Podcasts about dmaic

Chad Bareither is the owner and principal consultant of Bareither Group Consulting. Chad shares his journey from working as a civilian engineer in the U.S. Army to becoming a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt and consultant for medtech and pharma companies. Chad discusses his process improvement framework, the importance of understanding both systems and people, and insights from his recently published book "Improve LESS." He also covers the transition from being an employee to an entrepreneur and the qualities essential for leadership in the industry.    Guest links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadbareither/ | https://www.bareithergroup.com/ | https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTjC2ZBL3mqnriCeAIkmSlQ Charity supported: Polaris Project Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at theleadingdifference@velentium.com.  PRODUCTION CREDITS Host: Lindsey Dinneen Editing: Marketing Wise Producer: Velentium   EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Episode 045 - Chad Bareither [00:00:00] Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world. [00:00:09] Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them. [00:00:15] Frank Jaskulke: There was a period of time where I realized, fundamentally, my job was to go hang out with really smart people that are saving lives and then do work that would help them save more lives. [00:00:28] Diane Bouis: I got into the business to save lives and it is incredibly motivating to work with people who are in that same business, saving or improving lives. [00:00:38] Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives. [00:00:42] Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference. Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Leading Difference Podcast. I'm your host, Lindsey, and I am so excited to introduce you to my guest today, Chad Bareither. Chad is the owner and principal consultant of Bareither Group Consulting. He partners with med device and pharma company leaders to boost productivity. This is delivered through the Focus and Align Framework, the subject of his book, "Improve LESS.". Chad is a Certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt and holds a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan Technological University, as well as Master's degrees in both Industrial and Systems Engineering and Applied Statistics from Rutgers University. He has over 10 years of experience in the med device and pharma industries and almost 20 years of professional experience. All right. Well, welcome to the show, Chad. I'm so excited to talk to you today. [00:01:42] Chad Bareither: Yeah, thanks for having me on. [00:01:45] Lindsey Dinneen: Of course! I'd love if you wouldn't mind by starting off telling us a little bit about yourself, your background, and maybe what led you to what you're doing now. [00:01:54] Chad Bareither: Sure. So I started my career in the US Army as a civilian engineer. So my background's in engineering, mechanical, I have a degree in mechanical engineering and also industrial engineering. So I started out in the U. S. Army as a civilian doing acquisition projects. So we would design and then purchase componentry for our warfighters from various defense contractors. And so my role in that was quality. So understanding are we designing all of the elements correctly. Then when they're being produced, are they meeting our specifications? And then once they're in stockpile, do they continue to work before we hand them to the brave men and women that are defending our freedom. And so I worked there for a while and pretty early found my niche that I was really into process improvement. So I would visit defense contractors, and if we had an issue, what I was really seem to have a knack for was helping to understand the process and make it better. So we could either expand capacity or have better quality. And so that kind of bridged right into a unique program they were introducing at the time, which was called Lean Six Sigma, which is a corporate program for reducing variation and improving efficiency of processes and the corporation at large. So I was pretty lucky that these two things coincide at the same time is that I was finding my niche and they were rolling out a program that really focused in that. So I was able to get into one of those programs, get trained and certified. And then I followed that path on to several other industries, including med device, pharma, and then was also a corporate employee in some utility, electric, natural gas. After my last corporate engagement, I went off on my own and I began consulting. So delivering the same services I had internally to those larger organizations. But now I have the ability to target smaller or growing organizations. In my consulting engagements, if you combine corporate experience and consulting engagement, it's somewhere around eight industries that I worked in. But I really enjoy the work and the challenges in med device and pharma a lot more. There's the purpose behind it of serving patients, and there's also some really significant technical challenges that I just find are fascinating to learn about. So for the last-- oh, it's six years now-- I've been consulting delivering those services in various industries, but really trying to focus my space into the medtech arena. [00:04:46] Lindsey Dinneen: Nice. Well, first of all, thank you for sharing a little bit about your background. I appreciate it. And it's fascinating to hear how you started off with one focus and then it just continued to evolve and twist and turn into this amazing consulting career that you have now. So many questions, but the first is could seven year old Chad have possibly anticipated what you're doing now, since it's different than what you started off with. [00:05:15] Chad Bareither: Yeah, no, I think seven year old Chad probably wanted to be a professional baseball player. But if I zoom forward a little bit from that, once middle school and high school, I always. naturally gravitated to our math and science was thinking it was going to be engineering. And I did, I studied engineering and most of my day is not engineering. It's really understanding people. But what's fascinating is if I look back, I think what all of my engineering education taught me was really a system for solving problems, right? So the problems that we solved happen to be mechanical design or industrial design. Got it. But taking that mindset of problem solving and now saying, well, the systems that I work with on a daily basis with my customers are a little bit more complex because you have mechanical systems, but you also have people systems that are intertwined with that, right? So, whether I've worked across the spectrum and still do of research and development, clinical trials, manufacturing and post market surveillance and across that. You can have systems set up, but people still operate it. So, it's difficult to just analyze your way into the perfect solution. Even if I can show on paper that it works, like you still need to understand the people elements of it. So I think that's been the biggest evolution through my career is early on, it was like, "I don't understand why we're doing this. It makes sense on paper." And it's like the change management component of that has been really something I've been able to develop personally, I'd say, over the last 6 to 10 years. [00:06:51] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. And I'm curious, so bridging that gap between systems and people and understanding that what looks good on paper might not translate as perfectly into real life as one would hope, because we're people and people are complex. So were there certain learning opportunities that you had that helped bridge that gap of gaining your expertise and knowledge in that way? Or what led you to be able to do that so efficiently now? [00:07:23] Chad Bareither: Oof, well, you're assuming I do it efficiently now, so but I'd say I still believe we learn more from failures than we do from success, right? So, there are specific projects or engagements I can look back to. So I'll talk about one specifically. This was a medical device assembly plant. And the particular production line that we were working on, we were trying to increase capacity on, and we even had the team engaged, right? So we were doing everything right in terms of the engagement project, had the teams involved, understood their pain points. We were trying to make it easier for them. And then like on paper again, showed we could do the production line, with the main assembly line, with three operators instead of four. And so we were really pushing for that because being just transparent, looking back now, it's like the productivity gain would have looked really sweet to management. But we had the operators telling us like, "I don't think it's going to work. I don't think it's going to work that way." And we're like, " No, it's going to work," right and pushing for it. And I don't know, you, you get a little focused on your own goals or whatever you, however you want to phrase that. And yeah it was a struggle to launch. And they ended up having to cover some of that with overtime. They made some adjustments long term, but that was a big learning for me of, I mean, if the people actually doing that work eight to 10 hours a day are telling you it's not going to work, like you should probably pull back and either, you've got more explaining to do, more improvements to do, or you should just maybe listen to them a little bit more. But you know, there's other scenarios I can look at that were. You know, when I say failure, right? Not everything means it's a flaming dumpster fire, but sometimes you don't get exactly what you expect out of it. And a lot of it can, I can point back to and say, " Ooh, you know, I could have done a better job. It's not that the analysis was wrong. It's not that the tool we put in place or the management technique or the visualization, it's that we didn't have the right level of buy in or the right people buying in." [00:09:35] Lindsey Dinneen: Okay. Well, I, thank you. I appreciate your honesty and transparency. But I do think to your point, failure or whatever we perceive to be as failure because it didn't work out quite the way we hoped for, is such a powerful learning tool if you can take it and go, "Okay, here's what worked. Here's what didn't. Here's what I can do better next time." And you don't have to go, "Okay, that was a waste." It's never a waste if you can learn from it. [00:10:01] Chad Bareither: A hundred percent. And I think only in recent years, I'd say the last four to five years, that I've really gotten into that of more of a bias for action of, " What's the worst that's gonna happen?" And honestly, I'm not talking about changes that are gonna bankrupt a company, right? It's if you're changing the direction, but " Well, let's try it." So having a bias for action and thinking, just like you pointed out, that it's going to be a learning experience, right? So if you treat it more of an experiment, success isn't necessarily binary-- it was a success or it wasn't-- we learned something. Maybe we got better. Maybe we didn't. But that means the next round, the engagement that we talked about before we started recording, I'm just coming back from-- we had two weeks of not going so well. And then the last week there was finally a breakthrough. And it was like, but I'm comfortable with it. The team was getting disengaged and I'm like, "We're going to get there! You guys stay positive, 'cause I know we're going to get there." And the failures we learned, we know so much more about that process now than we did three weeks ago. [00:10:59] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah. And that brought up an interesting point. So persistence and the willingness or the bias to action, which I really liked the way you put that, the willingness to experiment is something that does take a level of comfort that maybe not everyone is so excited about. But I'm wondering what you have seen over the years as being some of the top qualities of a leader that contribute to that success and that willingness to experiment. [00:11:33] Chad Bareither: Yeah. So, it helps me to think about specific leaders when I, that are like embodying that rather than just speak generically about it. And there was an R&D manager that I work with, his first name was John, but really took the stigma of failure, and I think not even using that word as much, out of it, and just saying, " Let's try and see what happens." And kind of building that learning mindset of, I'd rather move fast and learn something than move slow and get it perfect. And in industries, especially like a bunch of the medtech fields, I know in some of the pharma clients I've worked with, they're looking at things like new technologies, new modality of disease and I'm not a scientist, but these are things that we've never done before. And so the mindset of trying to get it perfect-- like this leader I work with previously, John is like, "Why are we wanting to get it perfect? We won't get it perfect the first time. And if we try to, we're going to be moving too slowly." so that's kind of the first thing that I think of is taking the stigma out of failure and turning it more into trying, learning mindset, things like that. I think the other thing is keeping open communication. And what I mean by that is there's another leader I'm thinking of and his first name was Mickey. And trying to have more open conversations. Information can be used for power, in some cases, or if you're harboring information or knowledge, like, " I'm the conduit, right? So then I become what puts it all together." And he was big on breaking down some of those and having more open conversations about what we're learning and what works and what doesn't work. And I mean, you see teams grow together faster. And so then when you take those two qualities, if I take the stigma of failure off of the organization as a whole, and I work to build more open lines of communication and you build trust, right? So then I'm more, I don't want to say confident-- that's not maybe the right word to go after-- but there's less hesitancy, less fear, maybe. So not being confident doesn't mean I'm not fearful, but if I can take a little bit of that fear, a little bit of the stigma of failure out, I'm willing to try. I'm willing to go off on something new. And as we look at this industry of new advances in technology, new challenges of diseases, we're going to have to keep moving fast and do it in areas that are pretty uncertain. So those are some things that I think help, of saying that we're not going to get it right every time, opening up lines of communication to build trust in the team. And then we can really move faster to a shared goal. [00:14:08] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. I really like that. Thank you for that advice and insight. That's really helpful. So now with your own company, consulting, well, a couple of questions, but the first is what stage of business do you usually typically come in on? Or is there not necessarily a stage that's your sweet spot? [00:14:28] Chad Bareither: There's, I wouldn't say right now there's a stage where I could say I have a, a litany of business cases for one stage, so multiple stages. I work with some organizations that are still in-- I mean, so if you think about the business, the corporate stage, established businesses, so they're past what would that be? Series two funding. So commercialized product. So I'm either working with the R&D pipeline on next generation products, next innovation, or in the operation space of improving manufacturing operations are typically the two areas that I'm working in the most. [00:15:09] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Was there an interesting learning curve going from being an employee to being an entrepreneur? [00:15:18] Chad Bareither: Yeah, so let me answer that two ways. The first is moving from being an internal employee to being a consultant, right? Because it's just a different, you're of a different role in the company, right? And then there's also to your point is great moving from being an employee to an entrepreneur. So if you don't mind, I'll kind of tackle both of those. The first is moving from employee to consultant is interesting. Because I was on the employee side when you would have consultants come in. And so leaving the bad taste in my mouth from some consultants we had worked in, they're there to make an impact so that they can either upsell their services or whatever. And I can remember being on engagement. So it's like pushing so hard and just, " I have to work with these people when you leave. So you're kind of creating a mess for us." And just trying to meet people more where they're at. But you know, there's an adage of "a prophet isn't recognized in their hometown." It's sometimes they just need someone from the outside to point out what everyone has showing. And I know that sounds simple, but sometimes you just need to come in and say, "Independent third party here. And yes, that is the problem." So it's nice that you have that sense of authority, but I am personally, I am very cautious about the fact of, look, these people need to live with the solution when I walk away. The worst thing in my mind could be helping a client solve a problem, and then it returned for them. So even if they did want to call me back, that would be seen as not ideal in my mind. I want to help them get to a solution that then they can buy in and sustain. So that, that first change is going from internal employee to consultant where, you do have to make an impact, a splash, a return on investment, whatever you say. But, I'm cautious to also say, but they need to adopt the change. They need to own it. It can't just be my great idea. The other side that you talked about is going from employee to entrepreneur, which is also an interesting transition. As an employee, there's some perceived safety and stability, and I say that just perceived, because depending upon the industry that you're in, as markets change and things like that, layoffs come, things of that nature. So job security is never a hundred percent, but there is some perceived job security and stability there. But as you get past the startup stage, you start to specialize, which means your job responsibility narrows, right? So in a larger organization, typically you become a specialist, but not very broad in thinking, and, and so that can be comfortable as well. You develop some technical expertise. Moving into the entrepreneurial space, which you probably have dabbled in a little bit as an, as a business owner yourself is, you are simultaneously the chief marketing officer and IT support and delivery services, and fill in the blank. So you're wearing a lot of hats. And it can be difficult to gravitate towards the stuff you're really good at. So, I am best at the delivery, the actual client engagements. But I recognize if I'm not doing sales and marketing, and building new connections like that, eventually that work goes away. So it's trying to manage yourself and not stay where you're comfortable, if that makes sense. And not just deep dive all the way down to specialty in one area and have to learn some of these things. Or, you know, find the right people to do it for you. [00:18:49] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's very insightful. So you are also a published author and I was wondering if you could share a little bit about your book. [00:18:57] Chad Bareither: Yeah. So the name of the book I wrote in the fall of 2023, it was released, is called "Improve LESS" and intentionally thought provoking title that I got to it in a very roundabout way. The whole concept of the book started behind that, when I launched my consulting firm, I was still working full time as a corporate employee. So a friend of a friend asked if I can help. And I said, "Sure!" And that was a side gig. And then had another one come up and another one come up and then one of those clients wanted something more. And eventually I didn't have time to do a full time corporate job anymore. But then I had three clients that were all kind of different phases and asking for different things. And so I had one client that was really focused on strategy. And, " We need to align our strategy. We need a better way to cascade that in the organization." Another client that was really focused on process improvement. "We want to build our problem solving and process improvement skills for the organization." And I had a third client that really wanted to have better eyes on the business, so we would call it a daily management system, visualization of metrics and understanding the business so we can diagnose problems. Well, once you get good at strategy, then you actually have to go improve the processes. Once I'm pretty good at process improvement, I should probably align those strategically. Once I can see the problems in my business, I need to-- so essentially all of those three clients needed the three parts that were together. So I sat back and I said, "Well, this is starting to become a little bit of a mess. What would I do if I had a new client? What, where would I start?" So I started writing down the process really for my own benefit. And then working with a business coach, I was like, "I'm going to give this away as like a PDF or whatever." They're like, "No, you should turn this into a book." And I'm like, "Like a book?" And they're like, "Yeah." And I had no idea how to do that. So, you know, back to our conversation about entrepreneurs is, so I found someone who did. And I'm work with someone else, a publishing strategist helped me go through everything, which I thought it was pretty good, in terms of editing, that was not the case. So, went through some content editing and professional editing, and then, hired a professional illustrator from my hand drawn drawings. So, yeah, it was a journey, but that's how it started was me saying, " Well, what's my process?" And so really the purpose of the book is it is a framework. Anyone can pick it up and follow it. And I also tried to keep it short. I don't like to be very verbose in the communications to my clients because they need to understand it. So it's literally something that you could read in a weekend and start on Monday. [00:21:39] Lindsey Dinneen: I love that. Okay. So yeah. Yeah. So you've written this book, and you have your consulting firm, and what are you excited about coming up? Maybe both personally and professionally. [00:21:53] Chad Bareither: Yeah. Oh, I think it's easier for me to answer personally. So I'll start there. So my wife and I have three children and they're all pretty active in different competitive endeavors, gymnastics. We talked before, my middle daughter is a dancer, the two girls, the gymnast and the dancer, also play volleyball. And then my youngest son is on a baseball and a soccer team. And so, I mean, I just love supporting them in those. Now I say all that academics are also important. They're doing well academically. That's kind of the condition for doing the sports and stuff like that, but really pouring into them right now. It's It's going to sound so cliche, but our oldest is 13 right now. And some pictures came up, memories on my phone, and it's goes by quick. So personally, I'm just excited about in them right now. And they're turning-- I use this term and my coworker laughs at me-- but they're turning into real people, with their own personalities and their own likes, and it's frustrating at times because they have their own thoughts. Yeah. But it's fascinating right now. And just being able to spend more time investing in them is, is great. Professionally is exciting to really I'm niching back down into this medtech area, right? So I'm carrying a pharma client. I came off a pharma engagement. That was just at the beginning of this year and I've worked in other industries, but I'm just really fired up about the work, the technical challenges in these areas. So getting back into some client engagements that are med device and pharmaceuticals, and then, pharmaceuticals has stuff going on that I don't, I can't begin to understand. Bio therapeutic proteins and cell therapy stuff, which is-- it's fascinating technology, but it's still process, right? And so I might not understand the science, but I do understand process. And I've been able to help in those areas. And it's just, it's humbling to be contributing to the field. So I'm really excited to niche back down in that area and do some more work in this medtech field. [00:23:56] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. And when it comes to medtech, are there any moments working with clients that stand out to you as just confirmation that you are in the right place in the right industry at the right time? [00:24:10] Chad Bareither: Yeah. So, I know very little about cell therapy, but basically, you grow stem cells and you make them into other type of cells that would be beneficial. If there's people in cell therapy listening to this, you can correct me if I'm wrong. But I mean, it's just, it's mind boggling the science, but I was working with that group and so they were building up their pilot capabilities. And I'm looking at for more like an industrial engineering, manufacturing point of view, developing standard work. And so they're like, "Oh, this is so helpful." And I'm just thinking, I'm like, "I don't even understand what you guys do. So the fact that I can be of any contribution here is..." But I think, pulling back on that is, you need to invest in your strength. So here's, very skilled multi year experience, PhD scientists. And sometimes they just need someone to help them with structuring up the process flow and the capacities and the standard work that they need to do this consistently. And I'm good at that. And so this kind of harkens back to our conversations about entrepreneurship, right, of knowing what you're good at and knowing what you need help with. And I just, I know what I'm good at. And if I find clients that need help in that area, I'm thrilled to support it. But that was one engagement where it was like, "I understand about zero of what you just explained to me, but I think I can help you." [00:25:36] Lindsey Dinneen: I love that. That's fantastic. One of the things I've noticed and really appreciated about the medtech industry is everybody is really good about celebrating and acknowledging how we all fit into the efforts to make it successful. So even if you are not the scientist, or you are also an engineer, but say in my case, I'm not a scientist, I'm not an engineer, but I do have a marketing ability. And the respect mutually that occurs for everybody's contributions, I think is really special in the medtech industry. I'm wondering if you experienced that too. [00:26:17] Chad Bareither: Yeah. You know, I think there's definitely times it's kind of like a family, right? Families fight, the families get along together. There's definitely times where it's like people are like, "Ah, sales department doesn't know what they're doing," or and you're like, but at the end of the day, you recognize you do need all those parts. Unfortunately, these technologies and this research is expensive. So you do need to sell, right? I mean, that's a reality. So you're right. They do all need to get to, and if people slow down, I think you're right. Eventually everyone's, " Yes, we need all these parts to work." I think there's definitely times where people are having a bad time and they get a little grumpy and they're like, "That department doesn't know what they're doing." But it's, but no, I think all the departments are actually really good at what they're doing. So, you just look at the growth that you're seeing in the industry and the valuation of some of these companies and it's, they know what they're doing and they're serving a need that, that we have supporting our health and wellness. And so it's cool. It's really cool to see that all come together. I think you get a very interesting view of that at some of the smaller organizations 'cause there is a lot more of that trust and that team camaraderie, but even, you know, I worked for a fortune 500 company when I was in in med device, as a corporate employee. And you still have that, within the product teams, within the production teams, that they're there to support each other, they're there for the win. There's also a healthy dose of competition in the industry, I think, that makes it a really driven. So it's, it's fun to be a part of it's fast paced because of the personalities. It's fast paced because of the science. It's fast paced because of the competitiveness with other competitors in the industry. So yeah, it's a fun space to be in. [00:28:00] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so pivoting the conversation just for fun, imagine that you were to be offered a million dollars to teach a master class on anything you want. It could be in your industry, but it doesn't have to be. What would you choose to teach? [00:28:17] Chad Bareither: Yeah. So this is maybe, I'm hopefully not being risk averse here, because I would teach something that I'm already good at teaching. So some of my favorite things to teach are structured problem solving. So most people that are in any type of leadership position got there because they were probably good at solving problems. And I think where we have challenges in, as organizations grow, is that not everyone solves a problem the same way. So how do you develop the new talent coming up to be like those next leaders? And you can't, you shouldn't just rely on individual people to be like, "We'll just find the good problem solvers and they'll go up." I've seen in organizations where you can really multiply, even exponentially grow, the pace of improvement by having structured problem solving in. So that's what I would do. Personally, that's DMAIC formatted problem solving. It's a five phase problem solving approach: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control. So that's something that I love teaching because I love the lightbulb moment that goes off in people's heads and we teach them that. There is a portion of that is statistics and I love teaching statistics because most people think this is going to be the worst thing ever and I tried to make it a little bit fun and they're like, "Oh, that was fun. And I learned something." And that's what fires me up. So yeah, it would be structured problem solving. That's what I would teach a masterclass on. [00:29:43] Lindsey Dinneen: Okay, I like it. And how do you wish to be remembered after you leave this world? [00:29:49] Chad Bareither: Oh, my. So my love language that I express as in service. Helpful, that's, I think that's the main thing. Whether it's in a client engagement or in the neighborhood or the family, I enjoy helping people. And so whether that's consulting on the launch of a new diagnostic device or helping someone repair their tractor, right? I enjoy engaging and learning with people and solving problems together. So I really like helping people. So I think I'd like to be remembered in that way. Helpful. [00:30:27] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, I like it. Absolutely. And then final question. What is one thing that makes you smile every time you see or think about it? [00:30:38] Chad Bareither: One thing. Well, I don't know. I've smiled a lot this week, seeing pictures of my kids when they were younger, because I don't know, maybe my iPhone's just paying tricks on me. It keeps showing pictures of my kids when they were little. So that's it. I think right now, just the point of life that I'm at right now as kids, two of my brothers just had babies as well. So little kids and just me realizing like my kids are never going to be that age again. I've been on travel and seen a lot of little kids in different cities, and it's sweet because it's so simple. Their world is so simple at that age. So I think it makes me smile just because the innocence is there. Yeah. I'm gonna stick with that. [00:31:17] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, great answer. It's, it's special to witness and it always brings a smile too. Especially little kids at airports that are dragging their tiny little backpacks or rollie bags behind them and they've got their best stuffed friend. Oh my gosh, it's so cute. [00:31:35] Chad Bareither: So one thing that's been interesting to see is when people have younger kids, and maybe they're misbehaving or maybe they're just excited, right? And the parents are kind of flustered. It's just it's, it brings a smile to my face. Not because the parents are flustered. It's just because I can remember being a parent and you make a big deal out of it, and it's man, but I just appreciate the innocence and the genuine joy that this small human is trying to have right now. And it's, I think, that's the thing right now in my life. That's bringing a smile every time I see it or think about it. [00:32:05] Lindsey Dinneen: I love it. I love it. Well, Chad, this has been an incredible conversation. I really appreciate your insights and advice and everything that you're doing. If anyone's listening and needs some outside support, please definitely get in touch with Chad. We are so honored to be making a donation on your behalf as a thank you for your time today to the Polaris Project, which is a non governmental organization that works to combat and prevent sex and labor trafficking in North America. So thank you for choosing that organization to support. And we just wish you the most continued success as you work to change lives for a better world. [00:32:42] Chad Bareither: Thanks a lot. And you got a lot going on. So I wish you continued success in all your endeavors as well. [00:32:49] Lindsey Dinneen: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. And thank you also to our listeners for tuning in. And if you're feeling as inspired as I am right now, I would love it if you would share this episode with a colleague or two, and we will catch you next time. [00:33:04] Ben Trombold: The Leading Difference is brought to you by Velentium. Velentium is a full-service CDMO with 100% in-house capability to design, develop, and manufacture medical devices from class two wearables to class three active implantable medical devices. Velentium specializes in active implantables, leads, programmers, and accessories across a wide range of indications, such as neuromodulation, deep brain stimulation, cardiac management, and diabetes management. Velentium's core competencies include electrical, firmware, and mechanical design, mobile apps, embedded cybersecurity, human factors and usability, automated test systems, systems engineering, and contract manufacturing. Velentium works with clients worldwide, from startups seeking funding to established Fortune 100 companies. Visit velentium.com to explore your next step in medical device development.

Gościem 36. odcinka podcastu jest Paweł Skorupski z firmy BSH, producenta sprzętu AGD znanego pod markami takimi jak: Bosch, Siemens, Gaggenau i Neff. Czy DMAIC to rzeczywiście jakaś "nauka kosmiczna"? Czy to rzeczywiście takie trudne? Czy i dlaczego ludzie boją się statystyki? No i jak sobie z tym ew. lękiem radzić? To tylko niektóre z pytań, które staraliśmy się zaadresować w tej rozmowie. Zapraszamy do wysłuchania odcinka!    Szkolenia Six Sigma / Lean w Akademii Białego Kruka: https://abk.pl/co-robimy/

We explore the history, philosophy, and methodology of Design for Six Sigma (DFSS). We dissect the acronyms DMAIC and DMADV, revealing how these methodologies are blueprints for achieving excellence.  From statistics to Motorola's legendary quality standards and other history of six sigma, you'll begin to see how DFSS may relate with your organization's current design development processes.Quality during Design is not DFSS. It can be part of DFSS or any other product development process. Quality during Design is a philosophy that emphasizes the benefits of cross-functional team involvement and a methodology that uses quality tools to refine design concepts early on. Quality tools bridge the gap between team communication and innovative concept development. We review why skipping the crucial steps of questioning and investigating can lead to missed opportunities. As we navigate through the essential stages of product development, we invite you to join us on this enlightening path to creating impactful and high-quality solutions that stand the test of time—and the marketplace.Give us a Rating & Review**NEW COURSE**FMEA in Practice: from Plan to Risk-Based Decision Making is enrolling students now. Visit the course page for more information and to sign up today! Click Here **FREE RESOURCES**Quality during Design engineering and new product development is actionable. It's also a mindset. Subscribe for consistency, inspiration, and ideas at www.qualityduringdesign.com.About meDianna Deeney helps product designers work with their cross-functional team to reduce concept design time and increase product success, using quality and reliability methods. She consults with businesses to incorporate quality within their product development processes. She also coaches individuals in using Quality during Design for their projects.She founded Quality during Design through her company Deeney Enterprises, LLC. Her vision is a world of products that are easy to use, dependable, and safe – possible by using Quality during Design engineering and product development.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Transfer Learning in Humans, published by niplav on April 22, 2024 on LessWrong. I examine the literature on transfer learning in humans. Far transfer is difficult to achieve, best candidate interventions are to practice at the edge of one's ability and make many mistakes, evaluate mistakes after one has made them, learn from training programs modeled after expert tacit knowledge, and talk about on one's strategies when practicing the domain. When learning, one would like to progress faster, and learn things faster. So it makes sense to search for interventions that speed up learning (effective learning techniques), enable using knowledge and knowledge patterns from one learned domain in a new domain if appropriate (transfer learning), and make it easier to find further learning-accelerating techniques (meta-learning). Summary I've spent ~20 hours reading and skimming papers and parts of books from different fields, and extracting the results from them, resulting spreadsheet here, google doc with notes here. I've looked at 50 papers, skimmed 20 and read 10 papers and 20% of a book. In this text I've included all sufficiently-different interventions I've found that have been tested empirically. For interventions tried by scientists I'd classify them into (ordered by how relevant and effective I think they are): Error-based learning in which trainees deliberately seek out situations in which they make mistakes. This has medium to large effect sizes at far transfer. Long Training Programs: These usually take the form of one- or two-semester long classes on decision-making, basic statistics and spatial thinking, and produce far transfer at small to medium effect sizes. Such programs take a semester or two and are usually tested on high-school students or university students. Effective Learning Techniques: Things like doing tests and exercises while learning, or letting learners generate causal mechanisms, which produce zero to or best small amounts of far transfer but speed up learning. OODA-loop-likes: Methods that structure the problem-solving process, such as the Pólya method or DMAIC. In most cases, these haven't been tested well or at all, but they are popular in the business context. Also they look all the same to me, but probably have the advantage of functioning as checklists when performing a task. Transfer Within Domains: Methods that are supposed to help with getting knowledge about a particular domain from an expert to a trainee, or from training to application on the job. Those methods have a high fixed cost since experts have to be interviewed and whole curricula have to be created, but they work very well at the task they've been created for (where training sometimes is sped up by more than an order of magnitude). Additionally, most of the research is on subjects which are probably not intrinsically motivated to apply a technique well (i.e. high school students, military trainees, and university students), so there is a bunch of selection pressure on techniques which still work with demotivated subjects. I expect that many techniques work much better with already motivated subjects, especially ones that are easy to goodhart. In general, the tension I was observing is that industry and the military are the ones who perform well/do non-fake things, but academia are the ones who actually measure and report those measures to the public. From when I've talked with people from industry, they don't seem at all interested in tracking per-employee performance (e.g. Google isn't running RCTs on their engineers to increase their coding performance, and estimates for how long projects will take are not tracked & scored). I also haven't seen many studies quantifying the individual performance of employees, especially high-earning white collar knowledge-workers. Recomme...

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Transfer Learning in Humans, published by niplav on April 22, 2024 on LessWrong. I examine the literature on transfer learning in humans. Far transfer is difficult to achieve, best candidate interventions are to practice at the edge of one's ability and make many mistakes, evaluate mistakes after one has made them, learn from training programs modeled after expert tacit knowledge, and talk about on one's strategies when practicing the domain. When learning, one would like to progress faster, and learn things faster. So it makes sense to search for interventions that speed up learning (effective learning techniques), enable using knowledge and knowledge patterns from one learned domain in a new domain if appropriate (transfer learning), and make it easier to find further learning-accelerating techniques (meta-learning). Summary I've spent ~20 hours reading and skimming papers and parts of books from different fields, and extracting the results from them, resulting spreadsheet here, google doc with notes here. I've looked at 50 papers, skimmed 20 and read 10 papers and 20% of a book. In this text I've included all sufficiently-different interventions I've found that have been tested empirically. For interventions tried by scientists I'd classify them into (ordered by how relevant and effective I think they are): Error-based learning in which trainees deliberately seek out situations in which they make mistakes. This has medium to large effect sizes at far transfer. Long Training Programs: These usually take the form of one- or two-semester long classes on decision-making, basic statistics and spatial thinking, and produce far transfer at small to medium effect sizes. Such programs take a semester or two and are usually tested on high-school students or university students. Effective Learning Techniques: Things like doing tests and exercises while learning, or letting learners generate causal mechanisms, which produce zero to or best small amounts of far transfer but speed up learning. OODA-loop-likes: Methods that structure the problem-solving process, such as the Pólya method or DMAIC. In most cases, these haven't been tested well or at all, but they are popular in the business context. Also they look all the same to me, but probably have the advantage of functioning as checklists when performing a task. Transfer Within Domains: Methods that are supposed to help with getting knowledge about a particular domain from an expert to a trainee, or from training to application on the job. Those methods have a high fixed cost since experts have to be interviewed and whole curricula have to be created, but they work very well at the task they've been created for (where training sometimes is sped up by more than an order of magnitude). Additionally, most of the research is on subjects which are probably not intrinsically motivated to apply a technique well (i.e. high school students, military trainees, and university students), so there is a bunch of selection pressure on techniques which still work with demotivated subjects. I expect that many techniques work much better with already motivated subjects, especially ones that are easy to goodhart. In general, the tension I was observing is that industry and the military are the ones who perform well/do non-fake things, but academia are the ones who actually measure and report those measures to the public. From when I've talked with people from industry, they don't seem at all interested in tracking per-employee performance (e.g. Google isn't running RCTs on their engineers to increase their coding performance, and estimates for how long projects will take are not tracked & scored). I also haven't seen many studies quantifying the individual performance of employees, especially high-earning white collar knowledge-workers. Recomme...

Gościem 34. odcinka podcastu jest Anna Maria Woronowicz z firmy Pandora. Rozmawiamy o tym jak radzić sobie z presją czasu w projektach, jak pogodzić takie skróty jak ASAP z takim skrótem jak DMAIC, po co Black Beltowi intuicja i jak pokolenie Z odnajduje się w świecie Six Sigma. Zapraszamy do wysłuchania odcinka!    Anna Maria Woronowicz jest również prelegentką 17. Konferencji Lean | Six Sigma, która odbędzie się we Wrocławiu 6-7 czerwca 2024. Więcej informacji: https://abk.pl/konferencja/

If you want to improve performance and feel great about it along the way your going to appreciate this conversation with Scott Helgeson and Andrew Maruska with Chart Industries. They will walk you through their 6 Sigma projects and how they helped improve quality and communication. Download the Leaders Guide

This week's guest is Clint West. Clint "turned the tables" this week by interviewing our host, Ron Pereira instead. Together they covered everything from lean in the office, to DMAIC, resistance, and more. An MP3 audio version of this episode is available for download here. In this episode you'll learn:  The quote Clint likes (6:35) His background (7:26) The "calmness" at certain facilities (15:38) Dealing with resistance (21:05) A story about Clint's family (25:08) What Ron has seen about eliminating waste in an office environment (26:27) Ron's pet peeve regarding DMAIC (33:22) About our Gemba Academy teleprompter evolution (39:57) Podcast Resources Right Click to Download this Podcast as an MP3 Clint on LinkedIn Get All the Latest News from Gemba AcademyOur newsletter is a great way to receive updates on new courses, blog posts, and more. Sign up here. What Do You Think?What is one of your lean "pet peeves"?

Mark Ross has been leading operations and manufacturing teams for 20 years. His recent roles include manufacturing manager at Medtronic and director of manufacturing at Endologix, where he led, coached, problem solved and performed continuous improvement activities in hi-tech medical devices.Aaron Moncur, hostAbout Being An Engineer The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community. The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us

Gościem 31. odcinka podcastu Six Sigma Espresso jest Grzegorz Furgał - Principal Engineer for Process Certification and Technical Problem Solving w Pratt & Whitney Rzeszów. Rozmawiamy o definiowaniu projektów usprawniających oraz trudnościach związanych z doborem miar i metryk do projektu.    Szkolenia i doradztwo Six Sigma i Lean: https://abk.pl/  

LİNKLER ========= Altı sigma video serimiz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJ7QLmPaoDE&list=PLfhztEYeT_5Yg_58XckpjHzUVBLD5HKCj Operasyonel Mükemmellik Danışmanlığı programı hakkında bilgi almak için: tulay.tek@yalin-dunya.com bilgi@yalin-dunya.com https://yalin-dunya.com/online-egitimler/operasyonel-mukemmellik-danismanligi-programi/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48YFCW1WbbY Sürekli iyileştirme geçmişini örneklerle öğrenebileceğiniz hikayeler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-lKswuWzW0&list=PLfhztEYeT_5aDwL289Iv7ddL3V2Gfpsnt Yalın yönetim bilginizi ve kişisel verimliliğinizi arttıracak kitap önerileri ve özetleri: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSv1sEWIghE&list=PLfhztEYeT_5be2A9T8w4gbMjS3k67k40h Operasyonel mükemmellikte sürdürülebilirliği sağlamanın yolları ve kullanılan araçlar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0Hb9rzG_r8&list=PLfhztEYeT_5bd-ZG8Xlxvxdo5ksbS-pAG Yalın yönetim araçları: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee9uoAPsRc4&list=PLfhztEYeT_5aA3FTEQ5foYYcU2WMU9jwB Bize ulaşmak için: tulay.tek@yalin-dunya.com bilgi@yalin-dunya.com Web adresi: www.yalin-dunya.com Diğer sosyal medya hesapları: Instagram : https://instagram.com/yalindunya​​_yeniden Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/yalın-dünya/?viewAsMember=true#6sigma #DMAIC

We are at the next step of moving our organizations to the digital twin which will allow us to monitor "the plane" (our businesses) in real-time and compare it with the predictions of the future. This missing step is Process Simulation, a "thing" that existed for years already and was widely underused. The change though is that the next generation of Process Simulation tools now is much more advanced and uses AI to help with predicting future outcomes of your process and helping finding suggestions on how to improve the process to enable that you reach your business objectives. John started out as economic analyst at the Bank of England, worked at another Simulation company and then founded Silico to transform the way organizations make decisions. He is interested in complex systems and computational simulation and lives close to London. In this episode of the podcast we are talking about: John's background What is Process Simulation and how does it work? What are main areas that Process Simulation aids? How does a client get started and how does it fit into the DMAIC cycle and continuous improvement initiatives? What is a "Digital Twin" of an organization? How does Process Simulation help with choosing the correct transformation initiatives? An example of a successful client deployment of Simulation John can be found on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-hill-3879b823/ or be reached at john@silicoai.com. Please reach out to us by either sending an email to hello@whatsyourbaseline.com or leaving us a voice message by clicking here.

In this episode, I share some audio about DMAIC from a recent class I taught, and I thought you'd find it helpful. I express the importance of ignoring improvement ideas in a DMAIC project until after you go through Define, Measure and Analyze first. You will get pressure to jump to Improve before you're ready, so resist that urge and trust the process. Links What is DMAIC? Need help in your organization? ⁠⁠⁠Let's talk! Schedule a free support call⁠⁠ Podcast Sponsor: Creative Safety Supply is a great resource for free guides, infographics, and continuous improvement tools. I recommend starting with their 5S guide. It includes breakdowns of the five pillars, ways to begin implementing 5S, and even organization tips and color charts. From red tags to floor marking; it's all there. Download it for free at ⁠⁠creativesafetysupply.com/5S⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠BIZ-PI.com⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠LeanSixSigmaDefinition.com⁠⁠⁠ Have a question? ⁠⁠⁠Submit a voice message at Podcasters.Spotify.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/leansixsigmabursts/message

We welcome back NCG Coach Jim Bradley for a continuation of our LEAN podcast series - this time, we're talking about the elements of the Control Plan. In our past episode we introduced the concept of lean thinking, reviewed  TIMWOODS, discussed Value added vs Non value added, reviewed DMAIC and discussed kaizen events - all of which are fundamental components nn making a lean transformation and a lasting impact on your continuous improvement culture.When it comes to continuous improvement - how do we keep traction in the spaces and processes we have tarnstored and invested in? We have to have systems checks of control to ensure change management remains sustainable and flows through to our financial results. This is about holding ourselves accountable to execute the initiatives coming out of the change management process.From Quarterly themes to KPIs, the 5S system and more, Jim walks us through a recommended list of control tools that will help keep the implementation process alive and well. This episode is brought to you by Penntek, our Gold Level Grand Summit Sponsor and a supporting partner of the Summit Member Group. . 

Gościem dzisiejszego odcinka jest Mateusz Dzięciołowski, certyfikowany Six Sigma Black Belt, a obecnie Local Product Owner w firmie NOKIA. Rozmawiamy o wykorzystaniu Six Sigma i metodyki DMAIC w projektach IT, różnicach między środowiskiem produkcyjnym i usługowym oraz o ścieżce Six Sigma Black Belta - czy jest dla każdego, jakie kompetencje pozwala zdobyć i jaki potencjał za sobą niesie?    Mateusz jest również jednym z Prelegentów 16. Konferencji Lean | Six Sigma. W swoim wystąpieniu przedstawi case-study poprawy trafności predykcji daty dostarczenia przez zespół devoleperski, na podstawie projektu A3.  Konferencja Lean | Six Sigma: https://abk.pl/konferencja/

In this episode, I discuss the importance of the Control phase in a Six Sigma DMAIC Improvement project, including the key considerations to make before closing out your improvement activity. Create a system and/or process to monitor the results Update any documentation of the processes and procedures Update any training of the processes Create a response or mitigation plan in case there is a drop in performance Add any visual controls or job aids that can be posted in the work area Review incentives to encourage new improvements to be used or followed Identify contact names and resources if employee has questions about the new improvements Schedule process audits or reviews for the next 30, 60 and 90 days Ensure improvements have been labeled, have a clear storage space, and have someone assigned to reorder them or perform maintenance on them (if applicable)? Ensure clear ownership of the improvements have taken place by the process owners Links ⁠What is DMAIC? Need help in your organization? ⁠Let's talk! Schedule a free support call Podcast Sponsor: Creative Safety Supply is a great resource for free guides, infographics, and continuous improvement tools. I recommend starting with their 5S guide. It includes breakdowns of the five pillars, ways to begin implementing 5S, and even organization tips and color charts. From red tags to floor marking; it's all there. Download it for free at creativesafetysupply.com/5S ⁠BIZ-PI.com⁠ ⁠LeanSixSigmaDefinition.com⁠ Have a question? ⁠Submit a voice message at Podcasters.Spotify.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/leansixsigmabursts/message

Our LEAN Podcast Series here on Out of the Hourglass rolls on with NCG Business Coach, Jim Bradley.   Today - we are introducing the Kaizen Event! If Lean is a lens through which we focus on eliminating waste, increasing productivity and providing value add for an organization, The Kaizen focuses on continuous improvement, the change for good. Having facilitated many Kaizen events over his career, Jim walks us through the approach and outlays the details of teaching lean thinking through this process, from the specifics of who should be involved, the timeline and preparation, and what type of issue or problem identified qualifies to be put through a Kaizen - this is about taking focused, structured time on site to identify and roll out a solution to a problem you want to fix. A reminder that we kicked off the series back in the Fall of 2022, so if you're just joining us -be sure to jump back for an intro to the concept and the following 2 episodes highlighting process tools, TIMWOODS and DMAIC. (Link to those episodes)This episode is brought to you by Groundwork, our Gold Level Grand Summit Sponsor and a supporting partner of the Summit Member Group. . 

We are back with NCG Business Coach, Jim Bradley for a continuation of the LEAN Podcast Series here at Out of the Hourglass. We kicked off the series back in the Fall of 2022 and today we're keeping the discussion moving, taking a closer look at another process used within the LEAN Lens - DMAIC! Yes, that too is another acronym. In our last episode we worked the TIMWOODS process - one it used to help us identify forms of waste or "flow interrupters" in a process. DMAIC is what comes next - once we have identified the “waste” or issues with flow, this tool is used to begin to focus on the solution. If you are just jumping into the series now, make sure to first listen to Episode 131: LEAN Principles - where we introduce the LEAN concept.

DMAIC: Define the problem (Set the goal, ...) Measure the problem (AS IS, ...) Analyse (Root cause analysis, ...) Implement (Find solutions test and implement) Control (Monitor and sustain improvements, ...) Popper's method: Problem definition ( "What to do next ?" Given the ... Root cause analysis, AS-IS / TO-BE, ...) Tentative Solution (Tentative answer to the what to do next question, i.e. a guess for what to do to solve the problem) Error-correction (Using not only data but also argument) New Problem

Illustrating what methods don't mention via the DMAIC problem solving method

Kevin Grayson provides an introduction to LEAN Six Sigma, and subsequent tools and problem solving structures such as: DMAIC, DMADV, the 8 wastes (DOWNTIME), 5S, and value stream mapping. Kevin Grayson is the assistant director of technology management at NC State Industry Expansion Solutions (IES). He provides strategic coaching and training in areas such as competitiveness review, business strategy development, new product introduction, innovation, advanced manufacturing methods, performance excellence and market growth. Kevin also supports other areas of IES including quality management systems and Six Sigma instruction. Kevin is an adjunct instructor in the Biomedical Engineering department where he teaches DFSS and certifies senior design projects. Kevin is also a Baldrige Examiner and AHCA Master Examiner and serves on the TNCPE Board of Directors. Kevin has been an AHCA master examiner for the AHCA/NCAL program since 2016. Kevin is a frequent speaker at conferences and professional meetings, typically speaking on subjects such as innovation, performance excellence or Six Sigma. Kevin has B.S. degrees in both electrical engineering and economics from NC State University, an MBA from Brenau University and an M.S. in electrical engineering from UNC-Charlotte. Kevin is certified as a Certified Six Sigma Black Belt and Master Black Belt (MBB). Industry Expansion Solutions: https://www.ies.ncsu.edu/ More on The BME Grad Podcast: Subscribe on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCyfF0xH80d5lS1RpQsmpw0Q/videos Follow us on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/thebmegradpodcast/ Follow us on Instagram: www.instagram.com/thebmegradpodcast/

Kevin Grayson provides an introduction to LEAN Six Sigma, and subsequent tools and problem solving structures such as: DMAIC, DMADV, the 8 wastes (DOWNTIME), 5S, and value stream mapping. Kevin Grayson is the assistant director of technology management at NC State Industry Expansion Solutions (IES). He provides strategic coaching and training in areas such as competitiveness review, business strategy development, new product introduction, innovation, advanced manufacturing methods, performance excellence and market growth. Kevin also supports other areas of IES including quality management systems and Six Sigma instruction. Kevin is an adjunct instructor in the Biomedical Engineering department where he teaches DFSS and certifies senior design projects. Kevin is also a Baldrige Examiner and AHCA Master Examiner and serves on the TNCPE Board of Directors. Kevin has been an AHCA master examiner for the AHCA/NCAL program since 2016. Kevin is a frequent speaker at conferences and professional meetings, typically speaking on subjects such as innovation, performance excellence or Six Sigma. Kevin has B.S. degrees in both electrical engineering and economics from NC State University, an MBA from Brenau University and an M.S. in electrical engineering from UNC-Charlotte. Kevin is certified as a Certified Six Sigma Black Belt and Master Black Belt (MBB). Industry Expansion Solutions: https://www.ies.ncsu.edu/ More on The BME Grad Podcast: Subscribe on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCyfF0xH80d5lS1RpQsmpw0Q/videos Follow us on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/thebmegradpodcast/ Follow us on Instagram: www.instagram.com/thebmegradpodcast/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-bme-grad/support

In this episode, Paul Deane and I discuss his three core pillars to an operational excellence journey. What You'll Learn: Three Core Pillars of an operational excellence journey. The biggest drivers for an organization to adopt Lean. The biggest challenges organizations face when embarking on a Lean journey. Paul's biggest 'win' he has seen organizations achieve having implemented effective Lean. How do you get buy-in for Lean? About The Guest: Paul Deane has over 25 years working with large global organizations all over the world leading manufacturing and service operations, and successfully deploying business improvement methodologies. An innovative continuous Improvement practitioner, with strengths in operationalizing LEAN systems, ISO9001, manufacturing best practice and DMAIC projects. CSSC/ISSP certified 6 Sigma Black and Green Belts. Over 15+ years implementing OPEX systems from zero base within global organizations with strong insight into engaging front line staff. His operational, service and manufacturing experience has covered chemical, industrial and food industries. Paul also spoke at the Virtual Lean Summit 2022. Important Links: Paul Deane | LinkedIn YouTube --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/leansolutions/support

Kyle J. Eickman, PharmD, describe the goals of six sigma methodology and review examples of its application within pharmacy dispensing, reviews DMAIC methodology and describes how lean and six sigma can be used to achieve the same goals of patient safety.  For more pharmacy content, follow Mayo Clinic Pharmacy Residency Programs @MayoPharmRes or the host, Garrett E. Schramm, Pharm.D., @garrett_schramm on Twitter! You can also connect with the Mayo Clinic's School of Continuous Professional Development online at https://ce.mayo.edu/ or on Twitter @MayoMedEd. 

DEFINE!MEASURE!ANALYZE!IMPROVE!CONTROL!> Mit diesem Prinzip bringst Du sofort Struktur in Deine Optimierungen, sowohl im Business, wie auch im Privatleben.----  

How Quality Management and Service Excellence Are Essential for a Great Customer Experience   This week, we welcome Alec Dalton to the Digitally Irresistible podcast. Alec is co-founder and managing partner of the Hospitality Leadership Academy, a firm offering professional development programs and management consulting focused on service excellence.   Alec has operated five luxury properties and has held various corporate positions with hospitality industry pioneers like Marriott International, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, and Walt Disney Parks & Resorts. He is a renowned keynote speaker on customer experience and quality strategy and a contributor to several internationally best-selling books on the topic. He also operates a consultancy that helps businesses—brand names and boutiques alike—design and deliver five-star services.  On this episode, Alec discusses the role of quality management in your customer experience strategy and how essential it is for achieving high levels of customer satisfaction.   A Career Journey That Began Where Dreams Come True  Alec's career dreams date back to when he was eight years old on a family vacation at Disney World. While he and his family were at lunch talking about the special experiences they had that morning at the Magic Kingdom and sharing excitement about the upcoming fireworks that night, Alec noticed a custodial cast member (aka Disney employee) cleaning a nearby table. Seeing quality management in action, he realized that the magical experiences he and his family enjoyed were only possible because of people like the custodial cast member and all the other employees in various functions across the resort.   As he grew older, Alec was captivated by Disney's focus on quality and he learned that other organizations did the same thing. He studied hospitality at Boston University, worked in a variety of hotels and resorts, and spent time in the quality management function in different corporate offices. Today he enjoys helping a variety of large and small organizations develop their own five-star services by training their teams, refining their executive and leadership development programs, and shaping custom frontline training programs. He provides this management consultancy focused on quality management, HR, and customer service both through his firm, the Hospitality Leadership Academy, as well as Accelerate Learning Systems, a partner company.   The 3 Components of Quality Management in CX  Alec believes that every organization should have a philosophy around quality. Quality, he says, centers on the interplay between customer experience, customer success, and customer service. He defines three primary components of quality management.  1. Conformance to Company Standards   One way to assess quality is based on conformance to the expectations a company has for the way work gets done and how outputs are produced. There should be consistency in your company's quality standards.  2. Competitive Quality  Another way to assess quality is in the context of industry norms and the experiences customers have with your competitors. Consider what competitors are doing to meet customers' needs, where they are failing, and what expectations customers have of your brand based on their experiences with analogous businesses.   For example, in the hotel business, it's common to check in with an employee at the reception desk for a few minutes before going up to your room. But in the airline industry, it's possible to check in online or check in at a kiosk in the airport. Also, in most cases, it's possible to select your seat on an airplane. Why can't the hotel business take advantage of the same self-service mobile technology innovations to enable mobile check-ins and room selection in advance? The analogous expectations customers have of your industry compared to other industries influence their perception of competitive quality.  3. Customer Satisfaction   Finally, in Alec's experience, customer satisfaction is the most important definition of quality. Customers bring their own unique wants, needs, and expectations. It's your job to deliver the products and services that satisfy those needs or help them find a way to get there if you can't.  How to Use Quality Management to Improve CX Design  Despite how essential quality management is in good CX, it is often overlooked. Yet there are ready-made frameworks CX professionals can use to design and improve experiences.  One of Alec's favorites is the Six Sigma quality framework that guides CX professionals to reduce inconsistency and improve efficiency. The DMAIC process (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control) outlines this strategy, which Alec writes about in “Customer Experience.”   Define   First, customer experience professionals must define the experience they want to deliver. This includes both the actual experience and the outcomes—the memories or products you want the customer to leave with. Alec says it's important to measure the key touchpoints along the customer journey that are important for driving customer satisfaction.    Measure   Second, measure the business operating metrics so that you can address compliance quality and competitive quality throughout the customer journey.   Analyze  Third, track the key metrics over time to reduce risk and make sure you're actually satisfying your customers. Ensure your standards meet the needs of your customers and are at least equal to your competitors' standards.   Improve  Next, look for opportunities where you can take things to the next level and improve on your current experience.   Control  Finally, develop a quality control plan so you can sustain a new level of quality or improve it and delight your customers even more in the long term.   Perceived Challenges of These Frameworks  Originally developed in the manufacturing world with clear metrics for consistency, the data-intensive focus of the Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing philosophies can lead some brands to hesitate with them, especially for those in industries that rely on measuring customer or employee emotion.   The DMAIC process, however, is fairly common for brands in the hotel, hospitality, and entertainment industries. Using voice of the customer channels like surveys and social media feedback, hospitality, and B2C companies can mine those sources for data. And there's increasing potential for more data in the future as video recognition and artificial intelligence technologies continue to advance.  The Cost of Poor Quality Management  In “Customer Experience 2,” the second customer experience book Alec coauthored, he writes about the cost of quality in the customer experience. He explains how there is a cost to deliver quality, but the cost of poor quality is even greater.  The cost of poor quality can include negative word-of-mouth, opportunity costs, loyalty loss, negative sentiment, waste, and the cost of reworking processes to eliminate quality concerns. It's important for brands to consider what happens when things go wrong and how you can prevent it from happening in the first place.   For example, say you check into a hotel and the front desk provides friendly service and your guest room is lovely. But after you go to sleep, another guest suddenly walks in and you realize you were both checked into the same room. Oops!   In this scenario, two customers are understandably upset about the experience, which may result in negative word-of-mouth, rebates, refunds, or other accommodations to ensure customer satisfaction. Poor quality by design—the breakdown in process that caused this problem—resulted in all of these costs.   The cost of quality management can be categorized into two groups: conformance and non-conformance.  1. Conformance  Conformance is the cost of designing and implementing effective quality management. There are two types of conformance costs: appraisal costs and prevention costs.  Appraisal costs include things like inspecting parts or supplies before production begins or before a service is provided. Implementing quality assurance programs, performing inspections and the like are all part of the appraisal costs. This costs money, time, and effort, but it can prevent faulty parts or experiences from advancing through your supply chain and production process.   Prevention costs are similar but from an in-built design standpoint. Prevention costs often go by the Japanese term poka-yoke which means foolproofing. These are the measures you put in place to prevent accidents from happening. In a digital world, they might include preventing an employee or customer from skipping a step in a transactional process through a pop-up message. There are costs associated with designing, building, and implementing these, but these costs are often much lower than the costs of non-conformance.  2. Non-Conformance  Companies incur non-conformance costs when things go wrong, often due to poor quality or ineffective quality management. These include external opportunity costs—the cost of an upset customer, angry guest, or negative word of mouth. But they also include internal costs when things go wrong and you need to rework processes, reduce waste, or address low employee morale.   Balancing Quality and Cost   To reach a healthy balance between quality with cost, it's important to remember that the ideal level of quality, at least from a financial standpoint, isn't perfect quality. Perfection is astronomically expensive and often unattainable, especially in services businesses because we're all human and accidents happen. In contrast, the goal is to balance the cost of preventing and assuring quality to help reduce the cost of any potential failures and ensure a great customer experience with high levels of customer satisfaction.   What Alec Does for Fun  Being in the hospitality business, Alec loves to travel. Last year he visited all 50 states in the USA! He's still deciding on this year's adventure, but he has his eyes set abroad.   To learn more about Alec and his insights into quality management, visit his website at www.alecdalton.com and connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter.  Watch the video. Read the blog post. 

Lo que debes saber para Abrir tu Cafetería 1) Conoce el Café 2) Fundamentos de Barra 3) Procesos Críticos 4) Fundamentos de BrewBar 5) Costeo y proyección 6) La práctica hace al maestro 7) Documentar, mezclar y probar 8) Sigue procedimientos 9) Método DMAIC. Si deseas más información de nuestros cursos, entra a: https://www.simplecoffeemx.com/

Hello everyone! Today we talk about the DMAIC cycle. DMAIC stads for Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control and is at the core of process optimisation. DMAIC is not only a tool, it is a "way of thinking" about the running processes. In this episode, I give a simple example on how to apply DMAIC in order to estimate the real (and not perceived) antecedents of exhaustion and how to estimate whether you approximate the state of burnout.  Here is the evaluation I am referring to during this episode (Excel-file). Best Eugene (Yevgen)  

Jak liczby, dane i fakty zmieniają sposób myślenia i pomagają zarządzać firmą? Gdzie szukać inspiracji na projekty DMAIC? Jak motywować zespoły do realizacji projektów? Skąd czerpać motywację do pracy i dlaczego nie warto zaczynać dnia od czytania maili? Zapraszamy na 18. odcinek podcastu Six Sigma Espresso, którego gościem jest Grzegorz Stępień - doświadczony Six Sigma Black Belt i dyrektor zakładu produkcyjnego. 

Global Policy Watch #1: The Man Who Broke Capitalism?Global policy issues relevant for India- RSJOver the last couple of years, I have run through a list of books in what I call the ‘crisis in liberalism’ genre. There is a template that most of these books follow – begin with the fall of the Berlin wall, remind readers about Fukuyama’s ‘The End of History’ paper, run through the mistakes that a triumphal liberal order made through the next two decades, talk about capitalism running amok leading to the global financial crisis and then build a grand theory for the populist backlash we saw in the last few years.I wrote about these books on these pages. The list is long – The Globalisation Paradox, Radical Uncertainty, Radical Markets, The Light That Failed, The Code of Capital and maybe you could add the various Piketty books in here too. There’s a cottage industry that’s built up here and you can say I’m a huge patron of their artisanal products. Well, the good news is there’s a new addition to this genre this week. “The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America--And How to Undo His Legacy” by David Gelles. The title is a mouthful, but it is also convenient. It says everything it has to say in its unwieldy length. There’s not a lot more in the book except trying to retrofit all kinds of ills of capitalism seen today by the author back to Jack Welch. Gelles is all over the media this week (here, here) talking up the book and making the same points over and over again. And it got me thinking on two counts. One, why business management research and literature is almost always garbage? And two, why do we get public policy on managing business and capital wrong so often?On the book itself, I will try and summarise (in deliberate broad strokes) the three key arguments Gelles makes:There was some kind of a ‘golden age of capitalism’ in the thirty years after WW2. Companies took care of their people, distributed wealth equally, happily paid the taxes and employed people for life. Businesses saw themselves as more than profit maximising engines. There was a feeling of loyalty to the country, a fraternal sense of belonging to a community and a wider obligation to the supporting the government. All quite nice.Then in the early 70s, Friedman wrote that shareholder value maximisation paper (“The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase Its Profits”) and the world was never the same again. Businesses focused more on their profits and soon lobbied for lower taxes and greater freedom in conducting their affairs. Reagan and the conservative revolution of small government followed. Into this mix came in Jack Welch as the CEO of GE, the iconic American institution. Welch singlehandedly destroyed capitalism as we knew it. He laid off people, shut factories, offshored jobs, built a shadow bank called GE Capital that reaped the benefits of financialisation, obsessed over meeting quarterly EPS numbers, stack ranked the employees in a bell curve, created the cult of CEO worship and initiated everything that you find wrong today in business. Quite an extraordinary feat in doing bad things at work. In Gelles’ words: “He's on the Mount Rushmore of men who screwed up this country.” The book then goes onto show how Welch’s long shadow still haunts corporate America despite obvious evidence that he got it all wrong. GE is among the worst-performing stock in the last two decades. It announced last year it plans to split itself into three different businesses to unlock shareholder value. GE Capital, the engine that Welch built, is defunct. Yet, business leaders worship at the altar of quarterly earnings, force ranking employees, financial engineering, building personal brands and negotiating ever increase compensation packages for themselves.  So, what’s the solution? I’m not sure if I understood it from the book. Gelles isn’t advocating for socialism surely. But he does throw around words like stakeholder capitalism and praises the current CEO of Unilever and the founder of WEF that holds an annual event at Davos for their efforts to build compassionate capitalism. Some kind of a future where we don’t measure companies on shareholder value but another set of metrics involving all stakeholders that rein in the single-minded pursuit of profits is his solution. All quite fuzzy because he seems to run out of steam by the end of the book. All that Welch bashing is tiring.Let me digress a bit here.When I started my career, the ‘GE way’ was a rage in corporate India. I remember picking up a pirated version of Welch’s autobiography from a streetside vendor at Kala Ghoda. Everyone I knew was reading it. Except for the parts about his growing up that were written with some honesty, the book was terrible. All the stories followed the same pattern. Welch gets a call and goes down to a factory floor or to a customer site. There he hears or notices something small that gets him thinking. Then he finds someone young who reminds him of his younger self – direct, analytical and abrasive. Welch decides either on shutting down or buying a new business based on his gut. He gives this young man (almost always a man) the mandate to do it. Young man does the magic and Welch basks in his foresightedness.Interspersed between these familiar stories, I got Welch’s views on lifelong employability (not employment), how to be tough but fair, his views on the future of business and, of course, six sigma.Ah, Six Sigma.You couldn’t ignore Six Sigma in India during those days. Welch had elevated it into some kind of a religion at GE. Everyone had to follow it. There were weekly Yellow belt and Green belt training programmes in every company where employees would be taught some basic statistics, and something called the DMAIC model. If you did well, you would then go on to a rigorous Black belt certification programme. The ultimate big daddy of them all was the Master Black belt - a Shaolin master with scores of Black belts in his stable who could be unleashed on any problem. All Master Black Belts came from GE and for them, the answer to every single problem was a Six Sigma project. Complaints about canteen food in the office? Run a Six Sigma project. Spending too much on office stationery? Why, Six Sigma can help. People quitting because the work is drudgery? No problem, Six Sigma will solve it. I even remember a training programme where a Six Sigma expert told us he could solve the Israel-Palestine problem using Six Sigma if only they invited him. To me the whole thing, as it was run in India, was a charade. There was no new idea or insight that came out following it. It was just bureaucracy with some babus lording over us because they were certified in this nonsense. Japan was always shown as a shining example of the success of such techniques. I guess no one had heard about Japan’s lost decade.Anyway, reading the book and seeing the success GE had then under Welch, I was convinced of two things. One, he foresaw the two trends of globalisation and financialisation way earlier than others. He figured both the threats and opportunities they presented and moulded GE to take advantage of them. He did this better than anyone else who was running a large business then. Two, he realised that running a diversified, globally distributed enterprise requires a certain ‘way’. So, he codified it - bell curve for ranking employees, global training centres for creating a kind of manager, Six Sigma as the common language to solve everyday problems and a common scorecard to rate business performance. In his scheme of things, process and order were more important than individual enterprise and innovation. GE probably didn’t produce a single world-beating product during his time but they did make truckloads of money for shareholders by being more efficient and faster to market than their competitors. And that didn’t happen by just mindless shutting down of plants or fudging the books as Gelles seems to allege.    Coming back to the book, I have three problems with it.First, there’s no pause to consider the counterfactual turn of events. Had Welch not done what he did at GE, what would have been the alternative history? It was clear by the early 80s that cheaper, and often better, consumer durables and industrial products were coming into America from Japan and the Tiger economies of the far east. American labour was getting more expensive, especially the retirement funds of workers that were run often on a defined benefit programme. Remember the great American motor companies had to be bailed out after the GFC in 2009 because they couldn’t fund the pension benefits of their ex-employees anymore. Welch was realistic enough to understand there wasn’t going to be any breakthrough technology that could change the businesses that were cash cows of GE. A refrigerator is a refrigerator. They had become commodities. Welch took a hard look at it and asked why couldn’t GE take the battle to the challengers? Why couldn’t GE outdo them in being more efficient, using the same sources of labour as them and getting into newer businesses? The breakup of the USSR and the opening up of economies around the world helped him to go overseas. So did the steep fall in telecom rates that powered the BPO revolution. He also figured he could use the large cash flows his core businesses generate to build a financial institution. And he created a behemoth in GE Capital.These two decisions extended the lifespan of GE and, perhaps, saved a lot of jobs. GE might be thinking of splitting itself into three today but these are still reasonably profitable businesses employing thousands of workers. The graveyard of corporate America is packed with companies who once competed with GE in sectors as varied as electricals (Westinghouse, Whirlpool), packaging and plastics (Tyco), and household goods (Xerox, Kodak)…the list is long. They died because they didn’t do what GE did then. You can accuse Welch of being just a manager who got a couple of trends right and rode them but who didn’t innovate and build genre-defining products. That’s fine. Not being a gifted innovator isn’t really a moral failure. But Welch ran a management template that worked for its time. A lot that was good in that has helped other enterprises manage scale and complexity. He overdid things for sure and that toxic legacy of being obsessed over quarterly EPS targets, financial re-engineering to meet them and treating people as expenses is uniquely his too. But, on balance, he was responding to the incentives that he and GE had during that time.The problem with a lot of business management books is that they use the hindsight of success or failure to go back and find reasons for it. This is a useful exercise in history. And it should be only read as history. As one version or interpretation of events. The trouble is many of these books start peddling these as some kind of deeply researched scientific material. It is not science because every single one of them will fail the falsification principle of Popper to demarcate science from non-science. Pick any book that teaches the Toyota way or the Netflix method of managing people and apply them in another context. The success rate of any such application, however generously you may use the term, is still quite low. In fact, the moment I see a book written on the unique way a company does something, I realise the company has jumped the shark. Gelles’ argument about Welch being the one man responsible for breaking capitalism is as flawed as the many books urging companies to follow the GE way a couple of decades back. There’s no science or verifiable truth here.Second, the book has an America centric view of how Welch made things worse. Sure, Welch shut down plants and shipped jobs offshore. And you could argue that made lives of American workers worse. But that trend was already inevitable. I don’t know about you but I don’t think the pre-Welch era, say of the 70s, was some kind of golden age for capitalism. People were still protesting against inequality, wars and seeking global brotherhood. Inflation was high. Diversity in corporates was low. Politicians were being voted out of power because of how they fared on economy. Doesn’t sound like a golden age to me.Gelles blames Welch for hollowing out the industrial belt and increasing inequality in the American society. Maybe it is true. But what about the countries where Welch set up new shops? Without Welch, there wouldn’t have been millions of jobs created in places like India, China, the Philippines and Eastern Europe. In the mid-90s, GE was the biggest customer of the then-fledgling Indian IT companies. The likes of TCS, Wipro and Infosys scaled on back of GE business that at various times accounted for about a third of their revenues. By the late 90s, GE began the BPO boom in India and other companies followed. Almost every company would visit the GECIS centre in Gurgaon to see what’s possible to outsource in India. You could claim with some confidence that he created the most jobs in the history of independent India. I witnessed this first hand. An entire generation made a good living and gained global experience because of the platform GE created in India. There is a good argument then that he might have actually reduced global inequality because of his actions. GE was a global enterprise. Why should only American workers and equality in American society matter in judging his legacy?Lastly, it is easy to diss Friedman and his famous paper on maximising shareholder value without understanding him fully. Friedman didn’t advocate some kind of cut-throat capitalism where nothing else except profits mattered. He was a better thinker than that. I wrote about this a couple of years ago on the 50th anniversary of that Friedman paper and Raghuram Rajan’s assessment of it:Over the years it has been attacked and its central message discredited in the light of the global financial crisis. Even businesses are reluctant these days to invoke shareholder value maximisation as their goal. There have been calls for societal value maximisation, stakeholder wealth creation and conscious capitalism to replace the Friedman doctrine. All good intentions aside, nothing has truly replaced it in how businesses operate. What explains its enduring appeal? Three reasons:A simple and measurable metric: The shareholder value maximisation goal is easy to set and monitor. It helps that there is a common understanding of the metric. The alternatives are amorphous. It is difficult to understand what does maximising societal value entail, for instance. Who will define what society wants? Are societal objectives of India and the US similar?Rewarding the risk-takers: The shareholders invest risk capital in an enterprise. This willingness to take risks is what leads entrepreneurs to build new products, satisfy the consumers and create new jobs. The shareholders deserve the pursuit of maximum return by the firms for this risk they undertake. It is up to them what they do with these returns. They can invest it in newer enterprises or use it to improve the society as they deem fit. The management or anyone else should have no claim on how to invest the returns that belong to the shareholders.Shareholders are the residual claimants: Everyone who contributes to the value creation of an enterprise – the employees, the management and the customers – get their fixed claim on the value through compensation for their efforts, stock options and the value derived from the products or services offered by the enterprise. Only when these fixed claimants are served well, the value for the residual claimant (the shareholder) is maximised. So, the pursuit of shareholder value will by itself serve the other stakeholders well.Any kind of over-indexing on input metrics (like environment or society) instead of a residual metric like shareholder value runs the risk of the measure becoming a target and ceasing to be a good measure (Goodhart’s Law). The recent events around ESG investing and greenwashing are examples of this. See the Deutsche Bank story on this. More will follow.And to quote Friedman from his original article:“But the doctrine of “social responsibility” taken seriously would extend the scope of the political mechanism to every human activity. It does not differ in philosophy from the most explicitly collectivist doctrine. It differs only by professing to believe that collectivist ends can be attained without collectivist means. That is why, in my book “Capitalism and Freedom,” I have called it a “fundamentally subversive doctrine” in a free society, and have said that in such a society, there is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception fraud.”   There is always a desire to ‘manage’ the economic system in a way that it allocates resources and rewards most efficiently. As we have seen over a few centuries now, this is a noble but flawed pursuit. It generates worse outcomes than a system that builds itself on fundamentals of human enterprise, behaviour and its response to incentives. There are many economic concepts that sound evil or counter-intuitive: efficient market mechanism, free trade, comparative advantage or Ricardian equivalence. But they work. There are reasons for market failures and there are extended periods of time when these failures are allowed to persist. But the beauty of spontaneous order is that the correction to its excesses is also built in. The correction is the time to learn from past mistakes and improve it. Not to call for discarding the system itself in favour of some kind of ‘planned design’. Welch was a remarkable manager – both a product of his times and someone who shaped his time. He pushed the boundaries in ways good and bad. That which was bad is already interred with his bones. The good must survive. India Policy Watch: Missing Pieces in the Jigsaw PuzzleInsights on burning policy issues in India— Pranay KotasthaneA popular way to think about strengthening the Indian Republic is to ponder on improving its institutions. However, this route often ends up in mere despondence over our many underperforming institutions. While confronting these demons is an absolute necessity, here’s another way to think about this issue: what are the meta-institutions that the Indian Republic is missing altogether?We aren’t talking here about institutions that don’t work, but institutions that don’t exist at all. And I’m not talking about the likes of a new sectoral regulator for cryptocurrencies, but about more important institutions, ones that could improve decision-making in governments across spheres.I don’t have a comprehensive list yet. However, there are at least three that I’ve heard many experts talk about.1. Parliament’s own think tankOf all the roles parliamentarians end up donning, our current structure equips them the least for the very function they exist: making well-designed laws in their constituents' interests. India’s MPs are not assigned any research budget or research personnel. Combine this congenital defect with the curse of the anti-defection law, and you get a structure that’s subservient to political party interests. Of course, some MPs do stand out despite these constraints, but it does appear that the odds are heavily stacked against them.Thankfully, a solution has emerged from civil society to fill this gaping hole: PRS Legislative Research — a 17-year old non-profit organisation that aims to provide independent and non-partisan research to the parliamentarians.However, just one such institution is not sufficient for an India-scale entity. What we need, in addition, is another much bigger research think tank of the Parliament, that’s paid from the Consolidated Fund of India and has researchers who develop deep expertise in specific areas over the years. Consider, for instance, the Congressional Research Service in the US. This federally-funded agency has over 600 employees who are specialists in a variety of policy domains.As the size of the Parliament increases after delimitation, and as policy issues keep getting more specialised, it’s imperative for India to invest in this missing institution.2. An independent fiscal councilThis institutional gap has been highlighted by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Finance Commissions. While India has an institution (the Comptroller and Accountant General) to audit policies that are already in action, there is no institution that makes an independent financial evaluation of government policies before they receive the final approval.The result is that tall promises of handouts in electoral manifestos of parties often become government policies swiftly, without any regard to the fiscal sustainability or opportunity cost assessments. A recent example is the One Rank One Pension (OROP) scheme which was implemented in 2015 after appearing in the 2014 election manifestos of both the major national parties.An independent fiscal council then is an institution that is supposed to do three things. One, evaluate the quality of budget forecasts given how there is a wide gap between budgeted estimates and actual expenditures. Two, develop cost estimates of budgetary proposals ex-ante. Ang three, monitor if fiscal rules are being adhered to.Dr Govinda Rao writes in The Hindu that the global experience with such institutions has been largely positive:A study by the IMF (“The Functions and Impact of Fiscal Councils”, July 2013), documents that the existence of IFIs is associated with stronger primary balances; countries with IFIs tend to have more accurate macroeconomic and budgetary forecasts; IFIs are likely to raise public awareness and raise the level of public debate on fiscal policy. Case studies in Belgium, Chile and the United Kingdom show that IFIs have significantly contributed to improved fiscal performances.In Belgium, the government is legally required to adopt the macroeconomic forecasts of the Federal Planning Bureau and this has significantly helped to reduce bias in these estimates. In Chile, the existence of two independent bodies on Trend GDP and Reference Copper Price has greatly helped to improve Budget forecasts. In the U.K., the Office for Budget Responsibility has been important in restoring fiscal sustainability. Cross-country evidence shows that fiscal councils exert a strong influence on fiscal performances, particularly when they have formal guarantees of independence.Clearly a meta-institution we are missing.3. An institution for vertical and horizontal bargainingThis idea again comes from Dr Govinda Rao. He writes in his recent book Studies of Indian Public Finance that India lacks an institution that can act as a credible umpire between various states, and between the states as a whole on one side and the union government on the other. The National Development Council created for this purpose is defunct, the Inter-State Council is a part of the union government, the Rajya Sabha is no longer the council of states in reality, and finance commissions are dissolved after making their recommendations. The result is that there is no institution that can truly champion cooperative federalism. The GST Council perhaps performs acts as a bargaining and negotiation platform in the limited area of indirect taxation. To manage India’s heterogeneity, a meta-institution that is dedicated to horizontal and vertical balance is imperative.Another big lesson here is that the view that India’s government is oversized is inaccurate. The Indian State is quite anaemic when it comes to staffing for its core functions. We need more institutions, not fewer.What are some more missing meta-institutions in the Indian Republic? Leave a comment.India Policy Watch: The Paradiplomacy OpportunityInsights on burning policy issues in India— Pranay KotasthaneNote these two developments over the last few weeks: Tamil Nadu was first off the blocks to send a relief consignment to the crisis-stricken Sri Lanka. And as many as three Chief Ministers—besides the sons of two other CMs—made their presence felt at the World Economic Forum in Davos.Moreover, chief ministerial visits to business capitals of the world are now commonplace. Virtually every Indian state now has its own global investor summit. And yes, two states (Punjab and Kerala) already have departments for non-resident Indians.Put all these developments together and it becomes clear that Indian states are also geopolitical and geoeconomic entities. In the past, I’ve written how Australia gets around its low diplomatic corps strength by allowing its states to have their own trade and investment offices in other countries. India too should take this path, and encourage state governments to have permanent trade and investment desks in important business centres of the world.This view is not a popular one. The policy orthodoxy believes that since foreign affairs is under the Union List of the Seventh Schedule in the constitution, states have no role to play. Besides, state governments having their own foreign policy is at odds with the popular “one nation, one X” idea.But in my view, economic diplomacy by Indian states can be beneficial to all relevant stakeholders. It is in the states’ interest because they understand their comparative advantages, needs and challenges far better than the union government. Thus, they can choose to invest in external economic relations that are suited to their conditions.Economic paradiplomacy can also benefit the investors as they get to directly engage with the entity that controls crucial variables for running businesses, such as land, labour, electricity, and law and order.And finally, this strategy can benefit the union government as well. It frees up the already strained capacity of the external affairs and commerce ministries for broader issues. The role of states in the India-Israel relationship demonstrates that there is also a political utility:“Full diplomatic ties were established between India and Israel in 1992. Even after this move, collaboration with Israel was seen as a hot potato issue in India. The domestic implications of taking sides in what was essentially a religious conflict was a significant impediment to the ties taking off. A few Members of Parliament criticised this step on humanitarian grounds, arguing that New Delhi should have waited until an independent Palestinian state came into being. Some members of the ruling Indian National Congress feared that this step would be detrimental to their electoral appeal to the Indian Muslim community. The Babri Masjid riots further thickened the plot and the Indian government slowed down the pace of the partnership.It was under these circumstances that the Indian states were allowed to expand Indian collaboration with Israel. Traditionally, Indian states were kept out of India’s foreign policy debates. Even the Constitution assigned all matters of legislation related to foreign policy exclusively to the Union government. Consequently, the proliferation of collaboration between Indian states with Israel was a bold and unique experiment by the PV Narasimha Rao government. While this allowed relations to prosper, it also avoided the politico-religious undertones that would have been hard to suppress had this engagement been anchored by the Union government alone.”And so, economic diplomacy by the states is a win-win-win. For an India with global interests, its states have to come to the party. Should they be invited?HomeWorkReading and listening recommendations on public policy matters[Book] Dr Govinda Rao’s Studies in Indian Public Finance is a must-read for policy enthusiasts. I really hope OUP prices it such that the common Public can Finance the book purchase. Nevertheless, the book links to some classics in public finance. Here’s the compilation: Public Principles of Public Debt by James Buchanan, Public Finance and Public Choice: Two Contrasting Visions of the State by James Buchanan and Richard Musgrave, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups by Mancur Olson, Public Finance in Theory and Practice by Richard and Peggy Musgrave, The Power to Tax: Analytic Foundations of a Fiscal Constitution by Brennan and Buchanan, The Calculus of Consent by James Buchanan, The Road to Serfdom by Hayek, and Democracy, Dictatorship, and Development by Mancur Olson.[Prediction Market] We’ve written previously about the utility of prediction markets in foreign policy. Check out this US-government project that is explicitly meant to ‘build a collective foresight capability that can provide U.S. Government policymakers with an accurate and nuanced rendering of the future’.[Report] Putting the Periphery at the Center by Happymon Jacob makes some excellent recommendations on Indian Paradiplomacy. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit publicpolicy.substack.com

Shawn Davis, Chef Big Shake, started cooking in a professional kitchen when he was just 12 years old. His mother decided her son needed a healthy distraction over the summer break. In just seven years in his seasonal position, Shawn had worked his way from up from dishwasher to head chef. Under Gio Palermo's mentorship at the C. J. Palermo restaurant, Shawn learned the ins and outs of the restaurant business.Little did Shawn know that his experience at the Palermo restaurant would prove to be life-changing not only for his passion for food, but also for the inspirational, entrepreneurial journey he would take. In 1983, when Shawn Davis, a Bayshore, New York native was a mere 12-years old, his mother decided that her tween son needed a healthy distraction when school let out. So, when a co-worker told her about a job opening in Ocean Beach, Fire Island at C.J. Palermo's restaurant, she got Shawn onto the ferry.  That 30-minute trip turned into a seasonal post for Shawn and within seven years he worked his way up from Dishwasher to Head Chef. Under Giovanni “Gio” Palermo's mentorship, Shawn learned the ins and outs of the restaurant business and was even affectionately referred to as a “black son” by Gio himself. Since Shawn lived with Gio and his family every summer and worked side-by-side with him each day, the title was more than fitting. When Shawn left C.J. Palermo's in 1990, he realized his experience there proved to be life-changing; it not only ignited his passion for food but also laid the groundwork for his inspirational, entrepreneurial journey ahead. From 1989 to 1991, Davis attended Norfolk State University in Virginia, wherein he studied Hotel and Restaurant Management. In 1994, he accepted a job with G.E. Capital.  Working in various roles from Project Management to Collection Center Manager, he completed DMAIC process training.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/success-made-to-last-legends--4302039/support.

Do you need to improve your lab's procedures for standard work, reduce “work-arounds” or do you want better results out of your lab's projects? This episode is a sequel to S2 Ep. 4 "Lean on Me" and is the perfect listen for any leader that wants to work smarter, not harder!Today, co-host, Stephanie Whitehead, and returning special guest, Sarah Cook CLS, LSSBB, continue their conversation about LEAN and discuss the essential principles to Measure, Monitor and Sustain process improvements in the lab.   Tune in as Sarah mentors our listeners on how to use the DMAIC strategy (and other tools) to positively influence common projects in the laboratory! If you are a formal or informal leader in your laboratory, grab your pen and listen closely for advice on how maximize the outcomes in your lab and drive results for your team!Special Guest Bio:Sarah Cook, CLS, LSSBB is a collaborative, multi-faceted consultant with proven experience in project management, quality and process improvement, and integrating organizational change with business strategy and tracking of key performance indicators. With a proven history of achieving and executing on a company's visions and goals, Sarah has experience collaborating with Executives and team members of all levels to drive results. Listeners can follow Sarah on LinkedIn @Sarah Cook. Call to ActionWE would love to feature YOU!!! Share your favorite takeaway from today's episode or anyone from this season: Video ReviewBe an eLABorate Supporter!  Listen on directimpactbroadcasting.com, Spotify, Apple Podcast or your favorite podcast platform Don't forget to subscribe to the show on your phone, tablet or notebook so you never miss an episode!  Be sure to leave a comment, and share with a fellow medical laboratory professionals! Join our eLABorate Topics Group on LinkedIn Leave us a Video Review and we will feature you on our Social Media: Video Review Be a Guest on our show!If you have a leadership or laboratory message to share and would like to be a guest on the show, please reach out to us by completing the guest interest form or send us an e-mail us at elaboratetopics@directimpactbroadcasting.com.Please tune in next week to hear another amazing episode of eLABorate Topics!

In this episode, I talk with Lee Campe about some of his favorite problem solving examples. This is Lee's second time on the show.  Previously, in episode 56, we discussed how to maintain a high standards in Lean and Six Sigma.  Today, we talked about his experiences in problem solving with many different industries. What you'll learn in this episode: Are PDCA and A3 the same as 6 Sigma? What's the best way to identify the 8th form of waste? Do we still need a team of people to do a project? Why does continuous improvement deployment often fail? What then are the tips for a successful roll out? About the Guest: Lee Campe, is the President of Performance Excellence Inc. He is a Certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt. Lee is a proven Lean Six Sigma deployment leader with a wide array of expertise in all facets of business and Continuous Improvement. He also is one of the few instructors with extensive experience in Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) and Innovation through design thinking. Lee also served as a US Army Ranger. Prior to starting Performance Excellence, Lee was a Master Black Belt (MBB) for the  Home Depot, where he was responsible for coaching employees and mentoring projects  across the US. Projects Lee mentored provided the company with over $200 million in  savings. Prior to the Home Depot, Lee was the Vice President and Master Black Belt for JP  Morgan Chase in New York. His responsibilities included coaching and training  Champions, Black Belts, Green Belts, and management in the DMAIC and DFSS  methodologies. During his tenure, Lee trained over 100 Champions and mentored three  enterprise-wide projects that identified over $20 Million in potential savings. As an MBB and Director at Cordis Corporation, a $1.3 billion Johnson and Johnson  company, Lee was responsible for driving the implementation of Six sigma  companywide. Charged with the goal of making Six Sigma part of the corporate culture,  Lee was ultimately responsible for saving the company over $6 million annually. He also  built the company's transactional Six Sigma curriculum; developed the Six Sigma project database using DFSS for all of Johnson and Johnson; and trained and certified a J&J acquisition in Haifa, Israel. Important Links: http://leecampe.com/ http://www.linkedin.com/in/leecampe --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/leansolutions/support

Dr. Efrain Serrano serves as the director of engineering at Edwards Lifesciences. Efrain has a broad background of experience and expertise in the DMAIC method, Medical Device development, Root Cause Analysis, and Continuous Improvement, and holds a PhD focused in Engineering Management from Walden University. Efrain SerranoEdwards LifesciencesAaron Moncur, host ABOUT BEING AN ENGINEERThe Being an Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us***We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Being an Engineer Podcast.Help us rank as the #1 engineering podcast on Apple and Spotify by leaving a review for us.You can find us under the category: mechanical engineering podcast on Apple Podcasts.Being an Engineer podcast is a go-to resource and podcast for engineering students on Spotify, too.Aaron Moncur and Rafael Testai love hearing from their listeners. Feel free to email us, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast and Spotify!

This is number 4 in our series on LSS for the medical practice. Looking at the Analyze Phase of DMAIC

LSS episode three on Measure phase of DMAIC

Review of the Define Phase of DMAIC, second in a series seven episodes on Lean Six Sigma

In this episode, Ryan Fleser, the Director of Quality and EHS at Uponor North America, shares how to take yourself and your team from fighting fires, to preventing problems from happening. This episode is all about preventing problems from happening. One of the biggest problems we all see that causes lower yields than what we'd like is scrap and day-to-day fluctuations in yield make it hard to figure out when your process is really reliable. So how do you prevent problem from happening and reduce variation to improve yields? There are lots of ways to reduce scrap and improve yields like DMAIC or A3 but even they could present some level of “over processes”. A more straightforward approach with less complex tools like practical problem solving could be a great way for you to engage operators or technicians. But most importantly is that you pick an approach so you can make the switch from fire-fighting to installing a sprinkler system to prevent these problems from getting out of hand. Enjoy the conversation with Ryan Fleser, the Director of Quality and EHS at Uponor North America, as we talk about preventing problems from happening you'll definitely appreciate learning from his 36 years of quality leadership experience. Ryan Fleser is the director of Quality and Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) for Uponor North America. He holds 36 years of experience in the Quality field as well as 12 years in Environmental Management and has held director roles in various manufacturing companies since 1998, including Daiken Applied and Advantek. He has extensive training and experience in implementing Quality and Environmental Management systems that are certified to international standards, including ISO 9001, 140001, and 50001. For eight years, he served as adjunct instructor at the Dunwoody College of Technology in Minneapolis, Minn., teaching bachelor's completion degree courses in their Applied Management and Leadership Program. He has a Master of Science in Manufacturing Systems from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., and a bachelor's degree in Industrial Technology from Eastern Kentucky University. He is also a participating member of U.S. ISO Technical Advisory Groups 176 and 207, which involve the development and determination of the U.S. position for International Quality and Environmental Management standards. If you've hit a roadblock in developing your team and you want the support, insights, and expertise of your peers attend a peer group meeting. www.mfrall.com/peers Special thanks to this episode's sponsor:  CBIZ works with manufacturing clients in Minnesota and beyond to pinpoint tax and operational savings opportunities, mitigate risk, identify improvements to controls and manage compliance requirements across jurisdictions. To learn more go to www.CBIZ.com

This week on the podcast, I am speaking with Lee Campe. Lee is the President of Performance Excellence Inc. and a Certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt. In this episode, Lee and I talk about his extensive training and experiences in Lean Six Sigma and Design for Six Sigma. We also talk about the importance of maintaining high standards in Lean Six Sigma and advice on training in LSS. What You'll Learn This Episode: What frustrates Lee about the current Lean Six Sigma offerings, or the current Lean Six Sigma environment Lean and Six Sigma in the Army and how it transitioned to the civilian world Highlights Lee has had with his time using Lean Advice for leaders who don't feel like they're engaged in the process Why leaders need to remove roadblocks The importance of using phone for communication instead of relying on email MDAIC vs DMAIC Recommendations on certifying bodies How companies can maintain or enforce higher standards of Lean Six Sigma Why you need to have the people skills that are necessary in order to be a good problem solver in order to be a good lean practitioner. About the Guest: Lee Campe is a proven Lean Six Sigma deployment leader with a wide array of expertise in all facets of business and Continuous Improvement. He also is one of the few instructors with extensive experience in Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) and Innovation through design thinking. Prior to starting Performance Excellence, Lee was a Master Black Belt (MBB) for the Home Depot, where he was responsible for coaching employees and mentoring projects across the US. Projects Lee mentored provided the company with over $200 million in Savings. Prior to the Home Depot, Lee was the Vice President and Master Black Belt for JP Morgan Chase in New York. His responsibilities included coaching and training Champions, Black Belts, Green Belts, and management in the DMAIC and DFSS methodologies. During his tenure, Lee trained over 100 Champions and mentored three enterprise-wide projects that identified over $20 Million in potential savings. As an MBB and Director at Cordis Corporation, a $1.3 billion Johnson and Johnson company, Lee was responsible for driving the implementation of Six Sigma company wide. Previously, Lee worked as an MBB for General Electric Power Systems (GEPS) where he trained employees at all levels on GE's Six Sigma programs. Important Links: https://leecampe.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/leecampe Lean Six Sigma Book --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/leansolutions/support

I dusted off a LinkedIn article I wrote in November 2017 comparing the Six Sigma DMAIC methodology and the All-Hazards Planning "P" process. 

I dusted off a LinkedIn article I wrote in November 2017 comparing the Six Sigma DMAIC methodology and the All-Hazards Planning "P" process. 

I dusted off a LinkedIn article I wrote in November 2017 comparing the Six Sigma DMAIC methodology and the All-Hazards Planning "P" process. 

In this episode, I interview Justin Goldston, a senior managing director at Nestell and Associates, a strategy consulting firm, and a five times TEDx speaker on emerging technologies. He is a Professor at Penn State University on Project Management and Supply Chain Management. We discuss how you can harness emerging technologies to grow entrepreneurial companies of any size.   Time Stamps [01:02] The importance of technology in small and medium size enterprises [02:05] How technology can help you make better decisions in your business [03:52] The tools to use during business process automation [07:42] Defining digital transformation maturity [10:10] The augmented intelligence age [11:09] The Agile mindset [12:47] Why the Agile method works best in startups [18:28] The difference between the Agile and the Waterfall approach [20:15] The Hybrid project management approach [20:40] The downside to the Agile approach [22:06] Implementing Lean Six Sigma in a privately owned business [25:03] The DMAIC approach [27:15] Blockchains as decentralized computers [32:37] Why blockchains are easy to implement [34:50] How AI is used in predicting future trends [38:08] How to harness the power of AI to make your business better [39:40] How the chat box works and how to incorporate it into your business [43:06] The chat box as a machine learning tool   Links and Resources   Justin Goldston's LinkedIn Page Justin's TEDx Talks TractionEquity.com https://StevePreda.com  

Derek Mizysak, Supply Chain Director, for method products talks about the phases of SCM, lean tools and methodologies and blockchain.Episode Notes:Supply Chain Ninja 2:41. Demand for cleaning supplies 8:45. Integrated business planning process for Demand Planning 10:55. Inventory management 12:32. Machine learning and demand driven software 13:32. Importance of distribution centers (DCs) to managing demand 16:41. Lean methodologies to identify root causes 16:53. ‘5 Whys' 18:50. DMAIC 20:26. Kaizen events 22:05. PDCA 25:13. Root cause analysis 26:17. KPIs 28:17. Value stream 30:29. Data visualization, Tableau, Power BI 32. Blockchain 35:28. SAP 37:01. COVID-19 highlights inefficiency in supply chain 44:54. AI & ML adoption curve 49:23.

Intro: Welcome to the E6S-Methods podcast with Jacob and Aaron, your weekly dose of tips and tricks to achieve excellent performance in your business and career. Join us as we explore deeper into the practical worlds of Lean, Six Sigma, Project Management and Design Thinking. In this episode number 172, "DiSC over DMAIC" Part 2, we continue our discussion on the DiSC personality types, and when to leverage the strengths of each dimension throughout the DMAIC phases of a project. If you're just tuning in for the first time, find all our back episodes on our podcast table of contents at e6s-methods.com. If you like this episode, be sure to click the "like" link in the show notes. It's easy. Just tap our logo, click and you're done. Tap-click-done! Here we go. http://bit.ly/E6S-172 Leave a Review! http://bit.ly/E6S-iTunes Outro: Thanks for listening to episode 172 of the E6S-Methods podcast. Don't forget to click "like" or "dislike" for this episode in the show notes. Tap-click-done! If you have a question, comment or advice, leave a note in the comments section or contact us directly. Feel free to email me "Aaron," aaron@e6s-methods.com, or on our website, we reply to all messages. If you heard something you like, then Clammr, and share it. Didn't like what you heard? Join our LinkedIn Group, and tell us why. Don't forget you can find notes and graphics for all shows and more at www.E6S-Methods.com. "Journey Through Success. If you're not climbing up, you're falling down." Leave a Review! http://bit.ly/E6S-iTunes lean,six sigma,project,management,personality,profile, DiSC,team,DMAIC,business,career,communication

Intro: Welcome to the E6S-Methods podcast with Jacob and Aaron, your weekly dose of tips and tricks to achieve excellent performance in your business and career. Join us as we explore deeper into the practical worlds of Lean, Six Sigma, Project Management and Design Thinking. In this episode number 171, "DiSC over DMAIC," we review the basics of the DiSC personality types, and discuss when you should be "someone else" for the sake of your project. If you're just tuning in for the first time, find all our back episodes on our podcast table of contents at e6s-methods.com. If you like this episode, be sure to click the "like" link in the show notes. It's easy. Just tap our logo, click and you're done. Tap-click-done! Here we go. http://bit.ly/E6S-171 Leave a Review! http://bit.ly/E6S-iTunes Outro: Thanks for listening to episode 171 of the E6S-Methods podcast. Stay tuned for episode 172, for part 2 of "DiSC over DMAIC." Don't forget to click "like" or "dislike" for this episode in the show notes. Tap-click-done! If you have a question, comment or advice, leave a note in the comments section or contact us directly. Feel free to email me "Aaron," aaron@e6s-methods.com, or on our website, we reply to all messages. If you heard something you like, then Clammr, and share it. Don't forget you can find notes and graphics for all shows and more at www.E6S-Methods.com. "Journey Through Success. If you're not climbing up, you're falling down." Leave a Review! http://bit.ly/E6S-iTunes

Intro: Welcome to the E6S-Methods podcast with Jacob and Aaron, your weekly dose of tips and tricks to achieve excellent performance in your business and career. Join us as we explore deeper into the practical worlds of Lean, Six Sigma, Project Management and Design Thinking. In this episode number 170, we continue with "Virtual Meeting BB-Basics" Part 2. We discuss the basics to running a successful virtual meeting and some software solutions that are available. If you're just tuning in for the first time, find all our back episodes on our podcast table of contents at e6s-methods.com. If you like this episode, be sure to click the "like" link in the show notes. It's easy. Just tap our logo, click and you're done. Tap-click-done! Here we go. http://bit.ly/E6S-170 Leave a Review! http://bit.ly/E6S-iTunes Outro: Thanks for listening to episode 170 of the E6S-Methods podcast. Stay tuned for episode 171, "DiSC over DMAIC,"- when to leverage the different DiSC personality strengths to effectively execute projects. Don't forget to click "like" or "dislike" for this episode in the show notes. Tap-click-done! If you have a question, comment or advice, leave a note in the comments section or contact us directly. Feel free to email me "Aaron," aaron@e6s-methods.com, or on our website, we reply to all messages. If you heard something you like, then Clammr, and share it. Don't forget you can find notes and graphics for all shows and more at www.E6S-Methods.com. "Journey Through Success. If you're not climbing up, you're falling down." Leave a Review! http://bit.ly/E6S-iTunes

Intro: Welcome to the E6S-Methods podcast with Jacob and Aaron, your source for expert advice on Lean, Six Sigma, and performance improvement methods. In this episode number 34, “Fifty Shades of Black” Part 2, we continue our discussion over Lean Six Sigma commoditization, and how to cut through the gray area. “Seriously.... Will The Real Black Belt, Please St.... oh, there you are...” If you like this episode, be sure to click the "like" link in the show notes. It's easy. Just tap our logo, click and you're done. Tap-click-done! Here we go. http://bit.ly/E6S-033RB Leave a Review! http://bit.ly/E6S-iTunes Outro: Thanks for listening to episode 34 of the E6S-Methods Podcast. Stay tuned for episode number 35, “Blended Smoothie” Ditch your serial DMAIC approach. Subscribe to past and future episodes on iTunes or stream us live on-demand with Stitcher Radio. Follow us on twitter @e6sindustries. Find us on LinkedIn to join a discussion. Outlines and graphics for all shows are posted on our website, www.E6S-Methods.com. “Journey Through Success” If you have a question, comment or advice, leave a note in the comments section or contact us directly. Feel free to email me "Aaron", aaron@e6s-methods.com, or on our website, we reply to all messages. If you heard something you like, then Clammr and share it. Leave a Review! http://bit.ly/E6S-iTunes

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER ● KEITH WILLIAMS NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  This is our informal discourse about what matters most to you as a professional project manager, or if you're working toward that position.  We want to keep you motivated, keep you improving, and encourage you with some real-life stories from others who are doing the stuff of project management. I'm your host Nick Walker, and with me are the experts at all this, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  And one of the subjects we like to keep coming back to, it seems, in this podcast, Andy, is what we call “best practices.”  And our guest today can definitely speak to that. ANDY CROWE:  Yeah, I'm looking forward to that.  We have Keith Williams in the studio with us today.  And, you know, the whole idea with best practices, we get to learn from other people.  We get to figure out what they've learned by trial and error and through some pain so that maybe we don't have to go through that ourselves each time. NICK WALKER:  Well, let's talk a little bit about Keith before we introduce him.  He's a project control supervisor at Georgia Power Company.  He's been serving in various areas of project management there since 2005, and as the operational performance supervisor for Southern Company.  Before that he held several project management/project controls positions at Parsons Company, Georgia Transmission, Enron Energy Services, Chemical & Industrial Engineering, the City of Louisville, and Earth Science Technologies.  Keith, it is a privilege to have you here on Manage This.  Welcome. KEITH WILLIAMS:  Thank you, and I look forward to it.  It's a great opportunity. NICK WALKER:  Let's start of by – just tell us a little bit about your current role in project controls at Georgia Power. KEITH WILLIAMS:  The project controls group at Georgia Power, first of all, I'm segmented in the transmission organization.  Those are your large power lines and substations.  The biggest thing we always like to describe, we're the extension cord between the plant and the customer, so we're the big orange cord. BILL YATES:  That's a good picture.  Got it. KEITH WILLIAMS:  And so my group is mainly responsible for scheduling and budget controls.  It's segmented into several different fields within project controls, which also includes cost engineering.  And also we're responsible for the tools that manage all of that.  In that role, as far as my leadership within my group, our goal is I always like to say we're the mortar between the bricks.  We're the ones that are trying to make the connection between the organization and give them information so that, first of all, our project managers can make good decisions, offer real information; and then also to see how we can improve processes as far as that constant improvement that you see in Six Sigma. NICK WALKER:  You're a project management nerd. KEITH WILLIAMS:  Yes, I would agree. NICK WALKER:  That's what Bill and Andy are calling you.  And we love project management nerds. KEITH WILLIAMS:  Oh, most definitely.  I get told that a lot.  But then I look at the other guy and say, “Hey, you all are engineers.  It's not like you all are cool.” ANDY CROWE:  Keith, you mentioned Six Sigma.  Now, do you guys actually practice Six Sigma in your group, or is that something that you look at from your own standpoint? KEITH WILLIAMS:  It's something more I look at from my own standpoint, really got exposed to it as the operational performance supervisor.  And especially with looking at DMAIC and looking at those aspects there. BILL YATES:  Sure.  Now, Nick, you called me out, so I need to go ahead and explain. NICK WALKER:  Sure. BILL YATES:  So here's how I came to that conclusion.  There are many data points here.  But as Keith and I were talking, he is a card-carrying member of the AACE,