Six Sigma For Dummies^?

by Craig Gygi; Neil DeCarlo; Bruce Williams; Foreword by: Stephen R. Covey

• ISBN13: 9780764567988
• ISBN10: 0764567985
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-03-01
• Publisher: For Dummies

Summary

The world's largest and most profitable companies including the likes of GE, Bank of America, Honeywell, DuPont, Samsung, Starwood Hotels, Bechtel, and Motorola have used Six Sigma to achieve breathtaking improvements in business performance, in everything from products to processes to complex systems and even in work environments. Over the past decade, over $100 billion in bottom-line performance has been achieved through corporate Six Sigma programs. Yet, despite its astounding effectiveness, few outside of the community of Six Sigma practitioners know what Six Sigma is all about.With this book, Six Sigma is revealed to everyone. You might be in a company that's already implemented Six Sigma, or your organization may be considering it. You may be a student who wants to learn how it works, or you might be a seasoned business professional who needs to get up to speed. In any case, Six Sigma For Dummies is the most straightforward, non-intimidating guide on the market. This simple, friendly book makes Six Sigma make sense.With a compelling foreword by Dr. Stephen R. Covey, the internationally recognized leadership authority and bestselling author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and The 8 th Habit, and an afterword by Roxanne O'Brasky, President of the International Society of Six Sigma, Six Sigma For Dummies is the most complete and objective book in the market today.Unlike most other works that are either graduate-level statistics treatises or thinly-veiled autobiographical success stories, Six Sigma For Dummies teaches the reader all the foundation principles, methods, and tools of this magnificent problem-solving system. Intended to help readers understand Six Sigma and how they can use it to improve their performance, this no-nonsense guide explains: What Six Sigma is all about and how it works The benefits of Six Sigma in organizations and businesses The powerful "DMAIC" problem-solving roadmap Yellow, Green and Black -- how the Six Sigma "belt" system works How to select and utilize the right tools and technologies Speaking the language of Six Sigma Knowing the roles and responsibilities Mastering the statistics skills and analytical methods Six Sigma For Dummies will become everyone's No. 1 resource for discovering and mastering the world's most famous and powerful improvement tool. Stephen Covey is spot-on when he says, "Six Sigma For Dummies is a book to be read by everyone".

Author Biography

Craig Kent Gygi began studying and applying the elements of Six Sigma well before they were formalized into today’s renowned breakthrough methodology. As a graduate student in mechanical engineering at Brigham Young University in the early 1990s, he integrated these cutting-edge improvement techniques into his coaching of student product development teams. Upon beginning his career in 1994 at Motorola’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Lab in Florida, he was formally introduced to the maturing Six Sigma method. It resonated deeply with his previous findings. From that time, Craig has applied, taught, and led Six Sigma in all his endeavors, including management and technical capacities at Motorola, Iomega, and General Atomics.
In 1998, Craig founded and led a software company to develop computational tools for Six Sigma practitioners. For several years, he also worked as a technical colleague of Dr. Mikel J. Harry, the original consultant of Six Sigma, co-developing and teaching new advances in its theory and application. Most recently, Craig has traded his mountain home in Utah for the Sonoran desert of Arizona to co-found Savvi International and direct and manage its Six Sigma products, services, and tools.
A Master Black Belt, Craig has wielded Six Sigma techniques now for over 12 years, spanning projects from design to manufacturing to business process management. He is also an expert teacher, having instructed and mentored at all levels of Six Sigma, from executives to White Belts.

Neil John DeCarlo has been a professional communicator in the continuous improvement and Six Sigma fields for more than 15 years, beginning with his work at Florida Power & Light company when it won the coveted Deming Prize for quality. Since that time, he has authored, ghostwritten, or edited more than 150 articles and six books in association with such companies as General Electric, Dupont, Bose Corporation, McKinsey consulting, UPS, AT&T, the Six Sigma Academy, and many others.
As a prolific author and writer, Neil’s past work has covered a range of subject matter, including Six Sigma, information technology, e-learning, knowledge management, change management, business integration, TQM, ISO, lean management, and other disciplines. He has also worked with several CEOs and consultants, including Japanese quality expert Dr. Noriaki Kano, and worked extensively with original co-architect of Six Sigma, Dr. Mikel Harry.
In addition to his writing pedigree, Neil has managed communication and publishing campaigns for a variety of companies and consulting firms, most notably, the Breakthrough Management Group, a Six Sigma, lean enterprise, and performance-improvement industry leader. While not working, Neil avidly practices Bikram yoga and contributes to that community through his advocacy and writing.

Bruce David Williams has been fascinated with complex systems since the launch of Sputnik on his third birthday. With undergraduate degrees from the University of Colorado in Physics and Astrophysics, he entered a career in aerospace systems, where he first encountered Six Sigma after Motorola won the inaugural Baldridge Award in 1988. Later, with graduate degrees in technical management and computer science from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Colorado, and as a member of the Hubble Telescope development team, he was intrigued by how breakdowns in the smallest components could lead to colossal system failures. He entered the Six Sigma industry in the mid-1990s, when he founded a software company to pursue product life-cycle traceability.
Bruce has since been founder and CEO of two Six Sigma research and technology firms, and is now Chairman and CEO of Savvi International, a provider of solutions for business performance improvement using Six Sigma, lean, and business process management techniques.

Table of Contents

Foreword	xv
Introduction	1	(1)
About This Book	1	(1)
Conventions Used in This Book	2	(1)
Foolish Assumptions	3	(1)
How This Book Is Organized	3	(1)
Part I: Six Sigma Basics	3	(1)
Part II: Understanding and Enacting the Breakthrough Strategy (Dmaic)	4	(1)
Part III: The Six Sigma Tool and Technology Landscape	4	(1)
Part IV: The Part of Tens	4	(1)
Icons Used in This Book	4	(1)
Where to Go from Here	5	(2)
Part I: Six Sigma Basics	7	(54)
Defining Six Sigma	9	(18)
The Managerial Perspective	11	(5)
Radical corporate success	12	(1)
Bridge between science and leadership	12	(1)
Management system orientation	13	(3)
The Technical Perspective	16	(11)
Product, service, and transactional quality	17	(3)
The journey from one to many	20	(2)
Watch out for the wiggie, bump, and jitter	22	(1)
Why six and why sigma? (Putting the pieces together)	23	(4)
Examing the Principles and Language of Six Sigma	27	(14)
It All Begins with One Simple Equation: Y = f(X) + ε	27	(2)
Determine the Cause	29	(3)
Cause and effect	29	(1)
There is a better way	30	(1)
Beware superstitious delusions (that is, correlation doesn't imply causation)	30	(2)
Variation happens	32	(4)
What is variation?	33	(1)
Where does variation come from?	34	(1)
Getting variation right is everything	35	(1)
Thou Shalt Measure	36	(2)
Mind your Ys and Xs	36	(1)
The answer begins with the data	37	(1)
The bottom line on measurement	38	(1)
The Power of Leverage	38	(3)
The ``vital few'' versus the ``trivial many''	39	(1)
Finding the better way	40	(1)
Pinpointing the Essentials of Six Sigma	41	(20)
The Project Strategy: Dmaic	41	(2)
Domains of Activity	43	(3)
Thinking for breakthrough	43	(1)
Processing for breakthrough	44	(1)
Designing for breakthrough	44	(1)
Managing for breakthrough	45	(1)
The People: Who You Need to Know	46	(9)
In Six Sigma, everyone's a leader	46	(5)
Number-crunching karate: Black Belts and their brethren	51	(3)
Bringing the team together	54	(1)
The Lifecycle of a Six Sigma Initiative	55	(6)
Initialize: Ready . . . Aim	55	(1)
Deploy: Setting it all in motion	56	(1)
Implement: Forging first successes	57	(1)
Expand: Taking it everywhere	58	(1)
Sustain: The self-healing culture	58	(3)
Part II: Understanding and Enacting the Breakthrough Strategy (Dmaic)	61	(180)
Finding the Pain --- Defining Projects	63	(22)
The Six Sigma Project	64	(2)
The basics of a project	64	(1)
The problem transformation	65	(1)
Project responsibilities	65	(1)
Your Needs, My Needs, What Are They?	66	(19)
Aligning Six Sigma with strategy	67	(2)
Using a business case writing tool for project identification	69	(2)
Six Sigma project definition	71	(4)
Is it worth doing?	75	(10)
Measuring the Gaps	85	(38)
The 1, 2, 3s of Statistics	85	(10)
Why statistics?	86	(1)
Measurement 101	87	(1)
What does it mean? Measures of variation location	88	(3)
How much variation is there?	91	(4)
The Long and Short of Variation	95	(8)
Short-term variation	96	(3)
Shift happens: Long-term variation	99	(2)
Be all you can be: Entitlement	101	(2)
A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words	103	(20)
Plotting and charting data	103	(14)
Hindsight is 20/20: Behavior charts	117	(6)
Measuring Capability	123	(26)
Specifications: The Voice of the Customer	123	(5)
How close is close enough? Or why specifications?	124	(1)
What are specifications?	124	(1)
Do you do the Rumba? Creating realistic specifications	125	(1)
Don't push that big red button! What happens when you exceed a specification	126	(2)
Capability: Comparing the Voice of the Customer to the Voice of the Process	128	(21)
Measuring yield	128	(5)
Measuring defect rate	133	(5)
Linking yield and defect rate	138	(1)
Sigma (Z) score	138	(6)
Capability indices	144	(3)
Prescribing a capability improvement plan	147	(2)
Separating the Wheat from the Chaff	149	(20)
Understanding Data Types	150	(2)
Attribute or category data	150	(1)
Continuous or variable data	151	(1)
Avoiding Illusion: Measurement System Capability Analysis	152	(9)
Sources of measurement system variation	154	(2)
Measuring measurements: Measurement system analysis (MSA)	156	(5)
Filling the Funnel	161	(2)
Let the data do the talking	162	(1)
Cast a big net	162	(1)
Mining Data for Insight	163	(6)
Go with what you have: Observational studies	163	(2)
Digging in: Identifying potential sources of variation through graphical analysis	165	(4)
Quantifying the Critical Few	169	(26)
Finding the Best Partner	169	(11)
Viva Las Vegas: The central limit theorem	170	(1)
How sure are you? Confidence intervals	171	(1)
Confidence intervals for means	172	(4)
Confidence intervals for standard deviations	176	(2)
Four out of five recommend: Confidence intervals for proportions	178	(2)
Understanding Relationships	180	(15)
Correlation	180	(3)
Curve fitting	183	(12)
Achieving the Objective	195	(22)
Why Experiment? The Improvement Power of Six Sigma Experiments	195	(3)
What is an experiment, anyway?	195	(1)
The purpose of Six Sigma experiments	196	(1)
Experimenting with words	197	(1)
The end game of Six Sigma experiments	197	(1)
Look Before You Leap: Experimental Considerations	198	(4)
Frankenstein should have planned	198	(2)
Simple, sequential, and systematic is best	200	(2)
2k Factorial Experiments	202	(14)
Plan your experiment	202	(4)
Conduct your experiment	206	(1)
Analyze your experiment	207	(9)
You've Only Just Begun --- More Topics in Experimentation	216	(1)
Locking in the Gains	217	(24)
The Need for Control Planning	217	(4)
The process management summary	219	(1)
The process control plan	219	(2)
Statistical Process Control	221	(1)
Monitoring the Process: Control Chart Basics	222	(8)
Understanding control limits	223	(3)
Using control charts to keep processes on track	226	(1)
Using control charts to detect patterns, shifts, and drifts	227	(2)
Collecting data for control charts	229	(1)
Control Charts for Continuous Data	230	(5)
Individuals and moving range chart (I -- MR)	232	(2)
Averages and ranges chart (X -- R chart)	234	(1)
Averages and standard deviation chart (X -- S)	235	(1)
Control Charts for Attribute Data	235	(4)
The p chart for attribute data	237	(1)
The u chart for attribute data	238	(1)
Poka-Yoke (Mistake-Proofing)	239	(2)
Part III: The Six Sigma Tool and Technology Landscape	241	(60)
Identifying Six Sigma Practitioner Tools	243	(40)
The Practitioner's Toolkit	244	(1)
Process Optimization Tools	245	(22)
The Sipoc	246	(2)
What's critical? Look in the CT Tree	248	(3)
Modeling a process	251	(5)
Simulating a process	256	(2)
Cause-and-effect (C&E) matrix	258	(1)
Dem' fishbones	259	(1)
Fmea: Failure mode effects analysis	260	(2)
Kiss and tell: Capability-complexity analysis	262	(2)
Funnel reports	264	(1)
Plans	265	(2)
Statistical Analysis Tools	267	(11)
The basics	268	(1)
A picture's worth a thousand . . . dollars	268	(2)
The time machine	270	(1)
Analysis of variance: Anova	271	(1)
If the shoe fits . . .	271	(1)
Design of Experiments	272	(1)
How capable is your process?	273	(2)
Regression	275	(1)
Multivariate analysis	275	(1)
Exploratory analysis	276	(1)
Measurement systems analysis	276	(2)
Back to the future	278	(1)
Platforms and Protocols	278	(5)
Software products	278	(2)
Technology architectures	280	(3)
Mastering Six Sigma Manager Tools	283	(18)
The Manager's Toolkit	284	(3)
The gallery	285	(1)
Types of management tools	286	(1)
Through the Looking Glass	287	(1)
Project Management	288	(7)
Eureka!	289	(1)
Pick a winner	290	(1)
Project definition	291	(2)
Project planning and tracking	293	(2)
Just the Facts, Ma'am	295	(3)
Knowledge Management	298	(1)
An Apple for Your Apple	299	(2)
Part IV: The Part of Tens	301	(18)
Ten Best Practices of Six Sigma	303	(6)
Set Stretch Goals	303	(1)
Target Tangible Results	304	(1)
Determine Outcomes	304	(1)
Think Before You Act	305	(1)
Put Your Faith in Data	305	(1)
Minimize Variation	306	(1)
Align Projects with Key Goals	306	(1)
Celebrate Success!	306	(1)
Involve the Owner	307	(1)
Unleash Everyone's Potential	307	(2)
Ten Pitfalls to Avoid	309	(4)
Not Allowing Enough Time	309	(1)
Who's the Leader?	309	(1)
Taking Too Big a Bite	310	(1)
Focusing On Isolated Areas	310	(1)
``But We're Different''	310	(1)
Overtraining	311	(1)
Blindly Believing Your Measurement System	311	(1)
``Remind Me Again, Is It CLs or SLs?''	312	(1)
Exaggerated Opportunity Counts	312	(1)
Not Leveraging Technology	312	(1)
Ten Places to Go for Help	313	(6)
Colleagues	313	(1)
Six Sigma Corporations	314	(1)
Associations and Professional Societies	314	(1)
Conferences and Symposia	314	(1)
Publications	315	(1)
Web Portals	316	(1)
Periodicals	316	(1)
Technology Vendors	317	(1)
Consultants	317	(1)
Six Sigma Trainers	318	(1)
Appendix: Glossary	319	(10)
Afterword	329	(2)
Index	331