LSS Academy’s Ron Pereira goes live with his first vlog (video blog). In this video Ron walks us through a "one piece flow" versus "mass production" simulation to show differences between the two approaches.

Today with his first vlog, Ron also relaunched Lean Six Sigma Academy with the added functionality of a web 2.0 site. Take a minute to visit and see what Ron’s been up to.

The SBTI Show is the new and improved SBTI Lean Six Sigma Podcast. Sigma Breakthrough Technologies, Inc. is a forerunner in Six Sigma consulting firms that use the web to educate and instruct the masses in the ways of Six Sigma.

The SBTI Show is a collection of video podcasts that you can listen to or watch on YouTube. In the video below SBTI literally walks through an emergency room Six Sigma project, speaking with doctors and nurses about how they used Lean Six Sigma to reduce wait times. Thank you SBTI for putting on a great show!

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?

There’s a new blog in town, one that is sure to make it big. I invite dummies and non-dummies alike to read Today’s Six Sigma by Craig Gygi. Craig was the lead author of Six Sigma for Dummies as well as the Six Sigma for Dummies Workbook that hit the bookstores in late 2006.

When it comes to Six Sigma, Craig is no dummy. His track record and history with the methodology date back to the early 90s where he was formally introduced to it at Motorola. Craig is an entrepreneur at heart and has founded several companies in the Six Sigma software and consulting industries.

Craig’s approach to Six Sigma is fresh and his eye is on the future. I interviewed Craig back in 2005 after the release of Six Sigma for Dummies – and was amazed at his foresight into the future of Six Sigma.

His latest blog entry, The Bright Future of Six Sigma, is a perfect example of his fresh take on where the methodology is heading:

Get ready to go places with Craig Gygi. Visit his blog and subscribe to the RSS feed. Don’t be a dummy, get Gygi!

I recently came across a fairly new blog in the "business improvement" universe...Sith Sigma. It’s the rantings and ravings of a couple of infamous Sith Lords, Darth Sidious and Darth Vader.

They offer plenty of entertaining but solid advice on Leadership, motivation and project management. The blog has nothing to do with Six Sigma directly, but the intelligent business banter from the dark side may still influence you for good.

(If you’re in the mood to explore Six Sigma and Star Wars further, read this post from a long time ago...)

An iSixSigma reader submitted the following article for publication on iSixSigma.com. From time to time we receive excellent submissions such as this one, but they are just a bit too short for publishing to the website. The iSixSigma Blogosphere, however, is the perfect place for these "mini" articles.

By Johnny Welch (Originally posted on his blog.)

The unique demands on repairs, presented by the production environment, do not prevent us from revisiting the machine later and planning for a more permanent repair, if needed.

Likewise, we are not prevented -- and are again obligated -- to not only repair the problem, but to prevent the problem if at all possible. Just a few minutes of failure analysis can prevent hours of downtime later.

One of the Lean/Six Sigma tools that lends itself perfectly to this is the 5 Whys. By stating what happened, and continuing to ask why, we hope to arrive at the root cause of the problem. (Even though it is called the Five Whys, we only need to use as many as are necessary to arrive at the root.)

For example: “We had half of an hour downtime because we had to replace a sensor.”

• Why? — because the sensor failed.
• Why? — because it had a crack in the casing.
• Why? — because it is sometimes hit when unjamming product in the machine.
• Stop — put a guard over the sensor.

Of course, this begs the question of why the operators are having to unjam product from the machine, but for purposes of this discussion we’ll stop.

This is a simple example, but I hope we can see that this could be and should be used for all failures, no matter how complex.

However, we are not only tasked with preventing and correcting failures. As important as getting the problem fixed, in the industrial world, is the amount of time it takes to fix the problem. Therefore, our analysis of the failure is not yet complete.

Call it the 10 Whys, 5 Whys Times Two, whatever, we have not done our job until we have analyzed both the failure and the time involved in repairing it. This is where we finally locate the gun we keep shooting ourselves in the foot with — parts, documentation, training, etc.

For example: “It took an hour to replace a sensor.”

• Why? — because it took fifty-five minutes to isolate the problem to the sensor.
• Why? — because we changed another switch first.
• Why? — because we thought it was the only sensor involved.
• Why? — because we didn’t fully understand the sequence of operation.

We’ll stop here, but we see what needs to be done — we need to spend the couple of hours offline figuring the sequence out and then train everyone accordingly.

About the Author: Johnny Welch is an industrial electrician/electronics tech that has been working in industry for fifteen years. He has held leadership and supervision/management positions for more than seven years. He is currently working as a maintenance supervisor at a leading manufacturer of flooring products. Johnny recently completed Black Belt level Lean/Six Sigma training.

This week’s iSixSigma Blogosphere Newsletter features SEMOE as the Guest Blog. SEMOE stands for Search Engine Marketing Operational Excellence and is written by Matt LeVeque, a search Marketing Manager with Commerce360.

Matt knows his search engine marketing as well as his Six Sigma. He has a strong background in online marketing and was formerly the Sales and Marketing manager for Rath & Strong. I got to know Matt visiting with him at the many Six Sigma conferences we attended over the years.

For your search engine marketing fix with a Six Sigma twist, visit SEMOE!

Last week I was alerted to a fairly new blog in the Six Sigma Blogosphere. It is written by Michael Jordan, Sr. VP Management Consultant at Jones Lang LaSalle. After perusing his blog for just a few minutes I could quickly see that his writing is as good as his name. He’s the Michael Jordan of Six Sigma and real estate, literally.

Michael has been at Jones Lang LaSalle nearly a year helping clients improve their corporate real estate operations. Before that he was at Sun Microsystems for almost 10 years.

In his blog, Six Sigma for Corporate Real Estate, he shares real stories of Six Sigma application in the corporate real estate environment. His writing comes off as very real and personable. And as an extra positive, he is not at all long winded. His blog entries are a nice quick and solid read. Take his latest entry, “Oops! We (almost) fired the project managers!” In four short paragraphs he describes how root cause analysis and identifying controllable x’s is better than simply blaming project managers for performance:

I highly recommend his blog for all Six Sigma practitioners. And if you’d like to learn more about how Jones Lang LaSalle is using Six Sigma internally and with their clients, read the January 2007 issue of Building.com - Six Sigma at Jones Lang LaSalle was the cover story.

Jones Lang LaSalle: Where Six Sigma Works, Building.com, January 2007

Dr. Phil is blogging! No, not that Dr. Phil, I’m talking about Dr. Phil Samuel, Chief Innovation Officer for BMG.

The blog is called Chief Innovator Online and is the second blog written by BMG executives. David Silverstein, CEO of BMG, has been blogging for just over a year now and Leadership & Business.

I know Phil personally so it’s exciting to see him blogging his genius. His most recent post, Better Isn’t Enough - You have to be different looks at the dichotomy facing organizations today:

“Almost every corporation on our planet is on a quest to outperform its rivals in two key business activities – improve the performance of current business, and create the future for the business. The trouble with this is that few organizations do this well – they are either good at continuous improvement or good at innovation, but not good at both in a strategic, tactical and deliberate way… Continue reading

Welcome to the world of blogging Phil! I hope to read innovative posts from you throughout the year.

It’s almost becoming an age-old debate whether or not Six Sigma and innovation can co-exist in a symbiotic relationship. We have heard time and time again that Six Sigma "stifles innovation." But where’s the data to prove it?

The most recent issue of BusinessWeek covers innovation at 3M and what Six Sigma has to do with it (but more about what Six Sigma doesn’t have to do with it). Apparently 3M is scaling down their Six Sigma efforts in the “innovation” centers of the company. It looks like we have one data point now.

Business blogs have been going crazy commenting on the BusinessWeek cover storie. Most bloggers quickly agreeing with what mainstream media prints. Hey, if it’s in BusinessWeek, Fortune, or the the WSJ, it’s gotta be true! While I could never agree that citing one company example is proof an entire methodology is corrupt, the article does dig deep in to how company culture influences innovation - and 3M surely has/had a data driven culture.

Mike Lopez, over at the Lean Blog, shares his first impression of the article:

"As a Lean Six Sigma black belt at my company, I find that reading these types of articles continuously reminds me that neither Lean nor Six Sigma is a panacea."

I thought the exact same thing after reading the article (independent of Mike’s blog entry). Six Sigma is hardly a cure all. And please do not blame all consultants for perpetuating this fallicy. I have never met a consultant who preached such falshoods. Unfortunately, if a company is not hitting their numbers, something must be blamed. Six Sigma companies (those that use the methodology) are perfect targets for this misguided blame. They are "supposed" to be perfect.

A comment to Mike’s post sums up my thoughts on the relationship between Six Sigma and innovation:

"It seems positively stupid to think you can’t have both Six Sigma AND innovation at the same time at a company. This is more of the "we can only focus on one management tool at a time" mentality that’s harmful and destructive. We have to throw out Six Sigma from the places it’s useful because our innovation has suffered?"

Amen. 3M needs to get to the root cause of their lackluster innovation instead of beating up Six Sigma… the same Six Sigma that has saved 3M billions of dollars. Sounds like an interesting and profitable Six Sigma project...

The July/Aug 2007 issue of iSixSigma Magazine will include my latest research on Innovation and Six Sigma. We surveyed 1,000 people. Here’s a sneak preview of Finding Two:

If you’d like the full results of this research, subscribe to the Magazine, borrow the issue from a friend next month or make a meaningful comment below. I’ll send out a free copy of the magazine to the first person who shares their reaction/thoughts/opinion on the subject of innovation and Six Sigma. Go ahead share...

Links

At 3M, A Struggle Between Efficiency And Creativity, BusinessWeek, June 11, 2007

Six Sigma: So Yesterday?, BusinessWeek, June 11, 2007

Bloggers commenting on the BusinessWeek article

Innovation and Six Sigma, Real Innovation Commentary

Improvement and Innovation, Real Innovation Commentary

Putting Six Sigma back in its box, Cognitive Edge

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