SigmaWay Blog

SigmaWay Blog tries to aggregate original and third party content for the site users. It caters to articles on Process Improvement, Lean Six Sigma, Analytics, Market Intelligence, Training ,IT Services and industries which SigmaWay caters to

Consistency is the key

Six sigma technology helps in improving processes and making them efficient. Multitasking is a good sign for consistency but what if more than two processes have to be used? Then it becomes a problem as there are multiple variations. The variations are considered as an error or defect. So this will reduce the consistency of the business and it will lose its customers. Thus, Six Sigma helps in reducing these defects or variations. So there are a number of ways to reduce variations in the processes of your business which are as follows:
• By using tally sheet
• Pareto chart
• Flow chart
For more information visit:

https://www.6sigma.us/customer-service/consistency-breeds-perfection-in-business  

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Countries rolling out continuous improvement in Air products

Many countries are reflecting on its continuous improvement strategies. It is important to make modification which are both specific and measurable .Continuous Improvement, if carefully planned, will remove waste in any existing process, and prevent waste in future procedures.
To know more, please read the article by Rhea Haley (News journalist at Gasworld)
http://www.gasworld.com/air-products-sa-rolls-out-continuous-improvement-programme/2010050.article

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Simple data mining process to cultivate high performers

Teaching profession is facing lower job satisfaction, unclear idea related to a particular subject. Inaccurate teaching processes are generating slack in the education industry. To manage such issues we can use big data as used in famous movie "Moneyball". It can predict the future outcome by using simple statistics and work according to forecasted outcome. Proper mining could help us to find undervalued personnel with higher potential to attain a high success rate. So in educational context we can segregate major characteristics. These attributes can be:

1. High level of optimism, enthusiasm, sense of humor

2. High standard of expectation from their students

3. Continual self-evaluation

4. Self-criticizing, understanding and updating.

These attributes can be well observed if a bigger pool of educators is created and their continual behavioral attributes are analyzed. In this way future prospective educator’s list can be predicted and deploy them in proper institutional scenarios.

To read, follow: : http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/brown-center-chalkboard/posts/2016/02/03-teacher-moneyball-big-data-analytics-murray

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Lean Thinking: A Basis for Decision Making

Lean Thinking is a form of structured thinking that aims to provide a new way to think about organizing processes to deliver benefits to the organization while eliminating waste. Understanding this concept forms a base for deciding what actions to take, what to change, what to do. 

Pascal Dennis, in his book Getting the Right Things Done, has easily explained lean thinking in 10 words:

· “What should be happening?”

· “What is actually happening?”

· “Please explain.”

      To know more, read this article by Mark Rosenthal: http://theleanthinker.com/2015/02/13/lean-thinking-in-10-words/

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Design Out Waste to get a Lean Process and Cost Savings

Stephen Covey, the renowned management thinker, said, Start with the end in mind.” Every organization aims at meeting few common ends i.e. safe workplace, save money, save space, save time in launching new processes, and increase flexibility. The means to achieving these ends is designing the process in such a way that it is lean as well as waste is minimized. If done at the starting stage, this will be more useful in cost reduction as per the Rule of 10.Robert H. Simonis, senior consultant, KCE Consulting LLC in his article in IndustryWeek, talks about how reducing different types of wastes bring benefits to the organizations. 

Read more at: http://www.industryweek.com/lean-six-sigma/design-out-waste-and-build-lean

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Implement 5S for efficient business outcomes

5S is a methodology used initially to organize workplaces to be more efficient and streamlined thereby consistently striving for more outputs, lower costs and less waste. So in essence, as this is what Continuous Improvement is mostly about, 5S is one of the commonly used Continuous Improvement tools. 5S is widely believed to have originated or least initially widely used in Japan and the term 5S is derived from 5 Japanese words- seiri, seiton, seiso, seiketsu and shitsuke which loosely translated into English stand for: sort, simplify, shine, standardize and sustain. The principle activities taking place at each of the stages are: Sort - All unnecessary items, parts, files, supplies are removed from the area

Simplify – (or Set in Order) – A place is created for everything and everything is stored in its place

Shine – (Sweep) – Clean up the area

Standardize – Apply the same standard throughout (to other similar areas)

Sustain – Maintain the new standard and avoid slipping back to old habits

To know about practical recommendations to make 5S a key part of the Continuous Improvement machinery, regardless of the type of business visit:http://smallbizkaizen.com/index.php/2010/08/5s-business-benefit

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Continuous Process Improvement in the service sector

The service sector constitutes 62% of the world’s total GDP. It has grown by leaps and bounds over the last two decades. The service sector employs around 40% of the global labour force. The four unique features of services are Intangibility, Inseparability, Perishability and Variability. Service operations are often labour intensive and susceptible to variations. These variations often lead to complexities and customer dissatisfaction. The big challenge is to deliver consistent quality of services across all platforms.  Demand Planning is another big challenge. Services are dynamic and perishable in nature and this can often lead to instances of idle capacity or opportunity loss. Further, the quality in service environment is an experience and not just a measurement against specification so defect definition can tricky. To overcome these challenges, as in other industries, the service industry needs to innovate and continuously improve its processes. Here are four suggested process improvement techniques for services industries:

• Develop a Process Manual

• Automate Processes

• Reduce Failure Demand

• Conduct a Service Blueprinting exercise

To know more about the four suggested process improvement techniques visit:

 http://www.processexcellencenetwork.com/innovation/articles/four-key-process-improvement-techniques-for-servic/

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Working hard is not enough, continuous improvement is necessary

Continually changing markets affect all industries; sooner or later the world will move on. Any product or service will eventually become obsolete if it is not refined to keep up with these ever-changing market demands. Staying still is not an option. A good Continuous Improvement process will deliver rapid evolution into any business. If one can improve faster than their competitors then they will be able to secure more of the market in future. The four basic requirements needed to develop a flourishing Continuous Improvement culture are stating your intention to improve, harvesting opportunity ideas i.e. initiating a continual improvement process, empowering the workforce i.e. deploying a continuous improvement culture, which is easy where the staffs are empowered to improve and measuring the improvement culture by the number of identified success and celebrating the success. To know more about these four requirements go to:

http://adaptivebms.com/How_to_establish_a_Continuous_Improvement_Process/

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Characteristics companies should look for when purchasing the best project management software for contractors

Construction managers are looking for increasing efficiency and reducing costs. In a construction company there is a need for good project management software for contractors to cut costs on some areas and make products affordable. But, there are so many packages that it is difficult to choose. In this article, Jenifer Whitmire (a professional web content writer) writes how to choose good project management software for contractors. Please go through the link for more details: http://www.manufacturing.net/articles/2012/04/wrongly-doing-design-for-six-sigma

 

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Capital one delivers 85% of software through agile

To transform the customer experience from traditional methods to better and newer methods, business authorities are relying on agile technology development. When Capital One started using agile development in 2011, Rudy Wolfs, Senior VP of Card IT at Capital One said, it amounted to only 1% of software that was delivered. Today, 85% of softwares are delivered by the agile development method. Also with agile, Capital One now also releases approximately 400 products a month, which has reduced the delivery times to three to six months while "cutting costs significantly," and finds 95% of products meet expectations on the first release. Presently, Capital One has more than 3,000 developers and business users trained on the agile methodology to get a better product. To know more kindly refer to the below mentioned link: http://www.banktech.com/channels/capital-one-delivers-85-of-software-thro/240166887?_mc=MP_IW_EDT_STUB

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Five steps to quality management of your project

Maintaining the quality of a project is a cumbersome job because while maintaining the quality we must also take into account cost and time consumed for it. Proper planning at the beginning of a project is an absolute necessity. Well established and distinct communication system is also crucial for quality management of the project.  Please go through the link for more details: http://www.pmhut.com/five-steps-to-quality-management-of-your-project

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5 ways to end projects well

To successfully complete a project, a line must be drawn reaching which a project can be declared as complete. All obligations and requirements from the client must be checked and taken care of. Most importantly every project makes a contribution to the project management team as a lesson; good or bad. The team must take some positive feedbacks from every project and move on to the next one. Please go through the link for more details: http://www.pmhut.com/5-ways-to-end-projects-well

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The need to validate project assumptions

Validating assumptions for a project is an important criteria which should be done carefully and upgraded timely. New assumptions are also very important during various phases of a project. Tracking and defending assumptions during implementation of a project is extremely crucial for a project to see the light of success. To know more, kindly refer to the below mentioned link: http://www.drharoldkerzner.com/the-need-to-validate-project-assumptions/

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Misused cliches

Sometimes certain phrases spoken by senior executives or managers/team leaders can create confusions among employees of the company. Hence, managers/senior executives should be highly cautious about what they are saying because their words can be a reason of dissatisfaction or sending a wrong message to employees. To know more, kindly refer to the below mentioned link: http://www.drharoldkerzner.com/nine-often-misused-cliches/

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Lessons learnt in program management: The Olympics

Managing an event as vast and big as olympics is a complex and huge job. But from a management perspective, the success of an event does not mean that it was a successful project. In olympics, providing real time data to the spectators and broadcasters’ requires a huge software and hardware setup and also preparation and testing of data flow to avoid any glitches during execution of the games. To know more kindly refer to the below mentioned link: http://www.drharoldkerzner.com/lessons-learned-in-program-management-the-olympics/

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Five ways metric management can fail

Metric Management or dashboard implementation is a useful and a systematic way of providing data, only if it is properly implemented. Making unnecessary rush or incomplete information can lead to disastrous results which can lead to lose faith in the Metric Management system completely. It is also important to track whether people accessing the data from dashboard are correctly interpreting them or not. To know more kindly refer to the below mentioned link: http://www.drharoldkerzner.com/five-ways-that-metrics-management-can-fail/

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Project Management: warning signs your project may be in trouble

The chances of getting into trouble are always there in any project. Project management can be very affective when the project managers were not pressurized in any decision making and also project sponsor assist time to time whenever problem appears. To know more about project governance and other various reasons of project slowdown, please go through the link: http://www.business2community.com/strategy/project-management-warning-signs-project-may-trouble-0642386?tru=RKQB4#gT1e3qKb5Wk2eQ6S.99

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Beware of the dark side. The force will not be with you

Not always does every project get completed within the targeted date. But, when the dates are determined and announced by the top management, very little things are consulted from project managers about the constraints and time frame required for the development of the project. Mostly political and promoter’s convenience is looked after, but when the blame game starts, the top executives quietly distances them from the negativity of the project and starts denying any involvement with the project. This article also talks about few typical scenarios that may occur throughout IT projects. To know more kindly refer to the below mentioned link: http://www.drharoldkerzner.com/beware-of-the-dark-side-the-force-will-not-be-with-you2/

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Satisfying social needs

Satisfying the social needs of employees is directly proportional to the productivity of employees. Companies often take initiatives like arranging dinner parties and outings, but sometimes, these initiatives may fall flat. Companies must ensure that the benefits or facilities provided interest everyone and is not against the likes of some people. For example, couples dinner parties might upset the bachelors. It has been found that people who associate well outside the office also work better in the office as a team and has higher productivity. To know more, kindly refer to the below mentioned link: http://www.drharoldkerzner.com/satisfying-social-needs/

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Updating the standards

Upgrading of standards depend upon the structure of the industry and the changes occurring in it. But as demand changes, standards set previously becomes obsolete and new standards must be set to relate with the present market structure and demand. Even though companies might face resistance from unions and other political institutions, they must reassess the standards for the benefit of the company and also their employees. To know more, kindly refer to the below mentioned link: http://www.drharoldkerzner.com/updating-the-standards/

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