Offshore outsourcing will make sense only when customer needs, business requirements and offshore supplier's capabilities are properly aligned. In an article, "The Hidden Costs of Offshore Outsourcing", it was noted that around 72% of stated cost savings on offshore projects was lost at the start-up stage, transition, productivity and maintenance phase. DFSS can effectively reduce the risk of offshore outsourcing failure by quickly deploying a road map. Combination of various tools and behaviors are designed to reduce defects and cycle time to complete the requirement phase of a typical software project. Design for Six Sigma provides a structure, a strong deployment option to better manage business plan for profit maximization. Please go through the link for more details: http://www.sourcingmag.com/content/c060301a.asp

Lean - a set of tool that improves efficiency and the most important - improves profitability. 

Nowadays, hospitals are also using lean tools. Hospitals and other healthcare institutions are required to spend considerable time with patients which keeps other patients in line waiting. To clear problems of all of them, is a stressful job for doctors who attend them. One way to solve this is to add more staff to your organization. But, this has a flip side also. It will add cost to you. So, you have to think in a different way. You have to think in such a way, so that you clear all your stresses without incurring any extra cost.

This is where the Lean comes handy. By streamlining your process, it will add efficiency to your healthcare institution. Some of the immediate outcomes include reduction of lab turnaround time, reduction of emergency department turnaround time, etc. Apart from this, with effective management, doctors, nurses and other staffs attending patients can ease their stress and also they do not keep other patients waiting. You do not have to add extra workforce. Your healthcare institution’s efficiency will improve and cost will reduce.

Located at Sioux Falls, United States, Avera Medical Group applied lean practices to improve efficiency. Read at http://www.argusleader.com/story/news/business-journal/2014/05/07/health-systems-learn-lean/8781179/  to know how the clinic did it.

The IT enterprise field is slowly going to a saturation point. But, this sector is still facing competition. To know more on the growth areas in IT sector, go through the article by Dion Hinchcliffe, an expert in IT and business strategy.

http://www.zdnet.com/the-enterprise-products-with-disruptive-potential-for-2014-7000027859/

Human element plays an important role in the application of big data. Though data science is based upon business analytics, it is different from business analytics. Data science collects data and other information from different systems and then asks many different questions. To know more about whether it is necessary to include data scientist when a company is deploying big data solutions or not, go through the article by Daniel Kusnetzky, software engineer and product manager in Kusnetzky group.

http://www.zdnet.com/the-human-element-is-critical-in-applying-big-data-7000028983/

Big data is one of the important buzzwords in technology world. Nowadays, in addition to traditional enterprise data, companies are collecting data from different sources. Though big data is being used in high pace, companies working with big data are only concerned about the best product. To know more impact of big data, go through the article by Natalie Gagliordi, ZDNet staff writer.

http://www.zdnet.com/the-impact-of-big-data-on-enterprise-apps-7000028994/

An article by Hari Kelachankuttu, Change Facilitation Manager in Messier-Bugatti-Dowty (Safran Group) at Singapore, conveys that some organizations need to go a step further by setting financial savings targets by functions, departments or locations to have more granularities. As the challenges in the markets are getting complex business processes need to be continuously improved to overcome that.

To know more follow http://www.processexcellencenetwork.com/innovation/articles/continuous-improvement-and-the-trouble-with-metric/

In the second quarter of 2014, we are going to see shift of communication tool from e-mail to audio-visual, scope of mistakes will minimize and use of cloud computing are likely to increase. Moreover, there is going to be a sharp rise in demand for Agile Projects.

To know more about the new trends, kindly refer to the below mentioned link: -  http://www.sooperarticles.com/business-articles/project-management-articles/5-hot-project-management-trends-2014-1321635.html

Decision trees can be generated based on project schedules. This article shows how to use decision tree analysis in project management as part of quantitative risk and decision analysis.

Please go through the link for more details: http://www.intaver.com/Articles/Article_DecisionTree.pdf

To attain success in a project we must follow few simple steps (which are also termed as basic steps). Keeping things simple, accepting changes, dividing the work into small steps and being time specific are few of them. To know about 6S for success, please visit Cécile Bérubé’s article link at: To know more kindly refer to the below mentioned link:http://www.pmhut.com/6s-for-success

To complete a project successfully, a project leader must have the details and nitty-gritty’s of the project i.e. the constraints, requirements and demands clear in his or her mind. Documentation is very important for any project and so is the ability to utilize most of the team members for successful completion of the project within the stipulated time. To know more about the basics of project management, kindly refer to the below mentioned link:

http://www.pmhut.com/10-basics-of-project-management

According to Forrester principal analyst Mike Gualtieri, "Hadoop is not big data. It's a big-data technology. You can break down the siloes but Hadoop is also a framework for processing the data". So, proper handling of big data is very essential for any company. Hadoop can help in explaining corporate data by managing it across clusters of commodity hardware. Research shows that many of the big companies using Hadoop. To know more on the advantages of Hadoop, follow the article by Toby Wolpe, senior reporter at ZDNet in London:

http://www.zdnet.com/hadoops-rise-why-you-dont-need-petabytes-for-a-big-data-opening-7000028282/

How good is methodology when it comes to innovation? One key reason for going Agile is that it enables people to be creative and come up with ideas. With Agile, people are given freedom - but they need to understand what to do with it, as well as what they are expected to produce with it. There are certain challenges that makes Agile difficult to implement in the beginning but it will bring productivity in the long run. To know more about the challenges met, follow the article by Rebecca Leitch, writer in ESI International.

http://www.esi-intl.co.uk/blogs/pmoperspectives/index.php/2014/04/the-challenges-for-project-managers-to-overcome-when-going-agile/

Hospitals tend to be less hierarchical than manufacturing, requiring building consensus among stakeholders before taking action. In addition to cost cutting in healthcare, Lean initiatives improve patient safety and reimbursement rates and create new standards. Lean combined with Six Sigma, a process-improvement strategy, can help in reducing variability in business processes. An article by Susan D. Hall, experienced writer and editor in Dallas, talks about how Lean Six Sigma improves outcomes and saves costs by employing better care coordination and implementing a culture of efficiency, data-rich technology and real-time operation performance measurement.

To know more visit http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/story/lean-leadership-healthcare-what-does-it-take/2012-08-22

“Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.”
― Henry Ford
The quality of your product or service defines the success measure of your efforts. Now this leads to several questions like - What is ‘quality’? Why it is so important? To get answers to these questions we have to ask ourselves what is the level of standard we would like to achieve? ‘Quality’ is nothing but the final performance criteria which affects a company with respect to its customers, clients or consumers. For each product and service, requirements are specified which are known as ‘Quality Control’ parameters. The article deals with the details of different quality standards.

http://creative.sulekha.com/chapter-22-introduction-to-iso-six-sigma-tqm-lean-manufacturing-cmm-pcmm-cmmi-etc_273495_blog

 Total quality management (TQM) tools help organizations to identify, analyze and assess qualitative and quantitative data that is relevant to their business. Each of these tools can be examined and used to enhance the effectiveness, efficiency, standardization and overall quality of procedures, products or work environment, in accordance with ISO 9000 standards (SQ, 2004). Read more about the TQM tools from the following link:

http://totalqualitymanagement.weebly.com/tqm-tools.html

“Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it.” – Peter Drucker. Total quality management describes a management approach to long term success through customer satisfaction. The primary elements of TQM are: Customer focus, Total employee involvement, Process centered, Integrated system, Strategic and systematic approach, Continual improvement, Fact based decision making, Communications. To know more on this aspect, please go through the following link:

http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/total-quality-management/overview/overview.html

In words of Mahatma Gandhi:
“Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory”.

In sync with the above said words we find a case study which describes the efforts which were taken by a hospital to enhance its efficiency and productivity by using Lean & Six Sigma. Through this, management was able to reduce average door-to-physician time, outpatient length of stay and overall satisfaction level of their patients.
Please go through the link for more details: http://www.projmasters.com/project-management-consulting-services/project-management-case-studies/enhance-hospital-operation-using-lean-six-sigma/

What is Six Sigma? 'Sigma' is a statistical term for measuring how far a product differs from perfection. 'Six Sigma' means six standard deviations between mean and nearest specific limit. The main goal for applying Six Sigma is to reach as close to zero defect as possible. Six Sigma can be approached on three levels: Metrics, Methodology, Philosophy

Read more at http://www.surveymethods.com/glossary/article_six_sigma_seg_l.aspx

Taiwan is in a seismically active zone as it is situated on the earthquake prone Pacific ring of Fire. The cracks in the lightweight partition walls cause customer dissatisfaction as repairing cost is higher. To increase customer satisfaction, American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) is applying Six Sigma in construction technology. Application of C&A (Cause and Effect) and FMEA (Failure Modes and Effect Analysis) is being used to determine the reason of cracks. To know more on this please go through the following link.

http://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/(ASCE)ME.1943-5479.0000155

The main principle of Lean Six Sigma is to reduce waste and defects, thereby improving your process performance. But, just implementing it may not help you to bear the fruit. In the first step, you have to think ‘What will be the financial implications if I apply Lean Six Sigma on this process?’ Your company’s bottom line is the ultimate thing that speaks. So, it should be in such a way that when you apply the principles of Lean Six Sigma on the right processes, it will help you to optimize the costs associated with it and generate maximum return out of your investments.

Chris Rees, Director of Operations for SigmaPro and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, talks about how to go about for tuning your process that is financially beneficial. Read it here: http://www.business2community.com/strategy/linking-process-financial-performance-0834974#!Dswbh