Six Sigma Quotes

When you are finished changing, you're finished.

Pack speaking about his new love, Sky: “Well, let’s see. She has the animal husbandry skills of a vet, the organizational skills of a Six Sigma guru, and the mechanical skills of a…trained mechanic. She doesn’t require handyman help. And she’s nice to look at. Other than that, she leaves a lot to be desired. And maybe I omitted the best part, which is that she’s a fine human being with strong values.

Control your own Destiny or somebody else will

Perfect is an illusion, one that was created to maintain the status quo. The Six Sigma charade is largely about hiding from change, because change is never perfect. Change means reinvention, and until something is reinvented, we have no idea what the spec is.

When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.

Chaos is the enemy of any organization the strives to be outstanding.

If you want engagement, you must engage.

Chaos is NOT a condition of doing business.

Use every person's skill set to the fullest. Both optimists and pessimists contribute. An optimist invents the hot air balloon, and a pessimist invents the parachute." - Ramesh Lohia and Surbhi Lohia, consultants, Six Sigma, KaizeniSixSigmaKaizen. In Quality Quotes, Sep 1, 2016, Knowledge Center, ASQ [ AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR QUALITY]

Design is a funny word. Some people think Design means how it looks. But, of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works. —Steve Jobs

The reason, according to Fortune, was that Six Sigma got in the way of innovation. Too much energy was spent cutting defects to 3.4 per million, and not enough energy was expended developing new product ideas.

Kaizen should be done when times are good or when the company is profitable, since your efforts to streamline and make improvements when the company is poor are limited to reduction in staff. Even if you try to go lean and cut out the fat to improve business performance, when your business is in a very difficult position financially there is no fat to be cut. If you are cutting out muscle, which you need, then you cannot say that your efforts to become lean are succeeding.The most important thing about doing kaizen is to do kaizen when times are good, the economy is strong, and the company is profitable

QUIT = Quickly Uphold Important Things

This is like the Six Sigma approach to quality. Six Sigma refers to the quest for continuous improvement, ultimately leading to 3.4 defects per million units. The problem is that once you’re heading down this road, there’s no room left for amazing improvements and remarkable innovations. Either you rolled ten strikes or you didn’t. Organizations that earn dramatic success always do it in markets where asymptotes don’t exist, or where they can be shattered. If you could figure out how to bowl 320, that would be amazing. Until that happens, pick a different sport if you want to be a linchpin.

Look, cell phone geolocation data shows very few clustering anomalies for this hour and climate. And that’s holding up pretty much across all major metro areas. It’s gone down six percentage points since news of the Karachi workshop hit the Web, and it’s trending downward. If people are protesting, they aren’t doing it in the streets.” He circled his finger over a few clusters of dots. “Some potential protest knots in Portland and Austin, but defiance-related tag cloud groupings in social media put us within the three-sigma rule—meaning roughly sixty-eight percent of the values lie within one standard deviation of the mean.

Correlation is enough,” 2 then-Wired editor in chief Chris Anderson famously declared in 2008. We can, he implied, solve innovation problems by the sheer brute force of the data deluge. Ever since Michael Lewis chronicled the Oakland A’s unlikely success in Moneyball (who knew on-base percentage was a better indicator of offensive success than batting averages?), organizations have been trying to find the Moneyball equivalent of customer data that will lead to innovation success. Yet few have. Innovation processes in many companies are structured and disciplined, and the talent applying them is highly skilled. There are careful stage-gates, rapid iterations, and checks and balances built into most organizations’ innovation processes. Risks are carefully calculated and mitigated. Principles like six-sigma have pervaded innovation process design so we now have precise measurements and strict requirements for new products to meet at each stage of their development. From the outside, it looks like companies have mastered an awfully precise, scientific process. But for most of them, innovation is still painfully hit or miss. And worst of all, all this activity gives the illusion of progress, without actually causing it. Companies are spending exponentially more to achieve only modest incremental innovations while completely missing the mark on the breakthrough innovations critical to long-term, sustainable growth. As Yogi Berra famously observed: “We’re lost, but we’re making good time!” What’s gone so wrong? Here is the fundamental problem: the masses and masses of data that companies accumulate are not organized in a way that enables them to reliably predict which ideas will succeed. Instead the data is along the lines of “this customer looks like that one,” “this product has similar performance attributes as that one,” and “these people behaved the same way in the past,” or “68 percent of customers say they prefer version A over version B.” None of that data, however, actually tells you why customers make the choices that they do.

I didn’t have the benefit of having worked under both CEOs, but it dawned on me how deeply a CEO’s persona and focus can shape an institution. Most CEOs are very good at many things, but they become CEOs for being superbly distinctive at one or two, which tend to be matched to a company’s needs at that time. Even CEOs need to declare a major. Welch is best known for Six Sigma—a set of tools to improve quality and efficiency—and his focus on people. Immelt instead emphasized sales and marketing, most visibly through GE’s branded “ecomagination” efforts to make and be perceived as a maker of greener products.

Oh my god, was he trying to Six Sigma me? “Dad,

A good managerial record is more a function of which boat you get into rather than how effectively you row"1 Warren Buffett

The most talented practitioners seek out certification as a Six Sigma Black Belt,9 an honorific that has nothing to do with karate but rather reflects a noble and ultimately hopeless attempt to give the work some sex appeal.

When the retail, operations, and finance teams began to construct the initial Amazon WBR, they turned to a well-known Six Sigma process improvement method called DMAIC, an acronym for Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control.1 Should you decide to implement a Weekly Business Review for your business, we recommend following the DMAIC steps as well. The order of the steps matters. Progressing through this metrics life cycle in this order can prevent a lot of frustration and rework, allowing you to achieve your goals faster.

Six Sigma process improvement method called DMAIC, an acronym for Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control.

Completed project plans. Requirements will vary by company but often include Gantt charts; stakeholder analysis; resistance analysis; risk analysis; action logs, responsibility assignments, and communication plans (not covered in this book)

What Six Sigma and Lean are to manufacturing, The 4 Disciplines of Execution is to executing your strategy.

Lean Six Sigma methodology works through sustainable processes.

What has been written down only goes back some six thousand years, tracking only the briefest steps of humans on this planet. And even that record is full of gaps turning history into a frayed and moth-eaten tapestry. Most remarkable of all, down those ragged holes many of history’s greatest mysteries have been lost, waiting to be rediscovered—including events that mark pivotal shifts in history, those rare moments that change civilizations.

So if every time a team member needs to do something they have to complete the conventional paper work and await approvals possibly from managers who have no idea when they are reporting to the office next, your project might be a disaster.  So instead of boxing those members within the rules of the old system, you need to empower them in carrying out any initiatives they may deem fit for the success of the project.

How do we measure performance using the Lean speed concept?   Keeping in mind that our success is determined by how well we keep our customers happy, we calculate the time that passes from when we begin working on the customer’s order to the time we actually deliver. We call that Cycle time.  The shorter that period is, the more successful we deem our performance to be.   If you take eternity, the customer will begin to sense danger, and the chance of not being satisfied with your work is pretty high. And that usually has good grounds. Is that it? Well, from practical experience it really is. Often when you delay delivering what the customer ordered, there is a list of things that may be wrong; and they include:   Low morale on the part of your workforce   The work being too complex for your firm   Product defects discovered and are being corrected   Team handling too many jobs at a time   Lack of flexibility on the team to adjust to the demands of the customer   Inefficient systems

The Project Champion is the one to take the project from the ground.

famous

An Alternative to Goals A reporter once asked an official from Toyota whether the company achieved “six sigma” quality—a defect rate of around 3 in a million and also the name of a quality improvement methodology that is currently fashionable. His answer typifies the Boyd approach to goals: Basically, I would say that because of our evolutionary concept, whatever we were doing becomes the benchmark for what we do next. We hold onto what we were doing so that it becomes maintainable and it is the new steady state.140 This may seem like a masterwork of obfuscation, but it is entirely consistent with Toyota’s overall guiding concept: The Toyota Production System, quite simply, is about shortening the time it takes to convert customer orders into vehicle deliveries.141 This is one of the best vision / focusing statements in the world of business. Instead of setting arbitrary goals, it tells everybody who works for Toyota that whenever they are in doubt about what to do, take the action that will reduce customer-to-delivery span time. It sets a direction, not a goal, since wherever we are this year, we will be better next year.

Rendering great services while drastically reducing the cost of that delivery

Have a rhythm – cadence. If you do, your customers are not going to ask when the next delivery will be

Having a clear and uncomplicated way of system analysis

methodology

You need to be receptive to feedback   Timeliness is of essence when working with Lean Six Sigma. As such, you need to break a few walls and let team members air their views freely. That is the only way you are going to learn things as they are. But if you insist on conventional protocol and formal language and format of feedback presentation, you may not learn enough authentic details to help you make effective decisions.   In any case, with a methodology like this that pushes for perfection, you need data and information that is as true and as real as it can be. After all, the reality always comes out in the results, when it is clear how far away from, or how close to, perfection your processes were. 

How do we measure performance using the Lean speed concept?   Keeping in mind that our success is determined by how well we keep our customers happy, we calculate the time that passes from when we begin working on the customer’s order to the time we actually deliver. We call that Cycle time.  The shorter that period is, the more successful we deem our performance to be.

If you take eternity, the customer will begin to sense danger, and the chance of not being satisfied with your work is pretty high. And that usually has good grounds. Is that it? Well, from practical experience it really is. Often when you delay delivering what the customer ordered, there is a list of things that may be wrong; and they include:   Low morale on the part of your workforce   The work being too complex for your firm   Product defects discovered and are being corrected   Team handling too many jobs at a time   Lack of flexibility on the team to adjust to the demands of the customer   Inefficient systems

Everyone in an organization should be integrated in pursuing the dual goals of zero breakdowns and zero defects." -Ramesh Lohia and Jack T. Parker - iSixSigmaKaizen. In Quality Quotes, March 23, 2015, Knowledge Center, ASQ [ AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR QUALITY]

For any business decision, there are only two choices: action or inaction. The best option is to take action." - Ramesh Lohia and Jack T. Parker, consultants, iSixSigmaKaizen . In Quality Quotes, February 25, 2015, Knowledge Center, ASQ [ AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR QUALITY]

Six Sigma helps you monitor, through observed data, how well you are doing.

Kai – Taking apart; and Zen – Making good.

Ever heard if it ain’t broke don’t fix it?

Liaise with customers so that you know exactly when to start processing one customer’s order

Reduce the number of tasks your people do at the same time because it becomes more like attending to many pots at the same time.

you need to take orders according to your capacity.

Do you realize that there is a lot that can go right if you view your profession as your business?

Lean Six Sigma seeks to achieve: minimum waste, best performance and high returns on investment.

Differential factor. When you strategically develop your value-based résumé, you will define the differential factor. The differential factor represents highly valuable skills, qualifications, and other employment assets that set you apart from other qualified candidates, that make you STAND OUT. Oftentimes, the differential factor is what tips the hiring scale in your favor! For instance, if you have an industry-wide reputation, your reputation might be the differential factor. If you are a black belt in Six Sigma, that may constitute the differential factor. A number of years ago, I coached a chief financial officer who worked for a legendary golf professional. Having worked for a famous golf professional was the differential factor because many hiring managers found it unique and intriguing to interview (and hire) someone who worked for a celebrity. Perhaps you are bilingual; this may represent the differential factor. When you identify the differential factor, you’ll provide your job campaign with a distinct advantage in landing a job quickly in the toughest of job markets.

In a larger business context, an example of the “Genius of the And” would be a company’s constant attention to both long-term growth and quarterly results.

• Typical categories include the 6 Ms: manpower (personnel), machines, materials, methods, measurements, and Mother Nature (or environment)

Several large companies such as 3M noticed that when they religiously implemented Six Sigma, innovation slowed to a crawl.

Six Sigma can be thought of as an organizational pathogen.

Stated simply, an Excel spreadsheet, or more likely a proliferation of these spreadsheets, is ill-suited for the longer-term data management and analysis required by Six Sigma teams.

So much has happened since the first publication of The Six Sigma Way, and it has been rewarding to find that much of what was in the book then still holds true. At the same time, the opportunity to reflect on how organizations have used, or misused, Six Sigma had offered a lot of new insights. We're pleased that this updated book will offer some real benefit to individuals and organizations still focused on driving continuous improvement today.

One way to get a handle on execution is to think of it as akin to the Six Sigma processes for continual improvement.

The third component of this assault remained unreachable. The last word from the Belgorod-class submarine was when it vanished under the polar ice cap, sailing its thirty-thousand-ton bulk toward the search zone. Its code name was Siniykit, chosen for the largest oceangoing creature—the blue whale—which was fitting as the submarine was nearly two hundred meters in length. The boat needed to be that large to hold its arsenal of six massive Poseidon 2M39 torpedoes. The stealth weapons were the latest in Russia’s underwater arsenal, tested for the first time in 2023. The bus-size weapons were more drones than torpedoes, capable of remote operation, with a range of ten thousand kilometers. Powered by a nuclear reactor, the torpedoes were capable of carrying up to a 100-megaton payload. Such beasts were designed as a second-strike nuclear option, to devastate a coastline and trigger a radioactive tsunami. It was the reason the boat had earned its nickname the “Doomsday Sub.

If you want to change outcomes, you need to realise that outcomes are the result of systems. Not the computer systems, but the way people work together and interact. And these systems are the product of how people think and behave. So, if you want to change outcomes, you have to change your systems, and to do that, you have to change your thinking. Albert Einstein summed up the need for different thinking very well: The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking which caused them.

Toyota’s success, in short, is not rooted in its application of a standard “lean” methodology to manufacturing, nor can it be found in any internally implemented equivalent of Six Sigma. Instead, it is rooted in its leaders. More specifically, it can be found in the approach that a Toyota leader takes, seeing self-development and training others as the only possible path, not only for finding the right solution for the problem at hand, but for constantly and consistently improving performance day after day.

Lean Six Sigma is a combination of both the Lean and Six Sigma philosophies. This creates a powerful improvement concept that applies data-driven tools to solve problems, transform processes, and reduce costs.

Art Ocain is a business leader, investor, writer, and DevOps advocate from Pennsylvania, the United States who specializes in the field of programming and cybersecurity. He focuses on using the theory of constraints and applying constraint management to all areas of business including sales, finance, planning, billing, and all areas of operations. Ocain has a Mathematics degree from the University of Maryland and a Business degree from the University of the People. And he is also certified by many renowned organizations like CISM from ISACA, CCNA from Cisco, MCSE from Microsoft, Security Administrator from Azure, Six Sigma, Scrum, and many more. Ocain is responsible for leading many teams toward revolutionary change through his DevOps principles, no matter the type of company or team. So far, he has worked in a lot of companies as a project manager, a President, a COO, a CTO, and an incident response coordinator. Along with this, Ocain is a blog writer and public speaker. He loves to write and share his knowledge and has given presentations at SBDC (Small Business Development Center) and Central PA Chamber of Commerce. Ocain shares his thoughts and information about his upcoming events on sites like MePush, LinkedIn, Slideshare, Quora, and Microsoft Tech Community. Throughout his career, Ocain has been a coach and a mentor to many people and has helped develop companies and build brands.

The organization must respect its people, continually educating, training, challenging, and empowering them. Any organization that thinks itself Lean has to see its people as its most prized asset, and this asset must be stimulated, celebrated, and compensated properly.

​This is where you should start.  Develop a total system for continuous improvement not just going after the flavor of the month: six sigma, kaizen blitz, etc.  They are all good tools but you should plan what the entire ‘ship’ you will build looks like before you start using the tools to build it.

Customer satisfaction is the key determinant of quality. If a product satisfies the customer or meets the customer's specifications, then it is acceptable. Otherwise, it is defective in some way. To define the quality of any product, one must fully understand customer needs and specifications.

Accomplishing our quality goals should be straightforward, efficient, and productive.

Agile brought the power of iteration to the forefront. It sought to recover what the Lean and Six Sigma world somehow lost. Instead of building a massive plan that is rife with assumptions that will hopefully lead you to your destination, just set a relatively short-term goal and iterate your way there.

In order to increase the profitability of the company, we will have to increase sales, cut costs and expenses and implement Six Sigma.

A process is a formal, well-structured communication vehicle. It can be a heavily engineered Six Sigma process or it can be a well-structured regular meeting. The size of the process should be scaled up or down to meet the needs of the communication challenge that it facilitates. When communication in an organization spans across organizational boundaries, processes will help ensure that the communication happens and that it happens with quality.

Big organizations like to follow perfectionist regimes like Six Sigma and Total Quality Management, entire systems devoted to eliminating error from the conference room or the assembly line, but it’s no accident that one of the mantras of the Web startup world is fail faster. It’s not that mistakes are the goal—they’re still mistakes, after all, which is why you want to get through them quickly. But those mistakes are an inevitable step on the path to true innovation.

Efficiency systems such as Six Sigma or Total Quality Management might help franchise projects, but they will suffocate artists. When 3M, for example, inventor of Post-it Notes and Scotch Tape, brought in a high priest of Six Sigma as a new CEO in 2000, innovation plunged.

Short and long bios Contracts Cover page and introduction to a proposal Engagement letter Quick blurb/elevator speech—what do you do? What are your focus areas? Letters of recommendation Logo and company graphic art Nondisclosure agreements Presentations of all sorts Progress reports Proposals and statements of work Publications list Marketing trifold (less important now than in the past) Work programs and check-off lists Examples of frequently requested spreadsheets. For example, you may be in a business that uses six sigma for quality control. Graphs, statistical reports, and so on can typically be modified quickly from one client to the next. Unless you are in the graphic arts or publications business itself, there is no need to be original. Inspiring ideas permeate the Internet.

The customer may offer you a ‘solution’ rather than express her real needs. Ask the customer ‘Why do you want this?’ until you truly understand the real need.

When both introducing and sustaining change, leadership matters. The organization needs to see that you, personally, are taking this seriously. As we rolled out HOS, I talked about its importance for our business at every opportunity. I held regular meetings to make sure we were actually implementing it and that we were getting the results—something I didn’t do for Six Sigma, and a reason it underdelivered.

The Five Initiatives 1.​Growth (via customer service, globalization, and technology) 2.​Productivity (went hand-in-hand with growth) 3.​Cash (improve working capital and have high-quality earnings) 4.​People (keep the best talent, organized the right way and motivated) 5.​Organizational enablers (including Six Sigma, Honeywell Operating System, and Functional Transformation)

Agile Methodology: Learn from how terror networks work. AGILE methodology is about being able to iterate and reiterate till you get it right. You are always at the start and the end at the same time till the launch. You are more nimble than the waterfall method and more resourceful than the lean method.

The biggest challenge to any organization in transformation is always people management.

DMAIC is an acronym that stands for: Define Measure Analyze Improve Control

DMADV is built into five phases as follows: Define Measurement Analysis Design Verify

Laozu had highlighted its importance back in 600 BC: Before it moves, hold it, Before it goes wrong, mould it, Drain off water in winter before it freezes, Before weeds grow, sow them to the breezes. You can deal with what has not happened, Can foresee Harmful events and not allow them to be.

The important thing to understand about Six Sigma is that the goal is to have a very small number of defects — that is, improved quality — as a result of decreased process variation. You get there by measuring processes and using mathematical tools to improve consistency.

suppliers (ii) JIT layout: Employees arranged in work cells. (iii) Inventory reduction (iv) Scheduling: with a level schedule (small batches of constantly changing items so that production meets daily demand) and Kanban system. (v) Continuous job improvement b) Six Sigma: A methodology that furnished tools for the improvement of business processes. The intent is to decrease process variation and improve product quality. The objective is get as close as possible to “zero defects” with an outer limit of 3.4 defects per million. i) Elements of six sigma: (1) Customer: The definition of quality – the acceptable rate of defects – is in the mind of customer. (2) Process: When assessing a process, the company has to adopt the customer ’mindset. (3) Employee: Training 6 sigma tools (green belt, black belt and master black belt). ii) 6 sigma process and tools: (1) Phase 1: Define the nature of the problem. (2) Phase 2: Measure existing performance and start recording data and facts that provide information on the underlying causes of the problem (3) Phase 3: Analyze the information to determine the root cause to the problem (4) Phase 4: Improve the process by effecting solutions to the problem. (5) Phase 5: Control the process until the solutions become ingrained.

Design means how something works, not how it looks – the design should evolve from the function. —James Dyson

Many people who could not give their best because they were denied the opportunity. We must harness the capabilities of each person to encourage organizational success.” Ramesh Lohia and Pavan Lohia, Consultants, iSixSigmaKaizen Published in Quality Quotes, Jun 7, 2016, Knowledge Center, ASQ [ AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR QUALITY]