Posts from ‘January, 2010’

A Defects Per Million Opportunities (DPMO) metric can be useful in certain situations; e.g., when bridging from product to process. For example, a printed circuit board process might manufacture different board types going through the process. For this situation, we could (with a daily subgrouping, for example) divide the number of defects by the number [...]

I have heard the comment was made that successful lean applications can help companies reduce costs and improve quality. It is, unfortunately, being sold as the cure-all for all of the problems in business. There is a lot more to running a business than an effective lean strategy. A business-management system is needed, where Lean [...]

Integrated Enterprise Excellence deployment planning: A previous posting described day 1 of the Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) week-long workout. Now I will describe the second day, Tuesday, of our building of the company’s E-DMAIC business system. We are preparing for our first executive management report-out on Thursday morning. On Thursday afternoon, we will be meeting [...]

Recently I conducted a workout to help a company initate the creation of a business system that not only leads to the identification of process improvement projects so that the business as a whole benefits but also will integrate predictive scorecards with analytically/innovatively determined strategies.

In the Wall Street Journal article “Strategic Plans Lose Favor: Slump Showed Bosses Value of Flexibility, Quick Decisions,” it was pointed out that during the recession, as business forecasts came up against the reality, executives discovered that strategic planning doesn’t always work. Some leaders in business concluded that the new priority was to be able [...]