Selling Your Ideas: Learning the skills to be a great advocate

The toughest challenge many six sigma leaders face is getting buy-in. A plant is working at 105%; a business is quite profitable–how do you get that plant manager or business leader to consider using six sigma as a tool to do even better. Like it or not, there are politics to ideas in every organization. Good ideas, like six sigma, don’t sell themselves. Instead, you have to advocate for them. In this webinar, John Daly, author of Advocacy: Championing Ideas and Influencing Others, will describe some of the key skills of great advocates. You’ll learn very specific tactics for more effectively influencing others in conversations and meetings.

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Enhanced Hoshin Strategic Planning Process

Hoshin kanri, also called hoshin planning or policy deployment, is a technique that can establish a structure for implementing executive-defined strategies. However, the wording of strategic statements can lead to executions that are very team dependent. In addition, these statements can also lead to activities that are not healthy for the organization as a whole. In this article, Forrest Breyfogle will show how creating and executing strategic planning statements also can contribute to a company’s decline.

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Enhanced Lean Six Sigma DMAIC Process Roadmap for Conducting Business Improvement Efforts

Lean Six Sigma is a well accepted business improvement methodology, but when you read about companies that have introduced Lean Six Sigma (LSS), the results are not always consistent. There are as many examples of success as there are of failure. Many studies on the impact of LSS show three key characteristics that are correlated with success: leadership support from the top levels of the company, high-potential employees provided LSS training, and the LSS methodology being used. From the outside, nearly all Lean Six Sigma programs and methods appear the same; they use DMAIC and they may provide a certification. All LSS methodologies are not the same, not by a long shot. The article discusses how the Smarter Solutions’ Lean Six Sigma roadmap and methodology provide students the highest probability of success in solving their project in a short period of time.

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Re Introducing Lean Six Sigma Methodology Into A Business: Lessons Learned

Described are items that should be considered when re introducing Lean Six Sigma methodology (LSS methodology) into an organization; however what is described would also apply to the initial adoption of LSS practices into a company that has existing Black Belt-trained employees that could be involved in the LSS deployment.

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Quality Digest Live: Interview with Forrest Breyfogle, III

Forrest Breyfogle was interviewd by Quality Digest at the Quality Expo in Chicago in September 2011, where they discuss the future of quality and the future of manufacturing. *YouTube video, requires appropriate plugins. The full Quality Digest Live segment can be viewed at: http://www.qualitydigest.com/_qd.video_player.php?category=118&video=16271

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Truly Understanding Hypothesis Testing Concepts Making a Complex Topic Simple

Hypothesis testing is a concept that is taught in Lean Six Sigma and statistics courses. It is likely the least understood concept taught in both genre. In this webinar, we will walk through the concepts of a and b risk along with power and confidence choices using a completely different method than you would have been taught in a class. Through the use of diagrams and simulations, we will make the hypothesis concepts real and understandable. This could be the most informative hour your have every experienced! This may make much of your LSS training finally make sense. At the end of this webinar, the participant will be able to understand all hypothesis tests concepts and to be absolutely confident of the testing conclusions.

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Enhancing Voice Of The Customer Metrics

Most organizational improvement efforts are not sustainable, in part,because improvement projects are often created in silos and do not make a positive impact on the big picture and VOC needs. The Integrated Enterprise Excellence 9-step system overcomes this by analyzing the business as a whole, creating strategies determined through analysis and innovation, and then establishing operational scorecard goals for targeted value-chain scorecards. To implement this business system, one manufacturer took each of these steps and used the method as a roadmap for targeted improvement projects. Read the full article to see what happened.

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