Blog | Six Sigma Development Solutions, Inc.

I’m going to tell you a story that illustrates how Lean Thinking and Six Sigma Thinking both play an integral roll in my everyday life … which is a blessing and a curse ;) I was teaching a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt course in Atlanta. We were having a great class and everyone was engaged. I had worked up quite an appetite because I tend to be very animated and move around during class. Lunch time came and a few of the students and I went to the local Subway to eat. We weren’t the only ones with the idea. This was an industrial area, and this Subway was a local favorite. When we arrived, there were about nine people in line. While standing in line I watched the typical dance of the two Subway sandwich artisans. One was at the register, and the other was preparing the sandwiches. I noticed that most of the patrons wanted their subs toasted, which is also my preference. While watching the young man prepping the subs, I saw that that he put the sub in the toaster, and stood and waited t...

I am flying back from teaching a Green Belt course in Las Angeles, California and as promised, I will continue my “journal” of TLS implementation efforts at an industrial organization. In the last blog, we discussed how this organization was using the metric of “Yield” to score their production process success. We discussed that this metric only shows you what happens at the end of their process, and doesn’t give visibility to the success of the many internal steps. In order to implement TLS, we needed to have a better way to look at our process systemically. We also needed to have a way of determining where our constraints are. Following the “Lean” methodology, we decided to use O.E.E.(Overall Equipment Effectiveness) as a primary facility metric. We had an overall “Plant” OEE, and we had OEE’s per line and per product. OEE would give us visibility to how we were performing with respect to Performance (Ratio of Daily production to effective capacity), Quality (the number of Good v...

I teach Lean and Six Sigma classes all over the U.S. (as well as abroad) and a good number of the students that I teach aren’t from an organization. These students are unemployed and looking for a “resume booster”. Most of them are somewhat fearful of making the investment in a Lean and/or Six Sigma certification because they cannot “wrap their heads around” how they are going to take on a cost savings project when they do not presently work for an organization. Well, let’s explore this quandary … There are many organizations struggling in the U.S., especially now in the economic “downturn” that need help. There are many Small to mid size for profit organizations that presently do not have the means to hire a consultant. I ask my students if they know of any of these companies, and I always get a resounding “yes”. I ask them “what is the worst they can tell you when you offer a “pro bono” Lean and/or Six Sigma project to help them improve?”. There are many non-profit organizations...

I’ve been remiss in my promise to start a blog about the emerging quality methodology, TLS (the Synergy between Theory of Constraints (T), Lean (L), and Six Sigma (S). A very busy pre-holiday, and a fun filled family holiday commanded most of my time. I am happy to say it is a new year and my promise is to share my limited (but growing) knowledge of this new grass-roots methodology. A couple of weeks ago, I got a call from a company that I consulted with and trained their employees in an effort towards implementing the Lean and Six Sigma methodology around three years ago. At that time, they had a very engrained culture which ended up being stronger than the will to change of a few key people. I was recently called by a good friend in the company who had been moved into the operational side of the organization as a plant manager. We had a long lunch together where I learned that his job was to make his plant the benchmark for all other production facilities to emulate. During lunch...