The Practical Leader

JULY 11, 2011

Customer service and continuous quality improvement have always been important. As organizations struggle to grow revenues and reduce costs in our challenging economic times, service/quality is becoming even more critical. In high service/quality organizations, all three rings are strong and growing. Perceived value is high.

Quality 56

Quality Six Sigma TQM Health Care 56

Six Disciplines

MARCH 24, 2011

Companies operated alone, rather than being part of partner networks or plugging their people into informal relationships. It was an ineffective way to operate, especially after the information technology revolution took place, and to break out of it, companies needed management ideas. They’ve been through the paradigm shift.

Execution 101

Execution Six Sigma Strategy Information Technology 101

Strategy Driven

APRIL 3, 2013

The paper describes how best practices in measuring organizational performance in the nuclear power industry can be applied to healthcare providers facing the daunting challenge of concurrently increasing production, efficiency, and quality – all while reducing operating costs. About the Authors.

Six Sigma 62

Six Sigma Organization White Paper Efficiency 62

Strategy Driven

DECEMBER 5, 2013

Yet, despite the negative connotations, most companies still operate bureaucratically – insisting employees work inside of increasingly complex structures with processes and procedures designed to standardize or control everything. Silent Killer #3: Bureaucratic Styles. Lock in and Engage Top Talent.

Productivity 50

Productivity Products Six Sigma Competitive Advantage 50

Strategy Driven

NOVEMBER 7, 2013

The changes have been so dramatic that most companies are still scrambling to figure out the new rules of the game. Ohno’s inventions became the foundation of the quality movement that swept the world starting in the 1970s and ’80s and evolved into what is today known as the Toyota Production System.

Ohno 50

Ohno Productivity Products Six Sigma 50

Sales Wolf Blog

JUNE 11, 2010

.  The Management Improvement Carnival naturally features posts on how improve your management skills and systems within your organization, but also has a special focus on how this can be accomplished using lean management practices such as Kaizen, Six Sigma, and even Hansei.   Ready to improve your management skills? .

Management 133

Management Six Sigma Human Resources Kaizen 133

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 13, 2018

If the goal is to go beyond basic labor arbitrage savings to improve the process — and it should be — then companies need a good understanding of both their existing business processes and the new processes they want RPA to enable before implementing the technology. However, many companies don’t do that.

Process 12

Process Six Sigma Company Technology 12

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 22, 2015

Since the late nineteenth century, we have seen five distinct movements in the way companies compete. Many companies still compete this way and there continue to be successors to Taylorism, including business process reengineering and lean production. Edwards Deming , who introduced quality as a way of life for Japanese companies.

Six Sigma 8

Six Sigma Company Lean Production Taylorism 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 8, 2012

Six Sigma , Kaizen , Lean , and other variations on continuous improvement can be hazardous to your organization's health. Japanese manufacturers in the 1950s had a reputation for poor quality, but through a culture of analytical and systematic change Japan was able to go from worst to first. But what's happened in Japan?

Six Sigma 17

Six Sigma Kaizen Govindarajan Telecommunications 17

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 30, 2016

Such high-profile exposure has prompted more companies to view ZBB as a fresh “wonder diet” for achieving radical corporate leanness. Yet for all the promise of ZBB, many companies that try it soon grow disenchanted. It was apparent that others in the company shared this view. We have tried. Nothing worked.

Zero Based Budgeting 9

Zero Based Budgeting Budgeting Supply Chain Company 9

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 28, 2012

You might think that emerging country companies are more ready to address the needs of and win customers in other emerging markets. Consumers in many developing countries don't trust the quality of the municipal water supply; some boil their own water, others buy bottled water and yet others purify the water in their own homes.

Marketing 11

Marketing Company Six Sigma Engineering 11

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 18, 2012

If you've had a bad experience with an operational improvement effort (like Six Sigma or Business Reengineering), or if you haven't given it much attention lately, you should take a fresh look. Many companies and executives have been disappointed with these efforts when results weren't sustained and inefficiency crept back in.

Operations 15

Operations Six Sigma Supply Chain Webinar 15

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 16, 2014

If the number of executives from other companies who have been benchmarking GE’s management-development centers is an indication, interest in creating corporate universities is on the rise. Deeper qualities, some of which can’t be measured, are critical to success. Deep leadership involvement is essential.

Six Sigma 8

Six Sigma Human Resources Benchmarking Participative 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 20, 2013

As the business environment becomes increasingly complex and interconnected, few leaders express confidence in their companies' ability to adapt. We've worked with a growing number of companies to pair future leaders with social entrepreneurs so they can teach each other the skills they've honed.

Entrepreneur 8

Entrepreneur Company Six Sigma Franchising 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 23, 2011

Look at the companies that successfully used this approach.". Companies that practice process improvement have been victims of this hype cycle for decades. By reviewing the history of its process initiatives, the company made its journey visible and discussable. Here's this new approach.

Six Sigma 14

Six Sigma TQM Kaizen Balanced Scorecard 14

Strategy Driven

SEPTEMBER 19, 2011

Whether it was branded the Deming Method or Six Sigma or a host of other models, ‘continuous improvement processes’ found their way into organizations large and small and have made a major contribution to improving quality worldwide. Keep your company fighter-pilot agile in any turbulent or changing market.

Six Sigma 57

Six Sigma Learning-by-Doing Training Tools 57

Harvard Business Review

JULY 30, 2018

Each department trusts its own system, but when the task at hand requires that data be shared across silos, the company’s various systems simply do not talk to one and other. To see this, consider two departments of a consumer package goods company. standards) to facilitate company-wide communication.

Six Sigma 9

Six Sigma Supply Chain Long-term Definition 9

Harvard Business Review

JULY 3, 2014

These companies are in trouble, and their boards must select new CEOs under highly charged circumstances. The alternative, and unfortunately the usual route, is to compile a laundry list of laudable qualities. A global energy company was struggling and seemed unlikely to survive the industry’s looming consolidation.

CEO 15

CEO Six Sigma How To Apparel 15

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

One can't help being impressed with the effort biologists, physicists, and other scientists devote to data quality. And the attention science pays to data quality provides important lessons, especially for those interested in "Big Data.". You must get in front of data quality. This is not surprising.

Six Sigma 15

Six Sigma How To Quality Long-term 15

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 23, 2013

A common formula to create a best-selling business book is to start with a list of eye-catching companies that have been outperforming their peers for years. Subsequently, the management thinker takes the list of superior companies and examines (usually in a rather less objective way) what these companies have in common.

Six Sigma 9

Six Sigma Early Adopters Management Fashion 9

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 18, 2011

PERT charts also helped companies assess trade-offs when activities on the critical path began to fall behind schedule. The 1980s saw the rise of total quality management in the U.S., Related processes like Six Sigma and Total Quality Management became widespread, as the U.S. What about the decade just ended?

Innovation 15

Innovation Supply Chain Management Six Sigma 15

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 25, 2011

When companies go through boom times, they quite naturally take their eyes off costs. For example Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan recently announced plans to cut about 30,000 jobs across the company, nearly 10 percent of the work force, due to a downturn in trading and lending revenue and the continuing effects of the mortgage mess.

Cost 9

Cost Six Sigma Short-term Banking 9

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 7, 2013

In business today, "user experience" (or UX) has come to represent all of the qualities of a product or service that make it relevant or meaningful to an end-user — everything from its look and feel design to how it responds when users interact with it, to the way it fits into people's daily lives.

Strategy 9

Strategy Six Sigma Engineering Bottom-up 9

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 30, 2013

From reducing costs by improving quality, to enriching existing products and services by informationalizing them , to innovating by bringing big data and analytics to bear, data are showing themselves worthy across the board. Too many companies are a full generation behind, and acquiring those capabilities in a hurry may be necessary.

Six Sigma 8

Six Sigma Long-term Information Technology Short-term 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 3, 2014

These companies are in trouble, and their boards must select new CEOs under highly charged circumstances. The alternative, and unfortunately the usual route, is to compile a laundry list of laudable qualities. A global energy company was struggling and seemed unlikely to survive the industry’s looming consolidation.

CEO 8

CEO Six Sigma How To Apparel 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 26, 2015

It’s an established fact that the life cycles of companies and many products have been shrinking. How do long-established companies make this transformation? Companies in industrial businesses had to drive costs down and execution up and create foolproof processes to ensure quality. Let’s take the 1990s.

Welch 8

Welch Six Sigma Agility Operations 8

Strategy Driven

JULY 20, 2016

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) conducted a survey on the topic of project management and found that companies that use a project management methodology (i.e. PRINCE2 , Six Sigma and project management software such as Taskworld ) versus those who don’t have an advantage in five different areas.

Project 50

Project Six Sigma Management Delegation 50

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 18, 2013

Finally, the leadership team, in partnership with Booz & Company, invited people from across the system to collaborate in cost reduction. The result is akin to turning on a light bulb—it releases the energy needed to truly transform the quality and cost of care. Leading Health Care Innovation.

Cost 8

Cost Health Care Six Sigma Insourcing 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 30, 2014

(Short-term thinking has been charged with no less than a chronic decline in innovation capability by Clayton Christensen who termed it “the Capitalist’s Dilemma.” ) Corporations continue to focus too narrowly on shareholders , with terrible consequences – even at great companies like IBM.

Six Sigma 8

Six Sigma Drucker P&L Short-term 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 24, 2016

Recently, I was talking with a senior leader from a world-class global learning and development company. More recently, we have focused on the value of Lean, Six Sigma , and diversity. We were discussing his firm’s approach to teaching leadership. He was talking about how to help leaders influence others.

Influence 8

Influence Six Sigma Open-book Diversity 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 29, 2015

Is your company ready to compete in a world of smart, connected products ? How can these companies overcome the inevitable leadership, organizational, and cultural challenges involved? Together, these constituted radical moves for an industrial company headquartered on the East Coast. Bill Ruh was selected in 2011.

Software 8

Software Six Sigma Insourcing P&L 8

Deming Institute

SEPTEMBER 23, 2019

In the late 1960s, Frank Pipp, an assembly plant manager for a Ford Motor Company factory, instructed his staff to purchase competitor’s cars. Larry Sullivan, from Ford, wrote an account of the visit he made to Japan in 1982 to “study quality systems at a variety of automotive suppliers.” Sullivan, Quality Progress, July 1984).

System 74

System Productivity Products Deming 74

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 11, 2015

Mauro Porcini is PepsiCo’s Chief Design Officer—the first to hold the position—where he oversees design-led innovation across all the company’s brands under CEO Indra Nooyi. In this phase, it’s easy to fail, and it’s easy for the company to reject the new approach. How do you define design?

Organization 8

Organization Brand Six Sigma Innovation 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 7, 2011

When they set out to turn around processes that have become woefully inefficient or ineffective, most companies choose one of four process improvement "religions": Lean , Six Sigma , Business Reengineering or Business Process Management (BPM). But some companies realize they need to go beyond making episodic improvements.

Six Sigma 14

Six Sigma BPM Process Hammer 14

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 27, 2015

By now, your company probably has a new busi­ness incubator, an idea wiki, a disciplined process for mining customer insights, an awards program for successful innovators, and maybe even an outpost in Silicon Valley—all fine ideas—and yet, most likely, it still struggles to meet its growth goals and seldom thrills its customers.

Innovation 8

Innovation Company Engineering Supply Chain 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 10, 2011

Burns shares insights from her company's forays into bringing business into social challenges. Opportunities like the challenge by Vijay Govindarajan and Christian Sarkar can inspire companies and their employees to ask: What could we bring to contribute to the improvement of housing for the people who live at the "base of the pyramid?".

Govindarajan 15

Govindarajan Six Sigma Energy Transportation 15

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 4, 2012

Companies that are smart about global innovation create an explicit role for senior executives in their projects. Some adopt rigorous quality programs to provide formal project management for global projects. These are necessary to impose discipline, structure, and a shared sense of purpose across the locations.

Globalization 15

Globalization Innovation Team First-mover Advantage 15