Recently added articles from ASQ Six Sigma Forum Magazine:
Eye on Data Quality
Nov 01, 2008; ... This issue's Your Opinion section addresses one of the most important issues facing Six Sigma today: data quality. Tom Redman points out on p. 34 it is one of the most important issues facing our economy. Data quality is a critically important subject. Unfortunately, it is one of the least ...
DoE, the Air Force Way
Nov 01, 2008; ... Six Sigma Forum Magazine serves a vital role in the interchange of Six Sigma philosophies and methods that are effective in practice. Most other journal literature is overwhelmingly academic, offering peer-reviewed research that adds to bodies of knowledge but may not have any redeeming ...
Dealing With Massive Data Sets
Nov 01, 2008; ... USE DATA MINING TO ENERGIZE SIX SIGMA PROGRAMS Data mining involves extraction of information from historical data sets. Basic statistical paradigms have somewhat restricted its use by quality practitioners to baseline types of studies. But, with the increased rate with which ...
The Path to Improved Product Development
Nov 01, 2008; ... HOW A ROADMAP CAN LEAD TO COMPANY GROWTH IN A COMPETITIVE MARKETPLACE A sustainable company should have a planning process in place that attempts to improve the steps it takes toward achieving business excellence. This is especially true for its process of bringing a product to market, ...
Beyond Troubleshooting
Nov 01, 2008; ... BLACK BELT TRAINING SHOULD BLEND ANALYTICS AND CREATIVITY Anew model for Black Belt (BB) training is emerging. Practitioners who were certified in BB programs in the past might be startled to see how curriculum and teaching methods have changed in programs being taught ...
From Data to Information to Knowledge
Nov 01, 2008; ... As a statistical consultant with 30 years of experience in academia and industry, my opinion on the issue of data and information quality is based on a mixture of academic and practical perspectives. When you're a manager of a consulting firm, you learn to balance academic standards with ...
Data: An Urgently Needed Quality Revolution
Nov 01, 2008; ... As the financial scandal driven by Enron and WorldCom unfolded in the early 2000s, I decided to explore the applicability of data quality - my area of expertise - to financial reporting. From my work as a consultant, I was well aware that the financial services industry was bedeviled by poor ...
FEATURED COMPANY: Sonoco
Nov 01, 2008; ... COMPANY APPLIES SIX SIGMA, LEAN ACROSS THE BOARD Improving supply chain performance Since 1998, Sonoco plants and business units have reduced scrap and machine down time, and improved product quality, productivity, profitability and customer satisfaction by using Six Sigma and lean ...
The Information Quality Revolution
Nov 01, 2008; ... The current economic crisis is not an anomaly; it was absolutely predictable. Not long ago, two major home mortgage lenders brought me in to help them establish an information quality function, precisely because they had no idea how to evaluate the risk of their bundled mortgage ...
People Are Not Cars
Aug 01, 2008; ... Last month, the New York Times published a review of a new book by Charles Kenney, The Best Practice: How the New Quality Movement is Transforming Medicine. Abigail Zuger, M.D., opens her review by saying that until recently, no one knew what the 800,000 doctors and more than 2 million nurses ...
Agile Solutions With LSS
Aug 01, 2008; ... Most people in the business world feel uncertainty after a software or platform implementation is executed using the waterfall method of programming. It's a little like how it must feel to tumble off Niagara Falls in a barrel. Companies will spend as much as $500 million on software ...
VOICE OF THE READERS
Aug 01, 2008; ... PROBLEMS WITH 'DISSECTING DOE SOFTWARE' ARTICLE Editor's note: We received several letters from readers on May's article "Dissecting DoE Software" (Martin Tanco, Elisabeth Viles, Laura Ilzarbe and Maria Jesus Alvarez, pp. 25-30) pointing out omissions and inaccurate ...
Going Beyond the Balanced Scorecard
Aug 01, 2008; ... The balanced scorecard is supposed to provide leaders realtime information for the management of tactics that support their strategies. But how well does an organizational implementation of the balanced scorecard actually accomplish this? Likewise, is the balanced scorecard even the best ...
Six Sigma and Innovation
Aug 01, 2008; ... Any good management idea carried to an extreme has the potential of being misapplied. So it is with Six Sigma. It's clear Six Sigma has lowered costs and improved productivity for numerous companies and industries. These gains have been realized for some time in manufacturing processes, ...
How Lean Is Your Six Sigma Program?
Aug 01, 2008; ... Combining lean and Six Sigma has become extremely popular. Everywhere I turn, Six Sigma programs have morphed into lean Six Sigma. Lean Six Sigma combines the two business improvement methods to improve quality and efficiency. Lean production emphasizes the elimination of waste; Six ...
FEATURED COMPANY: SKF
Aug 01, 2008; ... GREEN, BLACK BELTS LEAD SUCCESSFUL PROJECTS Six Sigma at SKF Through a Six Sigma program, SKF, a Swedish bearing company, pursues a systematic and disciplined approach to achieve radical improvements in all business processes, with improved customer satisfaction as a primary ...