Please feel free to expand upon your answers in the comments section below. (Note that you do have to be logged in to post comments, but registration is free and lets you download hundreds of pages of terms and dozens of forms and tools.)
If you want to comment on posts, you’ll need to get an invite code. The invite code lets you sign up on the main site. We’ve tried a lot of different methods in the spirit of continuous improvement, and given our current constraints, this method strikes the best balance. It lets us layer some extra measures to protect us (and you) from spambots that post garbage links on websites, and makes sure you don’t inadvertently Read more…
We’ve got loads of free content for you. Visit CI Central, our training and resource platform, to see what we are currently offering for free. And, of course, you can also look over all the free content loaded to this site, including our extensive Continuous Improvement Companion.
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 of people coming out of the certification program. From an individual’s perspective, having this type of certification on a resume is great for internal promotions, Read more…
Sign up to get our Continuous Improvement Development Guide Phase Checklists. You’ll get a short series of emails with links to get the phase checklists for free.
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 sum of all data points divided by the number of data points Median: the data point with an equal number of data points above and 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 within capability analysis. Process Capability Ratio (Cp): This is a comparison of the size of the tolerance of the specification with the statistical spread of 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 by the interaction of the inputs (the X’s.) There are two main type of analysis conducted during the analyze phase of Six Sigma. 1. Data 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 of bored, unproductive people. Project Focus You have to decide if this project is going to be geared towards getting lots of results, or towards 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 tree felling days. The rules were simple. Whoever chopped the most wood during their shift would win. They were working on opposite side of a 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. The wider the wallet opens, the more satisfied the customer is. Sure, there are surveys and awards and reports on patient satisfaction, but those metrics 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 away. Accounts payable is essentially the opposite of accounts receivable, the money that is owed to the company. Accounts payable includes things like bills for Read more…
