Books

Power of Six Sigma
Business Process Improvement: The Breakthrough Strategy for Total Quality, Productivity, and Competitiveness
Lean Six Sigma : Combining Six Sigma Quality with Lean Production Speed
Rath & Strong's Six Sigma Team Pocket Guide
Office Kaizen: Transforming Office Operations into a Strategic Competitive Advantage
Six Sigma Business Scorecard : Creating a Comprehensive Corporate Performance Measurement System
Quality Is Free: The Art of Making Quality Certain (Signet Shakespeare)
Leading Six Sigma: A Step-by-Step Guide Based on Experience with GE and Other Six Sigma Companies
Design for Six Sigma (Briefcase Books Series)
Statistics for the Utterly Confused (Utterly Confused Series)
Barron's How to Prepare for the Ap Statistics: Advanced Placement Test in Statistics (Barron's How to Prepare for the Ap Statistics Advanced Placement Examination)
SPSS 11.0 for Windows (Student Version)
Applied Statistics and the SAS Programming Language
Guiding Growth: How Vision Keeps Companies on Course
Multivariate Data Analysis (5th Edition)
Probability and Statistics (3rd Edition)
Business Statistics (Barron's Business Review Series)
Statistics for Business and Economics
Derivatives Markets
Even You Can Learn Statistics : A Guide for Everyone Who Has Ever Been Afraid of Statistics
Mathematical Statistics with Applications
SPSS 11.0 Guide to Data Analysis
Multivariate Statistical Analysis: A Conceptual Introduction
Schaum's Outline of Statistics and Econometrics
Show Me The Numbers: Designing Tables And Graphs To Enlighten

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6-Sigma Explained
Very good introductory essay
Power Book
The Power of Six Sigma
Outstanding Foundation of Customer Satisfaction

Power of Six Sigma
Subir Chowdhury
Manufacturer: Kaplan Business
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Power of Design for Six Sigma
The Ice Cream Maker: An Inspiring Tale About Making Quality The Key Ingredient in Everything You Do
Inside Home Depot
Design for Six Sigma: The Revolutionary Process for Achieving Extraordinary Profits
What Is Six Sigma?

ASIN: 0793144345
Release Date: 2001-03-16

Book Description

Never before has a business initiative transformed corporations so dramatically. While it has been credited with improving productivity, slashing costs, and improving profit margins, it can cause much angst among employees who need to change the way they currently work and adhere to a new philosophy. That's where characters Joe and Larry step in to deliver The Power of Six Sigma. This fictionalized tale simplifies a complicated topic through the lives of two typical business professionals. Contrary to other books on the subject, The Power of Six Sigma explains the overall philosophy of Six Sigma effectively in a nonthreatening way, taking no more than two hours to read.

Customer Reviews:

6-Sigma Explained.......2007-02-08

Mr Joe Metter, a manager at American Burger, is suddenly laid off after 20 years of work there. By impulse and out of panic he calls his old buddy Larry Hogan. Larry turns out to be an executive with American Pizza. American Burger and American Pizza are subsidiaries of American Foods, and Larry and Joe had met each other while both worked in the mailroom at American Foods where they started their careers. The two friends agree to meet for lunch, and it is over lunch that Joe learns about 6-Sigma.

Larry's company, American Pizza previously a weak link in the American Foods chain, is doing very well; it is on the 6-Sigma diet, so to speak. And what is that? Six Sigma is "a statistical measure and a management philosophy" (p.17) that reduces error, waste, and corresponding cost. Page 28ff focus on the technical definition. By reducing error and waste, 6-Sigma increases customer satisfaction and company profitability simultaneously.

However, before there are satisfied customers and profitable firms, 6-Sigma empowers people. The book describes six steps to empowering people: problem definition, measurement, analysis, improvement, and control. See page 93.

Once people are empowered, it's time to put the process to work. The process aims at customer satisfaction. This is followed by product/service delivery. Profitability is simply a function of customer satisfaction. In other words, the goal of 6-Sigma is to reduce error and waste. The objectives for accomplishing those goals are: problem definition, measurement of desired outcomes, analysis, improvement, and control.

I have read six books of different lengths on Six Sigma in the last four years. This is by far the clearest and easiest to read. Kudos!

Amavilah, Author
Modeling Determinants of Income in Embedded Economies
ISBN: 1600210465

Very good introductory essay.......2007-01-22

This is an excellent, quick, and straightforward introduction to what Six Sigma is all about. Any business that ignores the customer is pretty much doomed. Any business that listens to its customers and provides the quality and service the customers want is virtually guaranteed to grow and increase its profits. This little book is a nice way to whet your appetite for how the Six Sigma process can transform your business and your working life.

Power Book.......2006-08-24

If you want a high level understanding of Six Sigma this is it. What an excellent story that is so true for many organizations. Read this book and learn from it.

The Power of Six Sigma.......2006-07-10

The books we purchased were for our office staff - feed back has been good. Well worth the time to read...

Outstanding Foundation of Customer Satisfaction.......2005-10-08

I found this latest offering by Dr. Subir Chowdhury to be an excellent review of how to satisfy customers. The books start out by using the dilemma that many organizations find themselves in today (losing market share and/or customers). Then allows the manager to find a way to be directly involved in identifying how to satisfy the organization's perspective/actual customers (actual contacts). I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to improve his or her performance.

Average customer rating:

Oh no not again
Packed with Knowledge!
DFSS For Dummies
The big picture of Design for Six Sigma
Don't buy this book, borrow it.

Power of Design for Six Sigma
Subir Chowdhury
Manufacturer: Kaplan Business
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Similar Items:

Power of Six Sigma
Design for Six Sigma: The Revolutionary Process for Achieving Extraordinary Profits
Design for Six Sigma (Briefcase Books Series)
Design for Six Sigma : A Roadmap for Product Development
The Lean Six Sigma Pocket Toolbook: A Quick Reference Guide to 100 Tools for Improving Quality and Speed

ASIN: 079316060X
Release Date: 2002-10-04

Book Description

When we first met Joe Meter in Subir Chowdhury’s The Power of Six Sigma, he had been laid off from his job at American Burger. After a transformational lunch that same day with former colleague and friend Larry Hogan, Joe was converted to the power of Six Sigma, a methodology that increases customer satisfaction and dramatically cuts costs. In The Power of Design for Six Sigma, it is several years later and the tables have turned. Now it is Joe’s turn to inspire Larry, who is disillusioned at work and wants to turn in his resignation—that is, until his conversation with his old friend.

Over coffee, Joe explains to Larry why Design for Six Sigma, or DFSS, is the only way to reach new heights of success. “Implementing Six Sigma can only take a company so far,” Joe explains. “Organizations that want to reach the next level of efficiency need to adopt a program called Design for Six Sigma.” Learn why DFSS is important across all departments, all levels, and all functions in an organization. DFSS is about creating products and services that are designed with the customer in mind—about designing things the right way, the first time.

Customer Reviews:

Oh no not again.......2006-03-04

This book is as silly and stupid as his last DFSS book "Design for Six Sigma". Don't buy it, don't borrow it! If you are looking for a serious book try "Design for Six Sigma: Innovation for Enhanced Competitiveness " by Gregory Watson instead.

Packed with Knowledge!.......2004-05-20

When last we saw Joe Meter, the fictitious hero of Subir Chowdhury's last Six Sigma book (The Power of Six Sigma), he was looking for work. His friend Larry Hogan introduced him to Six Sigma, which made Joe a huge success. According to the story, which is a novelistic construct for conveying business advice, now Joe is going to tutor Larry on a more advanced form of Six Sigma, one that delves into the very process of system design. This "meta-Six Sigma" appears to be a natural evolution of the basic Six Sigma approach, namely, to uncover the root causes of defects, inefficiency and customer dissatisfaction - and to fix them as part of the intrinsic design of the company and its processes. This book covers the design concept, but not the initial details of Six Sigma itself. Here, Chowdhury again explains a complex subject in a lucid manner, if you don't mind an alphabet soup of acronyms. We strongly recommend this book for anyone in management, or anyone who is experiencing a change initiative.

DFSS For Dummies.......2003-06-10

This book explains the advantages of investing in DFSS; it emphasizes that stopping at Six Sigma is not good enough because one can not go beyond 5 Sigma. Subir Chowdhury narrates the DFSS process in a very refreshing and anecdotal way. If you like reading stories and upshots, this is the book for you. Prior knowledge of Six Sigma is not required. This book only gives a high-level overview of how DMADV or DMEDDI or IDDOV was applied by a restaurant chain. I would recommend buying another thick book to get all the nitty gritty details like QFD or Robust Design Optimization because the method is as important as the result

The big picture of Design for Six Sigma.......2003-05-04

This book is not so much a how to do Design for Six Sigma, but why. It is a very easy read with an entertaining style. I keep copies around to loan out, and occasionally to refer to.

Its greatest asset for me was providing a big picture that helped explain what DFSS is to those who don't yet know the details. If you try to explain DFSS to people by jumping into the details of how to do it, they often won't have the patience to hear you out. This book helped me answer the most basic questions like "What do all the different DFSS programs have in common?".

Because it is such an easy and entertaining read, it can be used to generate enthusiasm in the team. It is definitely not a dry technical book.

Be prepared to order more books that give more detail on how to do DFSS.

Don't buy this book, borrow it........2003-04-15

I read this book as an introduction to the concept of Design for Six Sigma. My motivation to do this was that my company has begun implementing the management technique. Like Mr. Chowdhury's preceding book The Power of Six Sigma, this book has some serious flaws.

First of all, despite being a better-written book than the previous "Power" book, it is still hampered by a jumble of unrelated examples and metaphors. In this installment the master has become the disillusioned student and his student has become the confident master.

This book does provide a basic overview of Design for Six Sigma, but once attain is a cleverly disguised attempt to make money by exploiting the latest management buzz.

This books is slightly longer that The Power of Six Sigma. However, the author's writing style continues to distract you from easily learning the information.

My recommendation is to check it out from the library if you really want to read the book for the basic introduction to Design for Six Sigma.

Fusion Management: Harnessing the Power of Six Sigma, Lean, ISO 9001:2000, Malcolm Baldrige, TQM and Other Quality Breakthroughs of the Past Century

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Nice to know
Quality Management
NOW IT ALL COMES TOGETHER

Fusion Management: Harnessing the Power of Six Sigma, Lean, ISO 9001:2000, Malcolm Baldrige, TQM and Other Quality Breakthroughs of the Past Century
Stanley A. Marash , Paul Berman , and Michael Flynn
Manufacturer: Qsu Pub Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Similar Items:

Total Quality Management: Strategies and Techniques Proven at Today's Most Successful Companies (Portable Mba Series)
The Lean Six Sigma Pocket Toolbook: A Quick Reference Guide to 100 Tools for Improving Quality and Speed
Lean Six Sigma for Service : How to Use Lean Speed and Six Sigma Quality to Improve Services and Transactions
The Five Pillars of TQM: How to Make Total Quality Management Work for You
Demystifying Six Sigma: A Company-Wide Approach to Continuous Improvement

ASIN: 193219102X

Book Description

There has been no true breakthrough in the discipline of quality since 1934. There have only been fads and what Dr. Stanley Marash calls programmes du jour. Each has merit but too often companies get caught up in the more superficial aspects of these programs—choosing smoke and mirrors over real opportunities for process improvement. As CEO of one of the largest management system training and consulting firms in North America, Dr. Marash draws on more than 40 years of experience working with some of the largest corporations in the United States, Europe and Asia to cut through the hype surrounding such well known quality techniques as Six Sigma, Lean, ISO 9001:2000, Baldridge and others. Fusion Management can help your organization achieve true performance breakthroughs by unlocking the best quality secrets of the past century. With Fusion Management you will: Understand why your management system initiatives are wasteful or duplicative, learn why past management initiatives failed, gain knowledge to avoid future failures and become skilled in applying the best modern management approaches to your business to achieve quantifiable business results.

Customer Reviews:

Nice to know.......2006-06-11

Book info : 3rd edition published in 2004.
Pre required knowledge: ISO 9001:2000; 6 Sigma, Performance excellence.
Purchased price : USD 13,00
General : The book is written in a manor that half way the book you get bored. It uses quite a lot of abbreviations so that the author can show you how good he is.

Book content:
The book has got 6 chapters. Chapter 1 (13% of book content) gives a summary of the quality and management systems that have been introduced in the past century (over 30). It describes the creator of the system and it strengths and weaknesses.

Chapter 2 (16%) describes why quality systems were introduced in the industrial revolution, by government regulations and sector/customer specific. It also handles the migration from government and sector specific quality systems to general quality systems.

Chapter 3 (25%) shows that there is more then "document what we do, and do what is documented" and introduces management systems on top of quality systems. It handles the basics of Statistical Quality Control, Total quality Control, Total Quality Management, Lean , JIT and six Sigma.

Chapter 4 (12%) discusses awards like The Malcolm Baldrige National quality Award, what the requirements are for the award. Then these award specifications are compared with Six Sigma and ISO 9001:2000 and how they relate to an organisations Strategic, tactical and operational level.

Chapter 5 (13%) handles change management and what the key success factors are to achieve a successful change management.

Chapter 6 (21%) finally gives you a model for implementing fusion management, the part where you're waiting for. It is very specific and detailed; Not bad at all!

If you get passed the first four chapters you will be rewarded in chapters 5 and 6. Maybe my expectations were to high, based on the other reader's reviews, but if you are able to purchase this book for a reasonable price I recommend it.

Quality Management.......2003-08-20

As a long-term quality assurance professional, I was pleased to find in Fusion Management a book that does a good job of describing the chronological progression of, and linkages between, the various quality assurance paradigms and programs, e.g., Reengineering, Lean, ISO 9000, TQM, Six Sigma, etc. Dr. Marash describes the components of the programs and evaluates and recommends specific elements of past programs for incorporation into current quality program thinking. After a good review of quality history, Dr. Marash offers a compilation of the better elements of the better quality programs and describes how they can be synergistically integrated. He concludes with a step-by-step description of how to perform Fusion Management in your own company by identifying, selecting and integrating the "best of the best" in quality programs. This is a solid and well-presented book chocked full of quality information.

NOW IT ALL COMES TOGETHER.......2003-03-16

There have been so many management and quality theories over the years - but nobody has told us how they all fit together - in fact they always bad mouth different programs. This book tells how different quality philosophies build on one another. It also has real world examples of how to effectively implement ISO, Six Sigma and "Fusion Management". With the current economy and layoffs I'm ready to use the roadmap to get my company back on track. It is a good quick read, with interesting case studies (I read it on a four hour flight). It may be the most usable business book I've read in quite a long time.

The Six Sigma Leader: Putting the Power of Business Excellence Into Everything You Do

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Discipline of Six Sigma for Leaders

The Six Sigma Leader: Putting the Power of Business Excellence Into Everything You Do
Peter Pande
Manufacturer: American Media International
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD

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Similar Items:

The Six Sigma Way: How GE, Motorola, and Other Top Companies are Honing Their Performance
The Six Sigma Way Team Fieldbook: An Implementation Guide for Process Improvement Teams
Megatrends 2010
Six Sigma, The Breakthrough Management Strategy Revolutionizing The World's Top Corporations
The Six Sigma Project Planner : A Step-by-Step Guide to Leading a Six Sigma Project Through DMAIC

ASIN: 1933309369

Book Description

Peter Pande, coauthor of the bestselling Six Sigma Way (also published by McGraw-Hill Audio), shows you how the same principles that create process excellence can now be applied to management success. He details twenty things reader can do to perfect the skills and habits of a successful 21st century business leader.

Customer Reviews:

Discipline of Six Sigma for Leaders .......2007-02-12

First off, it's important to know that this book is not about how to lead Six Sigma, but rather how Six Sigma can help you lead.

In this follow-up to the enormously popular The Six Sigma Way, Pete Pande distills 20 years of experience in making Six Sigma relevant to the challenges of today. The traditional applications of Six Sigma are still critical. But Six Sigma is so much more. This book looks beneath the projects and tools--which are no more than the tip of the Six Sigma iceberg--to explore the underlying principles that have made Six Sigma the most powerful business improvement discipline ever developed. The lessons of The Six Sigma Leader are meaningful to individuals at any level, from senior executive to ambitious team supervisor, and can be effectively applied by leaders whether or not their organizations are implementing Six Sigma.

It's really about disciplining the change management process. The book lays out a cohesive roadmap to apply Six Sigma discipline to the primary leadership challenge of today. The goal is to shed the "bad habits" of leadership and replace them with proven strategies informed by the lessons of Six Sigma. The discipline of Six Sigma can tell you definitively when you are falling into "bad" habits. Even better, it can offer you solid, proven alternatives - a set of "good" habits, objectively identified through vast collective business experience. In short, Six Sigma can be your everyday guide to making choices that make you more effective.

If you've been involved in Six Sigma initiatives, this book shows you how to leverage your Six Sigma wisdom much more broadly. If you know nothing of Six Sigma, this book offers you a reason to explore it as a leadership discipline, even if you never expect to be part of a formal Six Sigma initiative.

Power of Ultimate Six Sigma(r), The: Keki Bhote's Proven System for Moving Beyond Quality Excellence to Total

Average customer rating:

Focusing on the Customer
Not your typical book on Six Sigma
Worst Book on Six Sigma

Power of Ultimate Six Sigma(r), The: Keki Bhote's Proven System for Moving Beyond Quality Excellence to Total
Keki R. Bhote
Manufacturer: AMACOM/American Management Association
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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World Class Quality: Using Design of Experiments to Make It Happen
World Class Reliability: Using Multiple Environment Overstress Tests to Make it Happen
The Ultimate Six Sigma: Beyond Quality Excellence
Beyond Customer Satisfaction to Customer Loyalty: The Key to Greater Profitability (Ama Management Briefing)
Next Operation As Customer (Ama Management Briefing)

ASIN: 0814407595

Book Description

Developed by Motorola and popularized by Jack Welch and GE, Six Sigma remains today's hottest program for "zero defect" quality excellence. Now, Keki Bhote, member of the original Motorola team, presents an undiluted approach, applying his trademarked "Ultimate Six Sigma(r)" method to every business process -- from manufacturing and customer retention to supply chain management and leadership.

The book is packed with every technique and metric necessary for a fast, smooth implementation, giving readers everything they need to make their own companies world-class in their industry.

In addition, numerous case studies of benchmark companies illustrate the factors that contribute to success. Bhote includes assessment tools designed to help a company gauge its current status and measure future progress. This book is the ultimate guide to the ultimate quality assurance tool.

Customer Reviews:

Focusing on the Customer.......2005-08-04

Keki Bhote is one of the pioneers of the Six Sigma movement, which has captured much of corporate America as the superior evolution of the quality movement. In a very narrow sense, Six Sigma refers to a statistical tool that can be used to analyze product defects and bring down their occurrences to approximately zero. His book The Power of Ultimate Six Sigma, however, is not really about Six Sigma¡Kit is partly about the application of his latest iteration called Ultimate Six Sigma, partly about loosely-related organization and management techniques, and, to no small extent, about selling his own ideas and previous works on the subject. Although not terribly well written (with many one-sentence paragraphs and undeveloped thoughts), the work is nonetheless helpful in providing practical ways to structure a business for increased stakeholder value and customer retention. His greatest contributions are the sections on developing and measuring customer, employee and supplier loyalty and cooperation. His list of about 200 ¡§disciplines¡¨ or techniques, case studies illustrating their application, and self-assessment checklists to help companies implement them are also a major plus. The techniques often need a little further explanation, but they contain many helpful suggestions for areas to improve effectiveness. The case studies help provide explanations for the disciplines, and the self-assessment checklists provide an abbreviated way to measure how much a company has already adopted an Ultimate Six Sigma system of management.
The book commences with a seemingly unrelated, and a bit pretentious, call for a business Marshall Plan to save the world from terrorism and other threats, which can only succeed with Bhote's Ultimate Six Sigma business ideas. He lambastes businesses for their general lack of ethics and social responsibility, and denigrates other practitioners of Six Sigma and other quality techniques. His single chapter explanation of the actual methodology and practice of Six Sigma is inadequate for anyone unfamiliar with the mechanics, and serves mostly to point out errors others have made in corrupting his ideas. Once one gets beyond Bhote's volcanic venting and frequent self-promotion, and wades through the loosely organized jungle overgrown with numerous acronyms and specialized lingo, the material markedly improves. Bhote attempts to provide a roadmap for the implementation of Ultimate Six Sigma as a quality management system. He begins with a section on developing stakeholder value, including separate chapters on customers, corporate leadership, organization infrastructure and culture, employees, and suppliers. The following section develops three major techniques for a company to increase its effectiveness and profitability: quality, cost, and cycle time. In an attempt to move the applicability of Six Sigma beyond manufacturing, Bhote devotes the next section to applying Ultimate Six Sigma to the major firm functional areas of design, manufacturing, and services. Finally, he includes a short concluding section discussing metrics for assessing results of the implementation of Ultimate Six Sigma.
I found the opening discussion on developing and measuring customer loyalty interesting and thought-stimulating. Bhote makes a convincing argument on the importance and efficacy of nurturing dedicated customers, as opposed to spending large resources on finding new customers. He introduces five disciplines to strive for the goal of zero customer defects:
-- Reduce and differentiate the customer base
-- Measure core customer defections
-- Assess customer "wow"
mass customization
quality function deployment
company effectiveness index
-- Customer cultivation
-- Establishing a company culture for customer loyalty

I had not previously considered that a company might want to actually shed some customers who do not contribute much to the company's profitability, but Bhote's argument that the top 60% of customers usually make up for nearly 100% of profits shows that spending resources to keep the bottom 40% is not very efficient. Bhote also argues for putting a monetary value into the accounting figures for customer defections. This is a good idea to emphasize the cost of losing customers because of inferior quality or service; unfortunately, Bhote¡¦s work here does not provide much practical assistance in how to accurately measure such defections.
Customer "wow" is that rush of delight in a customer's mind when they find an unanticipated but desirable feature in a product. Bhote provides a practical table to measure a customer¡¦s reaction to a company's product, called a "Customer Effectiveness Index." This takes several areas such as quality, reliability, price, ease of use, etc. and asks the customer to rate the importance of each area, and then the actual performance of the company in those areas. Bhote describes customer cultivation as "taking the customer's skin temperature every day." (p. 55) Finally, Bhote advocates four disciplines to build a company infrastructure that retains customer loyalty: meaningful metrics, a customer loyalty steering committee, a chief customer officer, and a customer defection SWAT team. These seem like good suggestions, but there is little concrete material expounding on how to establish these disciplines.
Bhote's section on leadership does not contribute much new insight on the subject¡K he emphasizes that a leader must provide a vision, must unleash the creative potential of the workers, and must act ethically and responsibly. He does provide a somewhat useful table (if one edits the specialized jargon which confuses the list of attributes) which employees can use to measure leadership effectiveness, called the "Leadership Effectiveness Index." As in the previously mentioned Customer Effectiveness Index, this asks employees to rate the importance of and then performance of company leaders in the areas of "personal philosophies and views," and "enabling people to reach their full potential." The table is a good summary of 20 leadership attributes that would contribute to a quality corporation.
Bhote advocates new ways of rating performance, along with making other suggestions for reorganization, in the section on organizational structure and culture. He lists the following "ten-step process for creating a culture of entrepreneurship." (p. 85)
-- Eliminate bureaucracy
-- Rebuild the organizing infrastructure (making it flatter)
-- Change requirements for hiring employees (letting line people make hiring decisions)
-- Train all employees (constantly and in applicable areas)
-- Revamp performance appraisals
-- Change the rules of compensation (giving large incentive payments based on performance)
-- Design meaningful and egalitarian gain sharing
-- Redesign promotion criteria (based on potential for leadership)
-- Team synergy
-- Total Involvement

The actual fleshing out of these details must be done by the reader, as Bhote provides little detail, but attention to personnel practices (hiring, evaluating, training and promoting) is worth consideration. For example, a 360 degree performance rating system could incorporate ratings from subordinates, colleagues, customers, and suppliers, not just the traditional method of relying on the single evaluation of one¡¦s immediate superior. I¡¦m sure company lore is full of personality conflicts or misunderstood employees who were not fairly evaluated by the traditional system. With a fair evaluation system, one can then implement Bhote¡¦s suggestions to provide large pay incentives based on performance that promote entrepreneurship and creativity, and that share the gains of the company equitably.
This brings Bhote to a discussion of the very important company stakeholder, the employee. His most useful ideas in this section are Job Design, Open Book Management, Self-Directed Work Teams, and The Minicompany. Bhote argues that ¡§the job is the core of motivation,¡¨ (p. 102), and that jobs must be re-designed to provide meaningfulness, responsibility, and knowledge of results. He proposes that this re-design be accomplished by combining tasks, forming natural work units, establishing client relationships, creating vertical job enrichment and opening feedback channels. (p. 103) One of the more pertinent practical suggestions is open
book management, in which all employees are regularly given full financial information of the company. Bhote strongly advocates Self-Directed Work Teams as an alternative to corporate bureaucracy, although he completely ignores any drawbacks to the use of teams. There are certain situations in which individual work will be more desirable and efficient than team work. Finally, the Minicompany concept provides a way for companies to push decision-making and responsibility down closer to worker level, making the organization flatter and, hopefully, providing more incentive for employees to increase their productivity. Bhote proposes this push toward worker empowerment and ¡§industrial democracy¡¨ as the ultimate solution to making a profitable company, and this may very well work for most American corporations in an indivualistic society. I believe one should be cautious, however, in completely discarding more vertically-structured organizations, as many situations and perhaps different cultures will prefer more structured direction in work.
Advocating supplier partnerships and more careful management of the supply chain is one of the stronger sections of Bhote¡¦s work. Bhote believes that supplier partnerships, with active company involvement in a supplier¡¦s design and manufacturing process, will produce improvements in quality, cost and cycle time. Since the majority of costs for most companies come from materials provided by suppliers, it certainly makes sense to take what is often a confrontational relationship into a collaborative, mutually-beneficial relationship. Bhote promotes limiting the number of suppliers to a quality few, taking the time to build a relationship which provides reliable, quality inputs. Partly to facilitate this close relationship, and because he believes there are numerous hidden costs in overseas outsourcing, Bhote also recommends keeping suppliers close to the production process. An important feature of the supplier relationship is to develop Early Supplier Input into design of parts or material supplied. He proposes an organizational structure that builds teams that are cross-functional and cross-company, that enhance the communication between supplier and buyer.
The following section discusses three major techniques, or ¡§high octane engines of thrust,¡¨ for increasing company effectiveness and profitability: Quality, Cost, and Cycle Time. This section is full of tools, many of them complicated statistical tools, that require much more detailed explanation from some outside source¡Xof course, Bhote would be happy to sell you his books on those very subjects! This section also suffers from being narrowly applicable to manufacturing, and is much less useful for the service industry. Bhote¡¦s three favorite tools, which he of course designed or radically improved, are Design of Experiments (DOE), Multiple Environment Over Stress (MEOST), and Total Value Engineering (TVE). The Total Value Engineering concept is a general technique aimed at maximizing customer loyalty at minimum cost. This is another way of looking at developing customer loyalty, but analyzes the cost of developing that loyalty. Bhote¡¦s case studies in this section are useful for giving ideas on how to assess what customers want and what can be done to fill their needs at lowest cost. The key of Total Value Engineering is to be aware of the customer¡¦s needs, and spend just as much as necessary to fill the need and develop customer loyalty¡Kanything else is unneeded and inefficient.
After discussing ways to involve and develop stakeholders, and then giving a cursory knowledge about tools to improve effectiveness and profitability, Bhoke attempts to show how Ultimate Six Sigma can be applied to three functional areas of design, manufacturing and service. The first two areas involve technical discussions specific to a company producing a product that can be analyzed for physical defects. The more interesting section is the attempt to apply the concepts to services. Bhote claims that Ultimate Six Sigma is the cure for service industry inefficiencies, but in fact the discussion focuses almost exclusively on management techniques to improve service sections within a company. The operative concept here is the Next Operation as Customer (NOAC). This was a concept initiated in Japan in the quality movement with the goal to improve quality, cost, cycle time and effectiveness. Bhote explains how he adapted it and then Motorola ¡§packaged it to extend Six Sigma process from a manufacturing and product focus to all white-collar operations.¡¨ (p. 287) This is simply encouraging a company to work as a large team, or perhaps as a collection of minicompanies, and to try to satisfy internal customers just as one would satisfy the end customer in order to succeed in the business. The method includes setting specifications for services, perhaps in timeliness or quality, and then providing internal rewards or penalties according to the ability to meet the standards.
Though much of Bhote¡¦s book remains applicable only to manufacturing, providing only a superficial and sometimes unorganized explanation of many tools and techniques, it makes significant strides in encompassing the design and service areas, and there is still much to be recommended in its reading. The how-to lists of business disciplines may take some expansion and individual research, but they are a good consolidated list of actions on which to focus to make one¡¦s business more effective. In the same way, the self-assessment, or health audits, at the end of each chapter offer a practical way to measure how far a company is in implementing Ultimate Six Sigma as a management system. The focus on customer rings loud and clear throughout Bhote¡¦s book, whether it¡¦s the external customer buying or using the final product or service, or an internal customer producing a key component or adding value to the final product. Business managers may see profitability as the bottom line, but one can¡¦t have profit without customers, and having loyal customers is the best way to ensure long-term solvency. This call to focus on the customer is not new, but remains an enduring principle, and Bhote provides some useful ways to maintain that focus, and move toward ¡§Total Business Excellence.¡¨

Not your typical book on Six Sigma.......2003-04-11

Several things need to be understood about this book. To begin with, the author is one of the most experienced Six Sigma professionals in the world. However, he has a very convoluted writing style that makes it difficult to understand some of the points he is trying to get across. Furthermore, this is not a book on Six Sigma per se, this is a book that describes how Ultimate Six Sigma can be applied to improve a variety of areas within a company from customer relations to supply chain management. Whenever I have heard someone criticize this book it usually revolves around the fact that the author believes his method of Six Sigma, Ultimate Six Sigma, is by far much better than most of the other Six Sigma programs on the market and this is perceived as being "preachy". I feel this type of criticism is unwarranted for the following reasons:

1. The author does not state that all of the current providers of Six Sigma are shysters, he is merely stating that some Six Sigma consultants are less experienced than others and this has resulted in some companies not achieving the desired results from implementing Six Sigma.
2. The author brings up some very interesting points in regards to how companies can improve their efficiency through new management techniques as well as through Ultimate Six Sigma. What is really nice about this book is that the author provides accompanying graphs, charts, and checklists in each chapter.
3. Since there is no one perfect book on the topic of Six Sigma, and since it is always a good idea to keep learning, this book is well worth the money. For those who buy this book and understand that it isn't a "how to" book on Six Sigma will be satisfied.

Do I recommend this book? Yes. However, if this is the first book you're thinking of buying on Six Sigma I suggest that you buy one of the following books first or in conjunction with this book:

A. Sailing through Six Sigma
B. What is Six Sigma?
C. Lean Six Sigma
D. The Six Sigma Way: How GE, Motorola, and other Top Companies are Honing Their Performance
E. The Six Sigma Handbook, Revised and Expanded: The Complete Guide for Greenbelts, Blackbelts, and Managers at All Levels
F. Implementing Six Sigma: Smarter Solutions Using Statistical Methods, 2nd Edition

Worst Book on Six Sigma.......2003-01-13

This book is a time waster. One of the terrible book on Six Sigma.

The power of Six Sigma. (Novel Solutions).: An article from: Modern Casting

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The power of Six Sigma. (Novel Solutions).: An article from: Modern Casting
Michael J. Lessiter
Manufacturer: American Foundrymen's Society, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Management | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Modern Casting, published by American Foundrymen's Society, Inc. on May 1, 2003. The length of the article is 565 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The power of Six Sigma. (Novel Solutions).
Author: Michael J. Lessiter
Publication: Modern Casting (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 1, 2003
Publisher: American Foundrymen's Society, Inc.
Volume: 93 Issue: 5 Page: 24(1)

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Six Sigma: the human side of management.(Brief Article)(Review): An article from: Fairfield County Business Journal

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Six Sigma: the human side of management.(Brief Article)(Review): An article from: Fairfield County Business Journal

Manufacturer: Westfair Communications, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B0009FFP2O
Release Date: 2005-07-28

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Fairfield County Business Journal, published by Westfair Communications, Inc. on September 10, 2001. The length of the article is 895 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Six Sigma: the human side of management.(Brief Article)(Review)
Publication: Fairfield County Business Journal (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 10, 2001
Publisher: Westfair Communications, Inc.
Volume: 40 Issue: 37 Page: 6

Article Type: Brief Article, Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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Power of Six Sigma an Inspiring Tale Of
Subir Chowdhury
Manufacturer: DEARBORN TRADE +
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000Q1OJ46

Profit Signals: How Evidence Based Decisions Power Six Sigma Breakthroughs

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"Five-Minute PhD" followed by discourse on profiting from statistical understanding

Profit Signals: How Evidence Based Decisions Power Six Sigma Breakthroughs
M. Daniel Sloan
Manufacturer: Evidence-Based Decisions, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0974461601

Book Description

Profit Signals is a pioneering Six Sigma work written and published by two internationally recognized Master Black Belts. The authors present a unique view on how executives, managers and Six Sigma practitioners can use evidence to make better, more profitable decisions.

Profit Signals details the key links between today's breakthrough project methodology, bottom line business results, financial modeling, spreadsheet simulation, vector analysis, applied science, and n-dimensional hyperspace. Case studies, which include finance, manufacturing, governmental services, and health care, show how a Six Sigma breakthrough project can result in savings of $100,000 to $1 million.

Using the authors' expertise and vector analysis methodology, Profit Signals breaks new ground for leaders who want to initiate a breakthrough improvement system, strengthen a robust Six Sigma program, or revitalize an initiative that is floundering on the rocks of a Black Belt bureaucracy. Simulation and Crystal Ball are mentioned to a small extent in the chapter on Evidence-Based Six Sigma and in the case studies. Crystal Ball software is not packaged with this book

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"Five-Minute PhD" followed by discourse on profiting from statistical understanding.......2006-12-26

A PhD himself, Sloan immediately admits in the opening paragraphs of this work that "PhD's, medical doctors, scientists, engineers, mathematicians, statisticians, economists, managers, and executives don't own the lock and key to data analysis" and that "what was once the high water mark of postgraduate study is now as simple as a Google web search". The following eight chapters in this book, however, present very well what a lot of web searches are not able to do: clearly discuss the core components of what the Six Sigma process is intended to do, save the accompanying bureaucracy. The author explains that an ANOVA deconstructs a data vector into the basic pieces essential for evidence-based decision making: data average, profit signal(s) and noise. Although most of this book discusses the first two pieces, Sloan's comment that "bar charts and pie charts symbolize old-school management thinking as no other icon can" starts a powerful discussion of noise and superficial data presentation on page 67 that is expected to win over the most skeptical of spreadsheet gurus, who typically use variance analysis rather than Analysis of Variance. Many readers interested in this subject matter will find the real-world case studies in the fourth chapter, although short, to be especially relevant. In addition, a long fictional case study that spans multiple chapters of the book is also presented, which was introduced to Sloan at the University of Wisconsin at Madison by George E. P. Box (a fellow of the Royal Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences). This Corrugated Copters case study, which presents a compelling dialogue of several individuals discussing an elementary Six Sigma problem, is also discussed in Sloan's "Using Designed Experiments to Shrink Health Care Costs" (see my review). Sloan continues his use of these fictional characters in his concluding chapter to explain why the three R's should be redefined as Reading, wRiting, and vectoR analysis. This book is very well written, and although the author covers a lot of ground, he manages to tie together neatly all of this thoughts. His enthusiastic, clever writing style reminds me of Gerald (Jerry) Weinberg's "The Secrets of Consulting" (see my review). Note that this book is currently available free of charge as a PDF document download at the author's evidence-based-decisions website.

The Power of Six Sigma: An Inspiring Tale of How an Extraordinary Process is Transforming the Way We Work

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The Power of Six Sigma: An Inspiring Tale of How an Extraordinary Process is Transforming the Way We Work

Manufacturer: Dearborn Trade
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0793145392

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