When W. Edwards Deming famously said, “We are being ruined by ‘best efforts,’” he was conveying the idea that simply striving to improve—even with laudable effort—can actually have the opposite outcome. How can this be? How could good intentions and diligent work ever possibly sabotage us? Well, they do all the time. (more…)
When companies consider the merits of Six Sigma or consider embarking on a Lean Six Sigma effort, concerns and questions always arise. Many companies have heard of Six Sigma, but most have no idea what it actually is or how it works. Here’s a helpful list of the basic questions companies get wrong most frequently.
Q: Lean Six Sigma only fits large companies, right?
A: Not at all. Companies as large as GE have saved billions using Six Sigma. But small companies have actually proven to achieve similar results more quickly than larger companies. Lean Six Sigma is a key component of improvement for any size business.
How do you know if you know? In other words, how do you know when you have sufficient knowledge to reliably improve or manage a process? More than a century ago, Lord Kelvin suggested a simple touchstone to answer this crucial question: (more…)
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