In the development of our upcoming blended learning Black Belt course we found a great software for producing software demonstrations.  Across the e-learning business, it is the choice for nearly all participants. The software is called Captivate and it is an Adobe product.  Since it is an Adobe software, it runs a bit different from standard [...]

As I set out on a fishing trip, I think about statistics.  Who would have thought the two could be related. In fishing, you do not know where to set your process when you start.  You choose different lures, by color, depth, size and motion.  Then you can choose the fishing methods, casting, trolling, or [...]

I am with a client this week preparing for a deployment of the IEE system and decided to pull out the IEE Volume II book (pages 144-148) to review Kotter‘s eight steps to change.  It was eye opening, yet again.  Kotter’s concepts truly focus the change effort for the greatest chance of success. Establishing a [...]

One of the inputs to an improvement project is a recording of the time it takes to execute a task, or in lean terms, the cycle time of a task.  There are three common methods to obtain this duration estimate 1. Actually time 5 to 15 random events in the process and average them to [...]

One of my peers shared with me his understanding of EVOP (Evolutionary Operations).  If you do not know of EVOP, it is an optimization method based on simple little DOE (design of experiments) tests.  He told me that the original Box book on this technique discussed chemical plants that continuously adjust their settings according to [...]

I find many of my clients are adopting the Net Promoter Score (NPS) method for evaluating their voice of the customer measures.  It is based on questions and surveys of your customers on how well they would promote you to others.  It is a method to evaluate the customer loyalty rather than their satisfaction. A [...]

When we teach black belts we speak of the central limit theorem, which states that the means of a sample from any distribution are more normally distributed than the original data.  Well, you may not have heard it this way, but this is the true statement.  Many were taught that sample averages are normally distributed.   [...]

My current client is in the middle of a pilot test of the Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) system for one part of their business.  The topic came up, from the sponsor, about the method used to demonstrate the benefits.  Most clients wait to see the system in place before they ask that question, and they answer [...]

It is very easy to collect data on activities.  Activities such as the number of people trained or the number of projects completed…  In these you count things that occur.  Nearly every organization has these types of metrics.   As a mentor, I generally discourage the use of activity count metrics.  This is based on a [...]

In my webinar today we talked about how the DMAIC tools are beneficial in the strategic planning process.  Most of the measure phase tools and simple hypothesis testing can be used. A bigger issue is not the tools, but getting a chance to apply them.  I expect that most black belts have never had access [...]