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Monthly Archives: May 2011
Management Trends for 2011: MORE!
The corporate world is changing. The biggest firms in the world are almost entirely public corporations, and an every smaller number of the largest firms are privately owned. Of the largest firms in America, the top five public firms are … Continue reading
Posted in Best Practices, Decision Making, Delivering Services
Tagged change, Improve, Measure, Metrics, Quality, Quantify, Six Sigma, Track
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The 4th Sigma: The Paradox of Customer Service
You’ve probably heard about it elsewhere, and if you haven’t in these Blogs we’ve discussed how the Six Sigma framework defines waste as any activity that doesn’t contribute value. For example, in “Is Quality Control A Waste of Time?“ we … Continue reading
The 4th Sigma: Analysis Paralysis… More Options Don’t Always Help
Any good management book or management system provides you with more than a few tools or the steps for a process. The best books remind that you are applying these systems to people, people with preferences and limitations. Some people … Continue reading
The 4th Sigma: Is It Time to Rethink Six Sigma?
Over the past few months, I have been using this blog to collect information from different operational managers, especially IT managers because of the wide range of services they run. The subject has been, “How are you dealing with the … Continue reading
Posted in 4th Sigma, Best Practices, Decision Making, Delivering Services, Improvement, Continuous or Not, Unique Ideas
Tagged change, Hiring, Improve, IT, Measure, Metrics, outsource, Projects, Quality, Quantify, Reporting, Satisfaction, Six Sigma, tips, Track, transform
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100%, Guaranteed On-Time… Sort Of!
When I have discussions with my peers about the metrics they collect to run their operations, or at least measure how well their operations perform, the most confused and controversial metric is… On-Time-Delivery (OTD). Many operations feel that they have … Continue reading
Variations On A Theme: Why Do I Need All This Math?
When you read about the different quality systems out there, you quickly hit the wall when they start throwing statistics at you. Once you move into the heavy math, the interesting idea start to look like a very complicated and … Continue reading
Posted in Best Practices, Improvement, Continuous or Not
Tagged change, Improve, Measure, Metrics, Predict, Projects, Quantify, Reporting, Six Sigma, transform
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The Customer Is Always Right… Sometimes
Yesterday we talked about the Baldridge Award and how one firm won the award, but shortly afterwards went bankrupt. This case raised questions about the value of quality control, or at least of the Baldridge award. My contention is that … Continue reading
Posted in Best Practices, Delivering Services, Expectations and Rewards
Tagged Clients, Improve, Satisfaction
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Pipe Dreams: Pursuit Of The Right Quality Metric
Quality can mean different things, often many things, to any individual. The term “quality”, by itself doesn’t necessarily clearly spell out what you mean. Identifying what quality means (in the context of a specific project) is vital to any improvement … Continue reading
The Mind Muddle Of Multi-Tasking
Multi-Tasking. We’ve all used this term for doing more than one thing at a time. As in, “Look at me Ma… I’m doing the laundry and watching TV… I’m Multi-Tasking!” Most of us have even been told to do more … Continue reading
Psychics Are Standing By To Install Your Laptop!
What do your clients really want from you? Sometimes a client will instruct you to do something, such as editing a document. When you fail to follow their instructions (because it violates a rule, such as English grammar) you can … Continue reading
