Tweet This week I traveled on Alaskan Airlines for the first time in many years (possibly first ever).  While I was waiting at the gate, they allowed their frequent fliers to load in the first two groups, as do most airlines.  the next group surprised me.  They loaded any passenger that did not need to [...]

Tweet Smarter Solutions is moving into the Business Process Management (BPM) world.  We will be providing courses and consulting services to support BPM implementations. Business Process Management is rather difficult to define if you rely on the internet to find information.  The primary search results are heavily weighted to software providers that support the IT [...]

Tweet In my job here at Smarter Solutions, I work with the web site and marketing.  This involves a bit of competitor analysis.  As I look at what a prospective Lean Six Sigma Black Belt candidate would see on the web, I wonder how the reputable providers can stay in business. I would not generally [...]

Tweet My last post on the LocalU seminar is part of a 3+ month effort to update our business website.  We worked with a great company, Espresso Moon, out of Houston who has done a great job.  Working with a process improvement company is not always an easy job, since we are constantly looking for [...]

Tweet I was able to attend a class that was sponsored by localU which was sponsored by Google, the Small Business Administration, and a local Austin business organization.  It was a great set of presenters.  The session lasted 4 hours and had 6 speakers from google and other firms and consultants in the web optimization [...]

Tweet Not all processes have true customer derived specifications.  These processes are difficult to report a capability value. The easiest method to report the capability of a process without a true specification is to just report what the range of typical values.  We recommend a median value as the most common output followed by a [...]

Tweet A student asked me about describing the middle of a lognormal distribution, so here is the answer and a piece of trivia. His choice was a geometric mean, which I have heard of but have not used.  To calculate a geometric mean, you multiply all the values in the sample together and then take [...]

Tweet I am providing a webinar tomorrow to discuss the differences and issues with using Shewhart SPC charting when used in actual practice.  We will discuss the unsaid issues with Shewhart SPC that are not discussed in training and why the 30,000-foot-level methods taught to students at Smarter Solutions. sign up at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/297310537

Tweet As I have posted before, “Life is a poor teacher, it provides the consequences before the lesson”  This week I have spent a lot of time with a client to restore a scorecard software that they had not put on their IT server backup program.  We spent 8+ hours using screen shots to rebuild [...]

Tweet This post may reveal a bit too much about the author, but I believe that the message makes it worth sharing. In December of 2009, I purchased a 2010 Ford Escape 4wd, thinking that I might be moving out of Texas to the snowy northern US.  I did not end up moving, but I [...]