Although the Six Sigma Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control (DMAIC) methodology is a widely accepted tool for achieving efficient management of all aspects of operations, there are still many unwarranted concerns about its perceived complexity and implementation costs. Dispelling these myths, Six Sigma for Powerful Improvement: A Green Belt DMAIC Training System with Software Tools and a 25-Lesson Course clarifies the long-accepted statistical and logical processes of Six Sigma and provides you with tools you can use again and again in your own "real world" projects—removing any doubts regarding their simplicity and "doability.". Not only does the book provide you with reasons for using the tools, it reveals the underlying doctrines, formulas, and steps required. Although the tools and techniques presented are specifically associated with the DMAIC philosophy, they are applicable across a wide range of management and improvement scenarios. Explaining Six Sigma processes in language that's easy to understand, the book starts with an overview, followed by specific techniques and procedures. It presents detailed, illustrated lesson segments that include an agenda, roadmap, objectives, and a list of takeaway concepts. It also: Provides seven separate Excel tool templates—each with its own user guide and additional smaller tools Presents completed Excel sample workbooks for each tool to facilitate your comprehension and utilization confidence Includes a CD with a PowerPoint-based DMAIC training course, the aforementioned Excel-based Six Sigma tools and workbooks, and extensive instructor’s notes embedded in each lesson Trained as and employed as a Black Belt and later as a Master Black Belt, the author presents doctrines and procedures with a strong pedigree and history of success. The book uses hundreds of figures and tables to illustrate key concepts and also makes them available in full-color on the accompanying CD. This is also true of the figures in the user guides that document the accompanying tools. For each of the tools, the book includes a completed sample workbook. The PowerPoint and Excel lessons and tools are provided in both 2007 and 97-2003 versions.

Six Sigma for Business Excellence: Approach, Tools, and Applications, based on the author's first-hand experience in quality engineering, provides a comprehensive coverage of the Six Sigma methodology. This book provides the complete study material for students taking the certified Six Sigma Black Belt and Green Belt examinations conducted internationally by the American Society for Quality (ASQ). At the same time, it adequately fills the need of management professionals with numerous application examples and case studies providing an insight into the practical aspect of implementing Six Sigma tools. The book begins with providing an overview of the evolution of Six Sigma, explains the basic concepts and then takes the readers step by step through the process. The focus is more on enabling the implementation of the Six Sigma tools by providing illustrations, tables, application examples, and templates as well as Minitab and Excel data files for project work and exercises in the soft form on a CD accompanying the book. The templates carried in the book include the Sigma calculator, Six Sigma project review checklist, process mapping, confidence intervals, hypothesis tests, project charter, and measurement systems analysis (Gauge R & R Study). The CD also contains a 30-day trial version of the Minitab and SigmaXL software programs.

Sustainability has become a topic of global relevance: Corporations and other economically acting organizations increasingly need to realize economic, environmental and social objectives in order to survive. Supplementary to "classical" environmental management, realizing corporate sustainability requires comprehensive approaches which allow the integration of social and economic aspects. Such concepts can be found e.g. in international excellence models mainly based on a TQM thinking but also in the field of human factors in organizational design and management. Understood as systems approaches, they include the interests of all relevant stakeholders with a mid- or long-term time perspective and are thus highly linked with the principles of sustainable development. In this book internationally leading scientists discuss the issue of sustainability from their perspective, resulting in an innovative view on different management approaches under the umbrella of corporate sustainability.

This book provides business professionals with the clearest, easiest roadmap to achieving highly effective departments and organizations. Are you baffled by how your department can keep making the same mistakes? Do you feel you have been climbing an unending, uphill battle trying to focus your employees’ limited time on more valuable work? These obstacles are so common in business that the solution to getting past them even has a name--business process improvement (BPI). Thankfully, though, you don’t have to be a BPI expert to resolve these situations and find the results your business needs to find success again. Written by experienced process analyst Susan Page, The Power of Business Process Improvement is the resource you need to find a simple, bottom-line approach to process improvement work. By implementing its proven 10-step method, you will be able to: Eliminate duplication and bureaucracy Control costs Establish internal controls to reduce human error Test and rework the process before introducing it Implement the changes Complete with software suggestions, quizzes, a comparison of industry improvement methods, and examples to help you apply the ideas, The Power of Business Process Improvement is your solution to turning your business into the well-oiled machine you know it can be.

This book fully details, as the title suggests, the real secret to maximizing an organization's profitability. While many companies have implemented improvement initiatives such as Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing, there is a missing link which, when discovered and implemented, will take these same companies to profit levels not seen before. This missing link is the Theory of Constraints, and when it’s combined with Lean and Six Sigma, true transformational improvements are sure to follow. In this book, the author walks you through the step-by-step method on how to combine these three methodologies with the result being significant improvements to flow, major improvements in variation, substantial reductions in waste, superior on-time delivery, and ultimately, maximized profitability. He has been using this integrated methodology for many years and each time, the results realized were well beyond what the leadership teams had experienced previously. The genesis behind this combined improvement cycle is based upon many years of analysis of both failures and successes using Lean, Six Sigma, and the Theory of Constraints as stand-alone improvement initiatives. By integrating Lean, Six Sigma and the Theory of Constraints into a single improvement cycle, the author has developed a recipe that will maximize your return on investment, cash flow, and net profit. The Secret to Maximizing Profitability is both stimulating and thought provoking, but more importantly it will provide your organization with a roadmap for maximizing the use of your resources to achieve more bottom-line improvement than you ever imagined possible.

Although world-class firms like GE and Motorola have relied on Six Sigma to build their performance cultures, these processes are all too often left out of human resources (HR) functions. This lack of Six Sigma principles is even more surprising because preventing errors and improving productivity are so critical to the people management processes of hiring, retention, appraisal, and development. From the history and evolution of the Total Quality movement to initiatives for introducing a Six Sigma continuous process improvement strategy in your HR department, Achieving HR Excellence through Six Sigma, Second Edition introduces a new way to envision your role within the organization. It explains how this powerful methodology works and supplies a roadmap to help you find and eliminate waste in your HR processes. Describing exactly what HR excellence means, the book outlines dozens of proven approaches as well as a hierarchy of the exact steps required to achieve it. It illustrates the Six Sigma methodology from the creation of a project to its successful completion. At each stage, it describes the specific tools currently available and provides examples of organizations that have used Six Sigma within HR to improve their organizations. The text presents proven approaches that can help you solve and even eliminate people management problems altogether. Filled with real-world examples, it demonstrates how to implement Six Sigma into the transformational side of your organization. It also includes a listing of additional resources to help you along your Six Sigma journey. Explaining how to build a new business model for your HR organization, the book supplies the new perspective and broad view you will need to discover and recommend game-changing alternatives to traditional HR approaches in your organization. The first edition of this book was one of the first to demonstrate how HR professionals could enhance their careers by learning the language of business — it introduced the evolution of change management and the change management toolbox in a fashion that could easily be implemented in organizations. This new edition updates the first with added information on some of the early history and introduces new case study tools resulting from the author’s continuing work with organizations and in academic environments.

TWO PROVEN TOOLS FOR SUCCESS IN ONE STEP-BY-STEP POCKET GUIDE Whether you've been using Six Sigma for years or are just starting to, you know it takes hard work to get it right. But WorkOut, developed by General Electric, can increase Six Sigma's success. Rath & Strong's WorkOut for Six Sigma Pocket Guide shows you how, with an action-ready game plan that you can apply to your initiative - right now. Learn how to: Set the stage for Six Sigma's success Find out if you're in trouble - and get back on track Make a good Six Sigma initiative even better See actual results--in less than three months "If you want to bring the power of WorkOut to Six Sigma, this pocket guide is an invaluable tool."--Ron Ashkenas, co-author of The GE Work-Out Six Sigma: A data-driven approach to meeting customer requirements, solving process problems, and achieving bottom-line results. WorkOut: The revolutionary problem-solving program that brings management and workers together to bust bureaucracy. Companies worldwide use Six Sigma to measure and improve performance. Others use WorkOut to get quick bottom-line results and empower their workforce. But few enjoy the enormous success General Electric achieved by combining these approaches. Rath & Strong shows you how to get that synergy, with a handy pocket guide full of charts, checklists, assessment tools, and cases that help you: Prepare for, reenergize, or enhance a Six Sigma initiative Use a fast, simple alternative to Six Sigma Make your culture more participative, data-driven, and customer-focused Engage your front-line workers in Six Sigma

Many smaller and mid-sized corporations can benefit from Six Sigma methods but are struggling with how to deploy them on the scale suitable for their organizations. This book delineates the leadership, strategy, implementation planning, execution, integration, and performance measurement issues that are universal to all organizations. It is a practical "give me the answers quick" Six Sigma guide for smaller businesses. Terence T. Burton is Founder and President of The Center for Excellence in Operations, Inc. He has over 30 years of experience in operations. Jeff L. Sams is Director of North American Operations for Casco Products, a Unit of Sequa Corporation. He is also a Six Sigma Master Blackbelt.

Ee have been deploying Lean Six Sigma in various large and medium size companies for many years and have realized excellent results in most instances. We found that while Lean Six Sigma does a great job addressing the primary concerns of manufacturing and service, we felt that there was something missing in the deployment of Lean Six Sigma programs at many companies. Something that could help foster sustainable breakthroughs; something to realize durable performance and sustainable quality enhancement based on a happy and engaged workforce, something to create a real learning organization in which people are working smarter, are committed and improve themselves continuously. We found that the results could be enhanced if the importance of Human Capital is considered as an integral part of the process. We learned that Lean Six Sigma, in itself, does not sufficiently address Human Capital at many companies. While expected results from Lean Six Sigma alone will be good, we believe that adding the human component to Lean Six Sigma has the potential to realize sustainable, long-term growth and produce a transformation into a lean, learning, prosperous organization. That’s why we are launching a revolutionary, holistic concept in this book called TPS-Lean Six Sigma. Combining these complimentary processes actively brings human involvement into Lean Six Sigma in a manner that not only stimulates commitment, integrity, work-life balance, and passion, enjoyment at work and employee engagement but also stimulates individual and team learning in order to develop a happy workforce and sustainable performance improvement and quality enhancement for the organization. TPS-Lean Six Sigma is a continuous voyage of discovery involving continuous personal and organizational improvement, development, and learning. The starting point in this concept is a journey to understand personal goals and ambitions of the workforce. Then we take the organizations goals and ambitions and marry them with the workforce, and find the best people for the job. Using our structured approach for aligning the personal scorecards with the organization’s scorecard, we are able to create a symbiotic relationship between employees and organizational desires through the establishment of Lean Six Sigma project teams that will enthusiastically drive positive results. TPS-Lean Six Sigma is like a ‘turbo-charged’ Lean Six Sigma program. All of the proven, sound methodologies of traditional Lean Six Sigma are charged with highly motivated team members. The result is a powerful people driven Lean Six Sigma program called TPSLean Six Sigma that leads to a High Performance Culture and allows employees to realize their full potential and contribute creatively while the organization benefits from increased profitability, market share, and customer satisfaction. People are happiest when they are given freedom, challenges, and control over their lives. TPS-Lean Six Sigma also offers a systematic and integrated approach to the transformation of people in organizations, and to impact business strategy, culture, organizational effectiveness and the controllability of business processes. It entails a learning process, which transforms people into happy, inwardly involved, and committed employees. This will not only allow them to contribute exceptionally but will also persuade them to support, defend, and promote their organization. This approach lies at the heart of successful organizational and cultural change. After all, it is difficult to change the organization, but if we change ourselves, the organization will change with us. This unique TPS-Lean Six Sigma system is based on several new models, guidelines and tools that have been proven in practice. It integrates the individual’s aspirations with the shared ambition of the organization, balancing the personal with the shared ambition, embedding ethical behavior in the individual’s mind and links individual capabilities with an effective talent management process. TPS-Lean Six Sigma and the related new tools provide an excellent and innovative framework for creating sustainable breakthroughs in both the service and manufacturing industries. This new book emphasizes the introduction of a new blueprint, called TPS-Lean Six Sigma, for addressing the primary concerns of manufacturing and service in a more sustainable and humanized way. It leads to a High Performance Culture and allows employees to realize their full potential and contribute creatively while the organization benefits from increased profitability, market share, and customer satisfaction. By way of this book, Hubert Rampersad & Anwar El-Homsi are launching a revolutionary, holistic concept which actively has human capital embedded in Lean Six Sigma in a manner that not only stimulates commitment, integrity, work-life balance, passion, enjoyment at work and employee engagement but also stimulates individual and team learning in order to develop a motivated workforce and sustainable performance improvement and quality enhancement for the organization.

The Paradox: Americans are not as healthy as people in dozens of comparable countries that spend 30 percent less on health care, and our medical marketplace overall is plagued by persistent problems of cost, quality, and access. Yet, the worlds best individual health systems are located in the U.S.each a unique result of visionary leadership and