Six Sigma Archives | Page 8 of 11

Millions of Dollars Saved in 60 Minutes

By Ron Pereira - October 28th, 2008

Last night I told you the story of a measurement system analysis gone bad. Tonight, as promised, I’ll explain exactly what the issue was and how we solved it in around 60 minutes. The Part in Question The plastic component in questio

A Variation Story

By Ron Pereira - October 27th, 2008

If you test or inspect (visual or automatic) a product of any kind I’m very confident I can show you how to save your company thousands, if not millions, of dollars (or Euros, Pounds, etc.). How you ask? Three words. Measurement Syst

Planting Seeds

By Ron Pereira - July 13th, 2008

What can we learn about continuous improvement from the person Christian’s call the King of King’s, Lord of Lord’s, and The Great I AM? Lots. Let’s start in the book of Matthew. And he spoke to them at length in parable

Strategies to Sustain Operations Excellence

By Ron Pereira - June 9th, 2008

This is an abridged version of a presentation I recently gave at a manufacturing excellence conference. If you’d like to download the video follow this link to Google Video and click on download video.

Entropy, Salmon, and Swimming

By Ron Pereira - June 4th, 2008

A can of soup falls if you drop it, your car tire blows out when a nail punctures it, and eventually my barbeque grill cools down after grilling steaks, even in the hot Texas air. Why is this? Allow me to explain. While these things ar

Eight Reasons Your Lean/Six Sigma Initiative Could Fail

By Ron Pereira - June 1st, 2008

Launching a Lean or Six Sigma initiative signals a move towards operational excellence and a dedication to continuous improvement. Yet, navigating this journey successfully requires awareness of certain critical challenges that are oft

8 Dimensions of Quality

By Ron Pereira - May 28th, 2008

The definition of quality is often a hotly debated topic. While it may seem intuitive, when we get right down to it, “quality” is a difficult concept to define with any precision. The most fundamental definition of a quality produc

Dealing with Doubting Thomas

By Ron Pereira - March 30th, 2008

Today, Roman Catholics around the world read about Doubting Thomas. No matter what your personal belief system is, I think there is much to learn from this story, especially for those of us attempting to drive change in our organizati

LSS Academy Series Review – Six Sigma Edition

By Ron Pereira - March 23rd, 2008

First of all, Happy Easter! My family and I were in Oklahoma the last few days. As is very typical with me during road trips, I began to think about this blog. I am not sure if this is entirely healthy (me always thinking about t

Brett Favre – Greatest Ever?

By Ron Pereira - March 5th, 2008

“No data have meaning apart from their context.” – Donald Wheeler Unless you live under a rock (or perhaps outside of the USA) you have likely heard that Brett Favre has decided to retire from the NFL. Like him or not

Free iSixSigma Salary Webcast

By Ron Pereira - March 3rd, 2008

Our friend Michael Marx over at iSixSigma will be hosting a free webcast Tuesday, March 4 at 11:00 AM EST. As of this morning, more than 850 people had already registered for the event. Here are the details of the event. Mark your

Long Live the King (Cash)

By Ron Pereira - February 7th, 2008

If you are involved with a for-profit business in any way please remember one thing – cash is king. Of course respecting people is absolutely critical. But cash pays the bills. It buys things. It pays salaries. So without money in

Schofield Media Group Announces Acquisition of iSixSigma

By Ron Pereira - February 6th, 2008

Big news yesterday from Michael Cyger, owner of the extremely popular iSixSigma brand. I am pleased and excited to announce that CTQ Media, owner of the publishing brands including iSixSigma, Real Innovation, BPM Enterprise and Sourcin

Just Do It

By Ron Pereira - February 2nd, 2008

“Talk doesn’t cook rice.” -Chinese Proverb While planning, checking, and acting/adjusting are of course crucial elements of the PDCA cycle I sometimes feel as though the “do” element is under-utilized. In a similar way,

Textron CEO on State of Six Sigma

By Ron Pereira - January 22nd, 2008

USA Today recently interviewed Lewis Campbell, Textron’s CEO. The questions were mainly centered on Textron’s enterprise wide deployment of Six Sigma. They asked several questions, some of them quite tough. All were answered with,

Has Lean or Six Sigma Changed your Life?

By Ron Pereira - January 21st, 2008

Mark Graban just posted an article about LEI’s newest book. Looks to be sort of like the Lean Lexicon but with blog-like quotes. Mark shared one of the excerpts from the book. “Lean should not have ‘changed’

Management Improvement Carnival #27 (Best of 2007)

By Ron Pereira - January 3rd, 2008

John Hunter asked me to write the latest Management Carnival. Normally, bloggers look at the previous month and share some links of their favorite posts. Since we are at the start of a new year I thought I would change things up a

One Year of Blogging!

By Ron Pereira - December 30th, 2007

Close to one year ago I started this little blog with the post Lean or Six Sigma?. Truth be told I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing (and am still learning) but knew I loved to write. I also knew I loved teaching people about lean a

Reader Question: Project Handoffs

By Ron Pereira - December 12th, 2007

A reader of the blog recently sent me the following question. Ron, I have a question. Here at my “office” we’ve been doing LSS for about two years now. After a successful Green/Black belt project completion we “

Continuous Improvement Begins with You!

By Ron Pereira - December 5th, 2007

One of the things that drives me batty is how hard some people make continuous improvement. Some think you have to go to 2 or 4 weeks of training to make something better. Some think if you don’t have a green or black belt you are no

Liquor Stores and Churches

By Ron Pereira - September 27th, 2007

They say there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Here’s an example of why this is sadly true in many cases. It’s been proven that there is a strong correlation between the number of churches and liquor stores in a commun

Six Sigma in Japan

By Ron Pereira - September 9th, 2007

Here is a question I honestly don’t know the answer to. Do companies in Japan use Six Sigma? When I say Six Sigma I am referring to someone following the standard DMAIC roadmap in attempts to reduce variation, defects, etc.

Fun with Confidence Intervals – Part 2

By Ron Pereira - August 30th, 2007

Last night we began our discussion on confidence intervals. Specifically, we talked about the difference between population and sample parameters and how they play a major role in understanding what a confidence interval is. Tonight I

Fun with Confidence Intervals – Part 1

By Ron Pereira - August 29th, 2007

If I said the words “confidence intervals” would you know what I meant? What if I also asked if you could calculate them? If you answered no to either one of these questions I assure you will be able to answer yes by end of this tw

Descriptive Statistics – Part 2

By Ron Pereira - August 21st, 2007

Last night in part 1 of this series we began our discussion of descriptive statistics by introducing the three measures of central tendency – the mean, median, and mode. As promised tonight we switch gears and are all about var

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