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Lean Certifications (or Six Sigma Certifications) comes in several forms. Company Internal Lean Certification. This type of certification has the drawback of being internally run, so there is little information outside of the company as to the quality of the training, the rigorousness of the training, or the resulting abilities Read more…
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Central tendency is a statistics term that is used to describe where the middle of a data set lies. The challenge is that there are a few different ways to describe where that middle lies. There are three common ways to describe the centering of data. Mean (or average): the Read more…
Capability Analysis is the act of determining process capability, or the ability of a process to meet a designated set of specifications. It involves a set of statistical calculations to determine whether the spread of the performance of a process fits within the desired specification. There are several terms embedded Read more…
The Analyze Phase of Six Sigma is the third phase of the DMAIC process. It is the phase where the relationship between the variables and outputs are established and quantified. This relationship is often called the ‘transfer function’ and is represented as Y=f(X). Y is the output and is determined Read more…
An important part of conducting a continuous improvement event is selecting a kaizen team that is strong and will get great results. The following factors all play a role. Scope Too few people for the scope of the project and you won’t finish. Too many and you’ll have a lot Read more…
There’s an old story about two lumberjacks who decided to have a contest to see who could chop the most wood. One was a young, energetic man who could chop relentlessly. He was convinced he would win easily against the older lumberjack who was on the back end of his Read more…
Patient satisfaction metrics are bad for healthcare. There. I said it. I know. It is blasphemy to say something like that in the Lean world. The focus of continuous improvement should be on the customer. The customer tells us if we are doing something right by speaking with their wallets. Read more…
AP is an abbreviation for “accounts payable”. It is the money that companies owe in the short term and is recorded under current liabilities. In general, companies want to pay debts off as far in the future as they can (provided there is no financing charges) and get paid right Read more…