Articles

Takt time is the maximum amount of time in which a product needs to be produced in order to satisfy customer demand. The term comes from the German word “takt,” which means “pulse.” Set by customer demand, takt creates the pulse or rhythm across all processes in a busine... Read more

On August 26, 2010, Six Sigma & Process Excellence IQ's sister portal, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement (IDGA), had author JP Lambiase write on how the "defense industry can better support the military by imple... Read more

Teams are very effective for problem solving and decision making. Members of a team often view opportunities for improvement or problem solutions in different ways. This is a normal characteristic of teams. The Force and Effect chart helps teams identify barriers to and resolutions for the tran... Read more

It is common for Lean and Six Sigma practitioners to put much emphasis into the tools and techniques of Lean and into their DMAIC analysis. Somewhat ironically, it is less common to really drill properly into the question of whether the models and analysis actually represent the underlying variation that exists within the data under observation. Too often, models are created as static representations of often large data streams, rather than reflecting the dynamic variation within the process.... Read more

For many years now, much debate has taken place throughout the Lean Six Sigma community regarding the potential for such methodologies to be successfully deployed within government agencies. This article attempts to present a logical rationale as to why Lean Six Sigma can be successfu... Read more

Important processes can often take time to learn, but once learned and mastered prove to be invaluable. The Lean Six Sigma methodology relies on training to give process champions the tools needed to bring change to business operations. Some training is more intense than others; however, the o... Read more

Introduction In difficult economic times there is a necessity to squeeze cost out of supply chains; and, it is an opportunity to create value chains that deliver exceptional value from customer to suppliers. It is at the ends of the supply chain that more and... Read more

(Editor's note: Six Sigma & Process Excellence IQ searched its contacts on LinkedIn for someone who would be able to offer insight into Minitab 16 and selected Michael Mercer to review the software. Mercer is in no way associated with Minitab.) Minitab 1... Read more

Six Sigma, a process improvement methodology, assists with analyzing and breaking down processes in order to detect specific causes or X’s that may adversely impact a process. In health care, these special causes or inefficiencies tie directly to the quality of patient care and therefore... Read more

When I left my continuous improvement job at United Technologies to join CIGNA nearly 10 years ago to run the Rapid Solutions Center, I couldn’t help but notice that the company did not have any kind of corporate-wide quality system. Quality, primarily in the form of audit/inspection tea... Read more