Articles

TQM - Business Benefits

Achieve Business Excellence with Total Quality Management (TQM)

If you’re ready to improve your business’ performance, it’s hard not to recommend TQM. However, if you’re unfamiliar with this business methodology, the following will help. What Is TQM? Let’s cover the basics quickly. TQM stands for total quality management. This structured approach offers a comprehensive method for organizational management that focuses on improving the […]

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Lean in with Six Sigma

Lean In: How to Gather Support for Six Sigma in Your Company

Are you prepared to advocate and fully support Lean Six Sigma? If yes, how do you know? If no, how you reach that stage? These questions can be tiresome and their answers difficult to pin down. We’re here to make things easy for you. Today we will help you get ready for Lean Six Sigma (or recognize […]

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Image: Beginner's Guide to Value Stream Mapping (VSM)

Beginner’s Guide to Value Stream Mapping (VSM)

We look now at the Lean method of Value Stream Mapping (VSM). This is a method where you analyze a current state and design a future state where you look at events from the very beginning of the process to the very end with delivery to the customer. This can involve a product or service. […]

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Assemble your Six Sigma Project Team

Get Set: Prepare Your Six Sigma Project Team

This article is the second in our three-part series to help you achieve the best results using Six Sigma. You can read the whole article series here. Now, get set… Our three-part guide will act as the perfect primer on all the important Six Sigma project facts. Today we discuss how to assemble and prepare […]

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Get Planning! Six Sigma is a great tool for project success.

On Your Marks: Planning a Successful Six Sigma Project

This article is the first in our three-part series to help you achieve the best results using Six Sigma. Today we focus on planning a successful Six Sigma project. You can read parts 2 and 3 here. Now, on your marks . . .   If you’re new to Six Sigma, or just want to […]

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Total Quality Management

Understanding the Most Important Elements of Total Quality Management (TQM)

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a management philosophy that strives to achieve the best possible results by centering all business activities and processes on customer satisfaction. Proper TQM implementation involves constant improvement and all members of the particular organization and expected to take part in the process. The main idea behind this approach is that […]

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Business Benefits of Lean Consulting

Big Business Benefits of Lean Consulting

When talking about big business in the context of efficiency, people’s minds often jump to economies of scale. But those are only attainable after all processes have been truly optimized. Unfortunately, the larger the scale, the more managerial manpower a company needs to make sure things run smoothly and margins stay as large as possible. […]

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Soft side of change management

The ‘Soft’ Side of Change Management | Lean 6 Sigma

Companies think of growth as an end in itself. Rather growth should be a mean towards a larger goal: that of serving the society. With such a noble goal in mind how can companies ignore the slice of society that works for them – their employees? Advocators of change harp on the bliss of information […]

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Guide to Value Stream Mapping

Step-By-Step Guide to VSM – Value Stream Mapping

When people that don’t fully grasp process optimization systems think about the topic, they often mistakenly pay the most attention to cutting out the unneeded parts. Obviously this is a gross oversimplification when it comes to methodologies like Lean Six Sigma, and it places the emphasis on the wrong indicator. The most important goal of […]

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Essential to the Improve phase of DMAIC, PDCA is the primary gauge of improvement rollout success.

Six Sigma and DMAIC in Focus: I – Improve Your Six Sigma Project

This article is the fourth part in our series on the principles of Six Sigma, focusing on Improve within the DMAIC framework. You can find the rest of our series here. Day four now sees us approaching the end of our DMAIC in focus series. Today, we will be looking at how to improve ourselves, and our projects, […]

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Six Sigma Motivation

What is Behind Motivation?

What makes us love our jobs? For the amount of time we spend at work and actually doing our job, it really does make it easier if we were to love what we do. In a Gallup report performed in 2013, State of the American Workplace, only 30% out of 150,000 full and part-time employees surveyed said […]

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Eternal Sunshine for the Changing Minds

Eternal Sunshine For The Changing Minds

Peter F Drucker, the father of modern management said, ‘‘everybody has accepted by now that change is unavoidable. But that still implies that is like death and taxes. It should be postponed as long as possible and no change would be vastly preferable. But in a period of upheaval, such as the one we are […]

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Image: All Quiet on the change front

All Quiet on the Change Front

  Change Management and its importance cannot be dismissed. Even the human resources who are the foundation of change management cannot be dismissed as well. Lack of human resources would result in lack of execution that damages the purpose of change management. It is important for the management to understand that human resource must be […]

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US Army Adopting Lean Six Sigma

US Army Adopting Lean Six Sigma

US army is building the principles of business transformation into its workforce introduced by Lean Six Sigma (LSS). The US army is doing this to make available resources for the personnel engaged in military operations along with providing the soldiers with necessary equipment quickly. Around 1,400 leaders in the US army have received training for […]

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Pied Pipers

The Pied Pipers of Change Management

Back in the thirteenth century, in the German town of Hamelin, when the Pied Piper played his pipe, all within hearing range chose to follow him, no matter where he chose to go, or so the legend goes. So, too, effective leaders must possess, a Pied Piper-like ”magic”, that enables them to call the tune […]

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culture, leadership, six sigma, lean six sigma, 6sigma.us

Culture: Creating An Environment of Sustainment

Is it the culture of your organization that is blocking sustainment? Most will tell you that one of the biggest challenges in implementing a 5S strategy is capturing the elusive element of Sustain. An effective 5S process is built around the elements of Sort, Set In Order, Shine, Standardize and Sustain. Quality leaders are typically very […]

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Six Sigma Leadership

Six Sigma Leadership – The Efficient Way

Six Sigma Leadership Six Sigma is a strategy used in business management and is extensively applied in many industrial sectors across the globe. Motorola is the original creator of Six Sigma. It has achieved great repute for the ability to produce tremendous performance improvements. In terms of implementation, a few firms understand its advantages. Over […]

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innovation, value, quality, 6sigma.us

Innovation: Where Is The Value?

Where is the value of innovation? If you ask business leaders to define value, you are going to get a dizzying variety of answers. Why is it so hard to define the term? Value means different things to different people. The definition depends on what they see as value in their organization. Finding value is […]

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Game Plan

What’s the Game Plan?

Browse through any management book these days and you’ll be amazed at the number of concepts that have appeared in the last decade: SWOT analysis, business process re-engineering, CRM, competitive advantage, analysis tools, fix-it tools and measuring tools. One frequently used (and overused) term is strategic planning. Look at any mid-size to large corporation, and […]

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