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“I did a lot of spaghetti walk this morning”, was uttered by my wife after we left our house. “What did you cover with your spaghettis?” was my question knowing…
“I did a lot of spaghetti walk this morning”, was uttered by my wife after we left our house. “What did you cover with your spaghettis?” was my question knowing…
Many companies spend considerable amounts of money on customer and employee surveys every year. The survey results are used to amend strategies, design new products and services, focus improvement activities, target staff development activities and … to celebrate success.
The question is: Can we always rely on what we see?…
At MyInsurance, survey results have been collected in 2017, 2018 and 2019. The rating was done on a 10-point Likert ranging from 1 … very poor to 10 … outstanding. As always, the upper 3 points, i.e. 8, 9 and 10, are seen as customer is satisfied. All other ratings are undesirable. How did MyInsurance do over the years?…
Lean Six Sigma is linked to some myth that are unjustified and merely a result of half-knowledge or wrong assumptions. Therefore, let’s try to demystifying lean six sigma:
MYTH: LEAN SIX SIGMA IS THE LEAN, THE SLIM VERSION OF SIX SIGMA.
“We have great news for you. Our project is delivering results already.” The team is all smiles when they give this update during the project meeting. The carefully prepared graphs unveil a remarkably shorter time for the whole process, from customer request to delivery of results. “We have applied a hypothesis test and the result is significant with a p-value of flat zero!”
They sound like they know what they are doing. When asked for the change in the process, they all give different answers. When asked what the root cause to have achieved this effect was, their smiles fade. “We actually only implemented some Quick Hits. They turned out to have a greater effect than we thought. Isn’t this a nice surprise?” They asked. Or, is it just a Hawthorne?…
Many companies spend considerable amounts of money on customer surveys every year. Customer survey results are being used to amend strategies, design new products and services, focus improvement activities and…
Just some weeks ago, I filed my tax in Singapore. It took me about twelve minutes at my computer at home on a Sunday afternoon in April. It was not straight forward, I needed to make some amendments and additional inputs to what IRAS had already prepared for me. Yet, it was really easy to understand, very effortless to do and I have the strong feeling I did not make a mistake. Twelve minutes. Really.…
Every blood donor of a large blood bank has to go through five process steps. These steps are Registration, Screening, HB Test, Donation and Refreshment. At the end of the process, that often takes around an hour, feedback forms are available for the donors. In one week, 210 donors have returned these forms with their satisfaction score for each process step. This satisfaction score is measured using a six-point scale. The desired rating is either 5 (satisfied) or 6 (very satisfied). …
Three teams compete in our CHL business simulation, CHL Red, CHL Green and CHL Blue. After completing Day One, it looks like the teams show a very different performance (Figure 1). Although the means look very similar, the variation is strikingly different. This is surprising, since all teams start with exactly the same prerequisites. To test this assumption of different variability among the teams, the Test for Equal Variances is deployed.…
Nearly all medium-size and large companies spend hundreds of thousands or even millions on customer surveys every year. Customer survey results serve to amend strategies, design new products and services and focus improvement activities. Gathering customer survey data is only the first step. The second step involves making best use of the expensive data, analysing them, drawing business relevant conclusions and making important decisions. How are we doing in this step?…
Consider a production process that produced 10,000 widgets in January and experienced a total of 112 rejected widgets after a quality control inspection (i.e., failure rate = 1.12%). A Six Sigma project was deployed to fix this problem and by March the improvement plan was in place. In April, the process produced 8,000 widgets and experienced a total of 63 rejects (failure rate = 0.79%). Did the process indeed improve?
The appropriate hypothesis test for this question is the two-proportions test. …
Working capital is influenced by a complex system consisting of external and internal factors as well as strategic decisions. External drivers are composed of economy, cost of capital, regulations and market position. Strategic decisions include geographies of customers and suppliers, customer mix and vertical integration. Tactical factors are policies, processes and metrics, systems and tools and also the degree of execution of the former. Whilst external drivers and strategic considerations cannot be subject of short-term changes to gain cash advantage, tactical factors definitely are. Lean Six Sigma helps to analyse the drivers and their impact on the working capital situation. Working Capital meets Lean Six Sigma.…
Given today’s need for HR professionals to be strategic business partners, to be a ‘Voice of Conscience’ to the CEO as well as champion for the employees. Those with background in proven management methodologies and tools have a great advantage. HR Professionals who can present their business case for HR strategies and interventions with a compelling return on investment, supported by rock-solid data, will be well respected and regarded. Understanding and using HR data analytics including basic statistics to convey messages goes a long way. Making proper use of HR data may help to identify drivers for staff satisfaction, staff turnover or staff engagement.…
Linear regression is one of the most commonly used hypothesis tests in Lean Six Sigma work. Linear regression offers the statistics for testing whether two or more sets of continuous data correlate with each other, i.e. whether one drives another one.…
Three methods for dissolving a powder in water show a different time (in minutes) it takes until the powder dissolves fully. The results are summarised in Figure 1.
There is an assumption that the population means of the three methods Method 1, Method 2 and Method 3 are not all equal (i.e., at least one method is different from the others). How can we test this?…
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