making good on his promise to bring business efficiency practices to the county...namely Six Sigma.






In his most unusual appointments, the new executive selected Alfred Hammonds Jr. as his director of Six Sigma implementation. Six Sigma is the business-sector efficiency discipline Collins championed during his campaign. Hammonds, senior project director at the University at Buffalo’s Center for Industrial Effectiveness, is a black-belt practitioner of Six Sigma.
 
Collins Goes Public, The Buffalo News, December 31, 2007]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Michael Marx]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[Government]]>
			</category>
			<pubDate>Wed, 02 Jan 2008 04:00:00 -0800</pubDate>
		</item>

		<item>
			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: Suggest Improvements then Take a Day Off Work]]></title>
			<link>http://www.sixsigmacompanies.com/archive/suggest_improvements_then_take_a_day_off_work.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[The U.S. Army Garrison Fort Leavenworth Army post in Kansas is striving to make Lean Six Sigma part of their culture.  Part of their project selection process is taking employee suggestions.  Suggestions for improvement have been hard to come by since Lean Six Sigma joined the Army.  Employees feared improvement would mean downsizing.  
But thanks to a new suggestion incentive program (and a commitment to no downsizing) suggestions for improvements are up:






The Garrison’s Lean Six Sigma Tiger Team formulated a reward system for civilian, military and contract employees. The reward corresponds with the success of the idea. For example, a civilian who suggests an idea that saves $2,600 could get an 8-hour time-off reward.

Employees who make suggestions can then track the fruits of their brilliant ideas via a tracking system.  This kind of reward system can go a long way.  
Jennifer Stefano, management analyst, says it best, "Everybody knows what to do to improve their job; making it relevant was the key."  A free day off work is more than relevant, it’s awesome.  Who in their right mind wouldn’t be making suggestions like crazy?  
So what does your company do to reward employees for making process improvement suggestions?  A day off, a gift certificate, or a pat on the back? ]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Michael Marx]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[Change Management&nbsp;,&nbsp;Government]]>
			</category>
			<pubDate>Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:59:45 -0800</pubDate>
		</item>

		<item>
			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: Elevating strategic relevance: Understand and inform strategy implementation]]></title>
			<link>http://blogs.isixsigma.com/archive/elevating_strategic_relevance_understand_and_inform_strategy_implementation.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[My last blog discussed elevating the strategic relevance of Lean, Six Sigma and process excellence.  My view is that mature Process Excellence Organizations enjoy or achieve credibility and success by executing a flexible performance-improvement process—attacking the top priorities, employing the best tools, selecting the right projects and leveraging organizational momentum.  The first thing mature Process Excellence Organizations do well is informing strategy setting and implementation (beginning with their own understanding of their enterprise’s strategy).
The most successful process improvement professionals are proactive rather than reactive about understanding and discussing strategy.  Executive level process excellence leaders share in common an understanding of the competitive position of their companies, options to shape competitiveness, and critical factors for success.  Further, these individuals understand the mechanics of a strategic management process and dynamics of organizational behavior that affect managerial commitment to change, execution against a plan, and responsiveness to opportunities and threats.
Positioning of the Process Excellence Organization determines its access to inform strategy setting and implementation.  Commitment from the COO to deploy best practices, for example, is more likely to result in Lean and Six Sigma becoming strategic levers, embedded in an organization’s culture and practice, than localized, bottom-up advocacy by a business unit executive, shared services leader or plant manager.  Yet unless market pressure, a crisis or some other impetus motivates a senior executive team to broadly rely on Lean and Six Sigma, Process Excellence Organizations must demonstrate credibility through their recommendations to improve performance and their track record of delivering returns to their companies.
Lean and Six Sigma professionals may ask how they are to shape strategy setting and implementation, if they lack access to regularly advise and influence senior leaders at their companies—the CEO, COO, CFO and especially the senior vice presidents in charge of business units, operations and technology.  Starting from their current base of deployment, Process Excellence Organizations should position themselves to identify and focus on strategically aligned opportunities for Lean and Six Sigma.
My assertion may not be fruitful in bureaucratic organizations—such as government institutions where the pace of change is slow, and status quo prevails.  At other companies the Process Excellence Organization can influence strategy. There is the annual planning cycle, where Lean and Six Sigma can inform the definition of change initiatives and funding of these projects, as well as progressive reduction of sales, general and administrative expenses.  Second, Process Excellence Organizations can bring a unique perspective to dialogue about longer-term strategies and programs.
Process Excellence Organizations can influence strategy because the strategic decision-making is ambiguous, dynamic and often chaotic.  Academics frame strategic planning as a formal process of answering three questions: (1) What does the business do?  (2) Form whom does it do these things?  (3) How does the business excel?  And the process has stages: evaluating the current situation, defining goals, mapping a route to achieve these goals, and monitoring implementation.  In a formal sense, the stages of strategic planning are not unlike the Deming lifecycle of planning, doing, studying and acting.  In practice, though, strategic planning is a communicative process, and strategies emerge from the habits and behaviors of organizations and their managers.  Executive dialogue, shareholder concerns, customer interactions, supplier dynamics, labor relations, information technologies, managerial fads all interact to form the content of strategy and direction of execution.
As an aside, I encourage anyone interested in sociological and behavioral approaches to strategy to look into research focusing on strategy as practice.  Over the last three decades, strategy research has tended to focus increasingly on organizational strategies as opposed to the activities of people in organizations as they define, elaborate, and implement strategies.  In contrast, strategy as practice is concerned with issues of practice within organizational contexts.  Lancaster University’s Management School is a good source of information about strategy as practice.
Start with the basics
Much is written about Lean and Six Sigma as tools for cost reduction.  More recently, the exploits of Starwood, Procter and Gamble, Capital One, and others highlight their relevance to innovation.  In terms of basic strategies, companies have three options, according to Michael Porter and others: low-cost production, differentiation, or some combination of the two.
Low cost production is a familiar paradigm among Lean and Six Sigma professionals in manufacturing, consumer products, healthcare, retail and service, and financial services industries.  Every industry has its favorite measures of efficiency: funding costs as a percentage of portfolio size for a mutual fund, percent of seats sold per airline flight, gross margin for product categories, etc.  Lean and Six Sigma professionals are familiar with the notion that reducing defects or eliminating cycle time can improve operating metrics, and these metrics contribute to the enablers of low cost production (e.g., economies of scale).
Differentiation is less familiar, especially for those of us who have focused on reducing variance of a distribution instead of shifting a mean.  Innovation is one way to differentiate.  Apple Computer is the most interesting, popular case study of innovation in the business literature today.  Another example is Proctor and Gamble’s shared services business unit.  After four years of successful cost cutting, Proctor and Gamble is now focused on managing its shared services as a business—figuring that exploiting core competencies in brand management and aligning delivery with marketing strategies can create sources of differentiation.  Whereas efficient production and processes are appropriable, strategies of differentiation are hard to craft and implement.
Corporate strategies are never as simple as low cost production or differentiation.  Rather, they emerge from the structures, habits and power in industries and at companies.  A few companies do well at managing strategy.  Most other are stuck in the middle—including companies with a significant investment in Lean and Six Sigma training and deployment.
A process excellence paradox highlights why understanding strategy is important—starting with the basics to develop a perspective on an enterprise’s current competitive position and future outlook.  The paradox goes something like this: Lean and Six Sigma have potential to raise any company to industry leader status, but too often returns on investing in process excellence are measured in six and seven figures instead of payback multiples greater than 20:1.  Pulling process excellence out of a rut and companies ahead in their industry has to be an exercise in strategic execution.
Institute disciplines to understand strategy
Efforts to understand strategy need to be disciplined, more than informal or one-off conversations.  Depending on the potential of the process excellence organization, many tools are available to understand strategies and their implementation at companies.  If formalizing disciplines to understand strategy is new, my advice is to start with a brown-bag discussion of your company within the process excellence organization or among its professionals and key business partners.  Things to cover include the economics of your firm’s industry, the external environment in which your company operates, and the internal capabilities of your firm.
The discussion should focus on understanding current state and future direction of the company at three levels of strategy: enterprise, business units and functions.  Leverage of Lean and Six Sigma tools is most often part of functional strategies, such as a multiyear plan to transform the operations and technology of a company or expand plant infrastructure in an overseas location.  Finding opportunities to have strategic impact depends on plans for the company and its business units.
These discussions do not need to produce a specific deliverable, but should factor into deployment planning and performance measurement for process excellence.  A number of frameworks can assist strategy discussions and create segues to efforts to evangelize, measure and govern process excellence.  One of my favorites is McKinsey’s “Star” or “7S” framework because it offers a holistic context in which to examine strategy implementation.
Accumulate knowledge from staff and line functions
By signaling its interest in understanding strategy, process excellence organizations may accumulate sufficient knowledge of strategy from their own professionals, colleagues in business areas and executive sponsors.  In my experience, Lean and Six Sigma advocates are willing to share knowledge and generous with information.  Though it never hurts to cast a wide net for knowledge and reach out to unlikely sources.
 Here are a few places to look:

Strategic planning: Many large companies have a strategic planning function, and a Chief Strategy Officer is becoming fashionable.  Often staffed by ex-management consultants, strategic planning departments provide analysis and advice to senior management about competitive positioning of the company.  While these departments may guard their work, they can facilitate building mind share with senior executives.
Corporate development: If your company relies on mergers and acquisitions to grow and compete, the team in charge of corporate development may provide a forward-looking perspective on the company, and assist tactical positioning of the process excellence organization.  Post-acquisition integration is a driver of strategic risk, and this is an area where Lean and Six Sigma can add value.
Corporate planning, budgeting and finance: These functions manage the multiyear and annual process of budgeting for programs, initiatives and operations.  Corporate planning functions can provide information about the efficiency of the company and performance of internal firm capabilities (e.g., operating metrics and ratios).  Information from the corporate planning department can be instrumental and is often necessary to sell a deployment strategy and benefits tracking process to senior management.
Financial engineering and modeling: Not all companies employ financial engineers or utilize financial modeling outside the strategic planning department.  At banks, insurance companies and firms with complex balance sheets, financial engineering disciplines can provide knowledge about the esoteric aspects of corporate finance that impact financial health and shareholder value.  Expertise in corporate finance is a weakness for most process excellence organizations that plan to market Lean and Six Sigma to finance departments.
Market research: Market research departments review secondary data, conduct original studies, and use qualitative methods to understand market and customer requirements.  Their work is a sophisticated voice of customer process, so market research managers can provide unique information about how markets and customers perceive a company.  Obtaining input from the market research department can assist with framing your understanding of market-facing strategies and opportunities to improve customer-facing processes.
Information technology: In companies that rely on information (most organizations today), the information technology architecture, program management office and database administration functions can provide useful information about problems with technology that limit internal firm capabilities.  In my experience with Six Sigma, data quality is an overlooked area that holds real potential for having strategic impact on cost and customer satisfaction.
Internal audit: Internal audit departments have a deep understanding of internal capabilities gained from rotational audits of all parts of a company.  Reaching out to an internal audit director requires sensitivity to matters of professional independence.  An internal auditor’s perspective on planning and control systems can provide useful information about governance, risk and compliance constraints that will impact opportunity identification and project selection.
Human resources: Many human resources departments cover organizational development and performance management.  Human resources managers who specialize in these areas can provide useful information about how raising employee satisfaction, reducing turnover and generally improving human capital will boost company performance.
These are a few areas where conversations about strategy may yield unexpected insight.  When reaching out, it’s important to frame discussions with these areas.  Asking focused questions, gathering perspectives, and testing impressions of a company’s strategy are the right level for these discussions.  If opportunities for Lean and Six Sigma come up, capture them in a pipeline of future projects and carry forward the discussion to deployment when the time is right.
Inform strategy through ideas for process excellence
The most successful process excellence organizations guide themselves with a deployment plan and through a governance process.  Some companies charter a management committee to decide where to apply Lean and Six Sigma and monitor realization of benefits.  In addition to promoting rigorous project selection, formal governance offers a forum in which to discuss strategies and influence big decisions.  Process excellence organizations with a bottom-up or less formal structure may want to pitch senior executives on possibilities for the company – pilot projects that may lead to strategic initiatives or higher impact participation of Lean and Six Sigma in ongoing initiatives.
To prepare for these discussions, the process excellence organization needs to synthesize its understanding of the company’s strategy.  One approach is to prepare an aide memoir that documents the following:

Industry and company facts
Key financial and operating metrics
Industry facts and analysis
Assessment of internal firm capabilities
Overviews of key company strategies and initiatives
Opportunities for process excellence
Key success factors for deployment
An aide memoir can take on many forms, and it should guide marketing and governance of Lean and Six Sigma deployment within a company.  To prepare an aide memoir, opportunities for process excellence need to be defined and mapped to company strategies and initiatives.  In this respect, one purpose of an aide memoir is to serve as the foundation of a marketing plan.
Ideation of opportunities is perhaps the most critical and actionable part of understanding and informing strategy.  In my experience, the most successful process excellence organizations use tacit or explicit methods to define opportunities to further implementation of strategy through Lean, Six Sigma and other best practices.  One approach is to set aside time for brainstorming at key points after conversations about strategy with business partners in a company.  The purpose of these sessions is to creatively tackle problems facing the company where Lean and Six Sigma can add value.  Another is to use nominal group techniques to structure similar discussions and to conduct a concurrent review of project opportunities in the pipeline.
Informing strategy depends on ideas from the process excellence organization.  In fact, informing strategy is continuous, subconscious and played out through the marketing, selling, execution and measurement of Lean and Six Sigma projects.  Bringing opportunities to the project selection process that are informed by an understanding of corporate strategy will help the process excellence organization create mindshare with senior management and build credibility through its focus on solving the most relevant problems through Lean and Six Sigma.
The deployment plan is a cornerstone of execution by the process excellence organization.  My next blog will cover deployment, starting with the early activities of marketing and selling process excellence.]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Charles McKinney]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[Change Management&nbsp;,&nbsp;Customer Satisfaction&nbsp;,&nbsp;General&nbsp;,&nbsp;Government&nbsp;,&nbsp;Innovation&nbsp;,&nbsp;Leadership&nbsp;,&nbsp;Lean&nbsp;,&nbsp;Management&nbsp;,&nbsp;Methodology]]>
			</category>
			<pubDate>Sun, 25 Nov 2007 18:18:21 -0800</pubDate>
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		<item>
			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: New iSixSigma Military Channel]]></title>
			<link>http://www.sixsigmacompanies.com/archive/new_isixsigma_military_channel.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[iSixSigma launched a new website last week, Six Sigma in the Military, complete with stories about how the U.S. Military is using Six Sigma.







The purpose of this iSixSigma Military channel is to document the transformation of the United States Armed Services through the use of Lean Six Sigma and related process improvement methodologies.
Ronald E. Rezek, special assistant to the acting secretary of the Army, has said the goal of the Army’s Lean Six Sigma deployment is to "make the business side of the Army as efficient as the war-fighting side is effective." Leaders of the other armed services echo that sentiment and transformation objective.
This portal will serve as a central community for everyone associated with the business transformation of the U.S. military. It will provide communication updates on deployments, the opportunity for military leaders at all levels to learn new skills, advance their careers and contribute to the success of their organizations.

The cover story of the September/October 2007 issue of iSixSigma Magazine is online at the new site as well as other news and information about the U.S. Military’s Lean Six Sigma initiatives.  ]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Michael Marx]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[Government]]>
			</category>
			<pubDate>Mon, 05 Nov 2007 16:31:43 -0800</pubDate>
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		<item>
			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: Six Sigma Politics]]></title>
			<link>http://www.sixsigmacompanies.com/archive/six_sigma_politics.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[If Fort Wayne Indiana is the Six Sigma City, we just might see a Six Sigma County on the horizon...if Christopher C. Collins is elected as the Erie County Executive. He believes that good government can be achieved through good business. The Buffalo News reports: 






Collins’ candidacy is built on his remarkable success in turning around several struggling companies. His clear goal is to graft the strategies that worked in those businesses onto Erie County’s often-dysfunctional government. Indeed, he specifically cites his desire to make Erie County the nation’s first “Six Sigma” county. Six Sigma is a business program of quality improvement and control.

I am all for the application of business improvement methodologies such as Six Sigma in government organizations.  We are seeing a clear trend toward that now in government organization including the U.S. military.  
Chris Collins has already had some negative feedback on his ambitions to become a “Six Sigma county.”  Mike Miller, a Six Sigma Green Belt, shares his thoughts on what Six Sigma could mean to Erie County in his blog:






The whole Six Sigma analysis process is time consuming, resource oriented and costly. There are probably thousands of human-driven operational processes resulting from services provided by the county. To improve them all would take several lifetimes.

Quite the pessimist that Mr. Miller is.  He is also stuck in the “Six Sigma only works for manufacturing” nonsense.  
Proclaiming the desire to be a Six Sigma county as candidate Collins has done, only implied that he’ll start looking at processes from a business improvement perspective, using Six Sigma tools to do it.  No one becomes Six Sigma overnight. GE has hundreds of thousands of human driven processes, and that didn’t keep Jack Welch from his Six Sigma objectives.  ]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Michael Marx]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[Government]]>
			</category>
			<pubDate>Mon, 29 Oct 2007 11:26:50 -0800</pubDate>
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		<item>
			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: Elevating the Strategic Relevance of Process Excellence]]></title>
			<link>http://blogs.isixsigma.com/archive/elevating_the_strategic_relevance_of_process_excellence.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Like many companies in the Fortune 1000, we are planning 2008. At leadership meetings, around conference room tables and in hallway conversations, we are asking big questions: What will our industry look like? How will external trends affect us? How should our business model change? What capabilities do we need? Do we have them? What level of cost savings will boost our stock price?
These conversations can create organizational angst: senior executives worrying about tenure, middle managers fearing loss of their jobs or attrition of star performers, and analysts feeling the effects of declining morale. Alternatively, they can create optimism: drive to succeed at all levels, commitment to company success and drive for big bonuses. Reality is often somewhere in between—a mix of pessimism, optimism and indifference. We fall into the “somewhere in between” crowd.
Deploying Lean or Six Sigma in an organization with strategic ambiguity is no easy task, especially if the Process Excellence Organization has not cemented leadership advocacy (a key success factor for adoption), demonstrated value, and achieved the cultural stickiness that Lean and Six Sigma enjoy at mature, self-optimizing companies. Self-defeating Six Sigma organizations wait for the next round of strategic priorities to be dictated, so they can update their deployment plans and complete new waves of projects. Self-directing Process Excellence Organizations inform strategic debate and shape their utilization—positioning their sponsors (or executives who will become their sponsors) and companies to achieve payback multiples (benefits of Lean and Six Sigma divided by the costs of deployment) greater than 10:1.
Having worked on transformation initiatives and in a champion role, my views of what differentiates effective from run-of-the-mill Process Excellence Organizations are evolving. Analytical rigor, methodological purity and quantitative exactness differentiate process improvement professionals, but critical thinking about strategy, marketing prowess inside a company and a pipeline to talent will set up Process Excellence Organizations to succeed. 
With strategic planning in full force, here is the first part of a series to help Process Excellence Organizations think about improving their value and odds of success.  Excellence is a process.  Executives might think Lean and Six Sigma professionals manage their own activities as a process-centric enterprise within an enterprise. My own experience suggests that we spend so much time improving company processes that management of our own process—deploying Lean and Six Sigma to improve performance (i.e., quality, efficiency, service innovation, customer satisfaction, shareholder value)—does not achieve the right level of maturity. And so a vicious cycle emerges: we work on the wrong projects; deployment does not produce big bangs; executives lose patience; we redeploy, reorient or disappear; companies embark on new quality journeys after forgetting pains of the past.
The hallmark of mature Process Excellence Organizations is their flexibility. A few years ago, a colleague at a well-known consultancy highlighted how Six Sigma can be inflexible. A client engaged his firm to recommend cost reductions. The engagement team identified redundant computer software. Wanting to achieve a quick win, a procurement executive announced retirement of the software in 45 days, unless business lines could justify the cost of redundant licenses and products. A few users complained, but the executive canceled the licenses. My colleague overheard a skeptical Black Belt comment that the executive made a quick decision and should have completed a DMAIC project to understand the true benefits and ensure canceling the licenses would not disrupt business processes. DMAIC projects at the client took 3-6 months. The analysis to identify the redundant software took 2-3 days. The procurement executive determined in a meeting that canceling the software would not have significant effects (besides whining by people who would have to begin using another, comparable product). The savings from the decision were over $1 million per year. The Black Belt showed a lack of flexibility. 
If my comments about flexibility seem insensitive to the rigor of Lean and Six Sigma, ask a personal question: Would you rather save enough money to retire over 10 years or 30?  CEOs are motivated by returns, and organizations that can grow the top line, shrink expenses and improve the bottom line the fastest enjoy the most credibility.  
Methodological and analytical rigor is a prerequisite for any Lean or Six Sigma effort to succeed. Taking a broader perspective, mature Process Excellence Organizations enjoy or achieve credibility and success by executing a flexible performance-improvement process—attacking the top priorities, employing the best tools, selecting the right projects and leveraging organizational momentum.  
Mature process excellence organizations address five things.  Over the next several weeks, I will discuss characteristics of mature Process Excellence organizations. They are:
1. Understand and inform strategy setting and implementation2. Create relationships and governance through sales and marketing3. Facilitate identification of the right mix of quick wins and big bangs4. Pull people into process excellence and push knowledge to the business5. Manage the process excellence organization like a consulting business
The five-part series will draw on research, case studies, personal experience and opinions to communicate ideas that Lean and Six Sigma practitioners can evaluate, adopt, reject or deride as whimsy. After a long-term absence from iSixSigma, my goal is to encourage the blog community to raise the strategic relevance of Lean and Six Sigma at their companies.]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Charles McKinney]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[Change Management&nbsp;,&nbsp;Customer Satisfaction&nbsp;,&nbsp;General&nbsp;,&nbsp;Government&nbsp;,&nbsp;History&nbsp;,&nbsp;Innovation]]>
			</category>
			<pubDate>Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:00:00 -0800</pubDate>
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			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: Lean adoption in the housing industry]]></title>
			<link>http://blogs.isixsigma.com/archive/lean_adoption_in_the_housing_industry.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[The Department of Housing and Urban Development ("HUD") released recently a study of Lean adoption at nine manufactured housing plants. HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research and the Manufactured Housing Research Alliance were sponsors of the study. The study highlights the benefits of Lean to making production of manufacturing housing more efficient and improving the availability of affordable housing. Details of the study are at www.huduser.org/publications/destech/pilotstudy.html.]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Charles McKinney]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[Buzz/Press&nbsp;,&nbsp;General&nbsp;,&nbsp;Government&nbsp;,&nbsp;Innovation]]>
			</category>
			<pubDate>Wed, 05 Sep 2007 18:58:51 -0800</pubDate>
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		<item>
			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: Professional Value Stream?]]></title>
			<link>http://blogs.isixsigma.com/archive/professional_value_stream.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[I have recently been transferred back to a professional service position as a Rehabilitation Counselor in the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation Services.  This is a long standing federal program that helps individuals with severe disabilities train for, maintain and obtain gainful employment within their functional capacities.  The program was initially started for injured military personnel early in the 19 century and now includes civilians with severe disabilities.  Historically, for every dollar invested in Vocational Rehabilitation 7-10 dollars are returned to government tax revenue, so it is an excellent program from an investment standpoint.    My Lean Government training has made me cognizant of value added tasks in relation to wasted tasks and this alone has increased my professional efficiency tremendously.  Besides the 5S process, which has worked great for me, I have developed an idea to measure or analyze my own Professional Task Value Stream or PTVS. I am suggesting this is as a voluntary process that professionals can complete by themselves on themselves.   This is sort of a hybrid time management process but in the world of social services may be the key to cutting waste and providing professional direct care providers with a tool to assure a majority of their tasks are value added from the customer’s point of view or VOC (voice of the customer).   Where is the VOC for government operations? Taxpayers, contractors, legislators, citizens who receive services? That is a topic for another blog.
Back to my original thought.  I wondered as I developed this idea.  Is there a Six Sigma tool for professionals to measure their value added task effectiveness? If so, I certainly do not want to reinvent the wheel.  Someone please let me know.   If not here are some suggested steps for how such a tool might be developed:
Step 1: Divide daily professional tasks into 5 or 6 major task categories. 
Suggested Categories (These could be developed in a professional team meeting so results could be standardized).

Travel to client meetings (this includes driving time and walking to meetings in the building)
Case work documentation, paperwork and phone work (this includes case notes, letters, data entry, and related case documentation, case related e-mail)
Case work review (reading of medical and other case evaluations, research regarding accommodations required, labor market research specific to the case etc)
Other behavior – (Talking with other staff for relief, avoidance behavior,  checking the internet, reading general e-mail,  coffee breaks et) Clearly much of this activity is waste but some of it is necessary.   I clearly recognize that the social aspect of social services  is a very important component for maintaining staff morale and reducing burn out.  But how much “social” is too much?  A tool like this would generate some controversy but would also increase awareness of the possible significance of “muda” in the world of direct client care.
Administrative Meetings required by management
Professional Development, training, reading journals, case study discussions with other staff individually or in a group.
Step 2: Log daily tasks for a week or a month or at least a few days.   
Step 3:  Assign each task % of daily work hours.  
Step 4: Decide how much of this is non value added and then develop a plan to reduce the non value added tasks. This is the key to this working.  Some consensus would need to occur as to how much “other behavior” is waste and how much is necessary to high level professional function   Ideally the most important value added task is number 2 (casework), but this is the conversation that professionals in the organizational system in which they work must have to determine a reasonable ratio of professional development vs casework vs other.
I suspect this may be controversial in some professional circles.  I mean… we are professionals. We can manage our own process.  Right?  Hmm….   I just ask the question.  I look forward to this group’s comments.]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Stephen C. Crate]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[Government]]>
			</category>
			<pubDate>Mon, 20 Aug 2007 13:29:27 -0800</pubDate>
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		<item>
			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: Public Deployment of Lean Strategies]]></title>
			<link>http://blogs.isixsigma.com/archive/public_deployment_of_lean_strategies.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[The Lean government paradigm promotes the analysis and implementation of efficient administrative and customer service process in order to reduce the cost of government while maintaining quality customer citizen service.  
Some have characterized this with the phrase “do more with less”.  While this reflects a public policy that would shrink the size of government just for the sake of shrinking it, this is poor public policy and clearly not the purpose of the lean government initiative.   
Lean government practices will allow government at the local, state and federal level to provide better services with the same dollars that exist and in the long run meet the needs of all citizens who need it, rather than some. Public managers in conjunction with legislators and executives have the challenge of maintaining this balance. They must be cognizant of the pluralistic influences of their customer citizens, legislative overseers and the importance of facilitating exceptional employee performance.
The difficulty arises when accurate process maps have been completed, budgets for the cycle have passed and realistic staffing measures and related overhead costs set. Shortly after this momentous time, which falls annually or biannually in most jurisdictions, something changes. Customer need increases, public support for the program weans or some unforeseen employee performance issue arises. Public managers need to include some flexible contingent plans for these changing times. Where in the private sector new staff can be brought on board when production needs change relatively easily, in the public sector this is more difficult due to equal opportunity human resource policy in government. 
If public budgets are built upon the a lean process model without any contingencies then there will be a probable chance that vital services may not be available at some time in the future.  This would be devastating to those who depend on government services for survival.  Accurate process analysis combined with workable contingencies will prevent this kind of difficulty in the public sector.]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Stephen C. Crate]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[Government]]>
			</category>
			<pubDate>Sat, 14 Jul 2007 11:47:43 -0800</pubDate>
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			<title><![CDATA[Six Sigma Blogs: Transformation is the New Operating System in Maine]]></title>
			<link>http://blogs.isixsigma.com/archive/transformation_is_the_new_operating_system_in_maine.html</link>
			<description><![CDATA[I have been contemplating organizational transformation over the last few months. Jim Womak at the Lean Institute has started a new research project that is collecting organizational development results from various lean projects in the public sector. He has encouraged all who have thoughts to contact him.   The driving question is: "What is the best way to conduct a lean transformation?"  I found this very interesting since the organization I work for, The Maine Department of Labor, set a similar goal for our whole department over the last two years called Bend the Curve. The model they used involved training in house staff in how to use various lean tools: value stream mapping, 5S, push/pull analysis and other similar six sigma tools.  Now "in-house" staff are facilitating process analysis groups throughout the Maine Department of Labor. These groups have produced process information that has resulted in significant changes within the organization.  
A similar initiative, also called Bend the Curve, is taking place in the Maine Department of Health and Human Services.
Recently their February newsletter included an article from their Lean Initiative director, Walter Lowell. Walter has been reading a book titled The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean: Lessons from the Road, by James Flinchbaugh and Andy Carlino. Walter says in his article:

"… they have a chapter called Pulling it all Together. In this chapter they describe Lean as the Operating System (OS) for an organization. The concept of an Operating System is familiar to most of us, but it’s a relatively new idea that first came into common usage with the proliferation of personal computers. Every PC has an operating system — for most people we know it as some version of Microsoft’s Windows, with XP or the just-released Vista. The operating system on a PC serves the function of making everything you do on the computer easy (ok, easier). It coordinates, schedules, executes instructions, delivers messages, and links files, and so on. What came as an insight to me in reading Hitchhiker is that the concept of an operating system is a good way to describe Lean. By implementing Lean thinking, we are designing and building into our organization (State Government) a capacity to coordinate actions, execute daily work routines, enhance communications, and deliver things faster and easier.
Think of Lean as the ingrained organizational intelligence that connects all our work together, designed to facilitate communication between our organization, (DHHS) and our clients and customers. For example, when you click on an icon such as Excel on your computer you expect something to happen quickly and reliably every time (i.e. a spread sheet opens) with no surprises. When a citizen requests a service from the State, they expect a similar response (i.e. something will happen quickly and reliably each time).
Lean as an operating system is more than the sum of its tools and methods. It is a new way of thinking and reacting in what we do and how we do it. Lean provides the foundation to transform our work, to make it more efficient and more effective, and to improve over time in service to our staff and citizens."

The combination of these two initiatives in Maine State Government has had a profound effect on the overall work environment. State employees who have participated in this process analysis are realizing that waste can be reduced, more work can be accomplished with the same effort and focus and in the long run the tax payer, our main customer, will get their money’s worth. Transformation is the new operating system in Maine.

 ]]></description>
			
			<author><![CDATA[Stephen C. Crate]]></author>
			
			<category>
			<![CDATA[Government]]>
			</category>
			<pubDate>Wed, 28 Feb 2007 14:52:18 -0800</pubDate>
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