All Entries in the "Operational Excellence" Category
The New Management Thinking
Managers are being flooded by a host of management ideas and models — Six Sigma, process re-engineering, Lean Enterprise, Lean Production, operational excellence, quality management, value chain analysis, business process redesign, process outcomes management and performance measurement. Whatever else these things are intended to produce, confusion is definitely a by-product.
To help work through the confusion [...]
Response to The Fraser Institute’s Report Card on Alberta Hospitals
On Thursday, June 18, The Fraser Institute released the Hospital Report Card Alberta 2009. The purpose of the Report Card, according to the report’s authors is:
to help patients choose the best hospital for their inpatient care by providing them with information on the performance of acute-care hospitals in Alberta.
The Report Card is primarily concerned with assessing [...]
Lean Certification Standards from ASQ/Shingo Prize
The American Society for Quality (ASQ) and the Shingo Prize recently announced their joint Lean Certification Book of Knowledge (BoK). Now that these standards are out, they provide an important benchmark against which organizations can examine their existing Lean training and development programs. For those experienced with Lean, much of the content will be familiar. There are [...]
Implementing Lean and Lean Six Sigma
The most frequent question we are asked by clients these days is how to get started with Lean or Lean Six Sigma. The second most frequent question is some variation of: What is Lean Six Sigma anyway?
Let’s answer the second question first and then dive in on how to get started.
Master of Cycle Time: Little’s Law
In physics, laws are a fundamental part of understanding how systems operate. E=mc2 would have to classify as the most famous example. From these three simple letters, physicists and others have been able to greatly improve their understanding of how the universe works and make predictions about how things will behave under differing circumstances – [...]
Dr. Kano’s Model of Value Characteristics
How do you define quality? That’s an important question for those engaged in quality improvement. Defining things can be difficult, doubly so when the definitions concern something as vague as quality.
Yet define we must, especially if we want to measure current quality levels, or improvement to quality. After all, if you can’t define something, you [...]
Flexibility, The Third Dimension to Performance
A year ago, businesses were planning for major expansion. Now, attention has turned to how to weather a recession. Soon, expansion plans will be back. It is difficult to keep up. Actually, it is impossible.
Is there better evidence that the key to survival is not in prediction or forecasting? After all, who do you know [...]
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