Six Sigma For Dummies Book

	Foreword	xv
	Introduction	1
	About This Book	1
	Conventions Used in This Book	2
	Foolish Assumptions	3
	How This Book Is Organized	3
	Icons Used in This Book	4
	Where to Go from Here	5
Part I	Six Sigma Basics	7
Chapter 1	Defining Six Sigma	9
	The Managerial Perspective	11
	Radical corporate success	12
	Bridge between science and leadership	12
	Management system orientation	13
	The Technical Perspective	16
	Product, service, and transactional quality	17
	The journey from one to many	20
	Watch out for the wiggle, bump, and jitter	22
	Why six and why sigma? (Putting the pieces together)	23
Chapter 2	Examing the Principles and Language of Six Sigma	27
	It All Begins with One Simple Equation: Y = f(X) + [epsilon]	27
	Determine the Cause	29
	Cause and effect	29
	There is a better way	30
	Beware superstitious delusions (that is, correlation doesn't imply causation)	30
	Variation happens	32
	What is variation?	33
	Where does variation come from?	34
	Getting variation right is everything	35
	Thou Shalt Measure	36
	Mind your Ys and Xs	36
	The answer begins with the data	37
	The bottom line on measurement	38
	The Power of Leverage	38
	The "vital few" versus the "trivial many"	39
	Finding the better way	40
Chapter 3	Pinpointing the Essentials of Six Sigma	41
	The Project Strategy: DMAIC	41
	Domains of Activity	43
	Thinking for breakthrough	43
	Processing for breakthrough	44
	Designing for breakthrough	44
	Managing for breakthrough	45
	The People: Who You Need to Know	46
	In Six Sigma, everyone's a leader	46
	Number-crunching karate: Black Belts and their brethren	51
	Bringing the team together	54
	The Lifecycle of a Six Sigma Initiative	55
	Initialize: Ready ... Aim ...	55
	Deploy: Setting it all in motion	56
	Implement: Forging first successes	57
	Expand: Taking it everywhere	58
	Sustain: The self-healing culture	58
Part II	Understanding and Enacting the Breakthrough Strategy (DMAIC)	61
Chapter 4	Finding the Pain - Defining Projects	63
	The Six Sigma Project	64
	The basics of a project	64
	The problem transformation	65
	Project responsibilities	65
	Your Needs, My Needs, What Are They?	66
	Aligning Six Sigma with strategy	67
	Using a business case writing tool for project identification	69
	Six Sigma project definition	71
	Is it worth doing?	75
Chapter 5	Measuring the Gaps	85
	The 1, 2, 3s of Statistics	85
	Why statistics?	86
	Measurement 101	87
	What does it mean? Measures of variation location	88
	How much variation is there?	91
	The Long and Short of Variation	95
	Short-term variation	96
	Shift happens: Long-term variation	99
	Be all you can be: Entitlement	101
	A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words	103
	Plotting and charting data	103
	Hindsight is 20/20: Behavior charts	117
Chapter 6	Measuring Capability	123
	Specifications: The Voice of the Customer	123
	How close is close enough? Or why specifications?	124
	What are specifications?	124
	Do you do the RUMBA? Creating realistic specifications	125
	Don't push that big red button! What happens when you exceed a specification	126
	Capability: Comparing the Voice of the Customer to the Voice of the Process	128
	Measuring yield	128
	Measuring defect rate	133
	Linking yield and defect rate	138
	Sigma (Z) score	138
	Capability indices	144
	Prescribing a capability improvement plan	147
Chapter 7	Separating the Wheat from the Chaff	149
	Understanding Data Types	150
	Attribute or category data	150
	Continuous or variable data	151
	Avoiding Illusion: Measurement System Capability Analysis	152
	Sources of measurement system variation	154
	Measuring measurements: Measurement system analysis (MSA)	156
	Filling the Funnel	161
	Let the data do the talking	162
	Cast a big net	162
	Mining Data for Insight	163
	Go with what you have: Observational studies	163
	Digging in: Identifying potential sources of variation through graphical analysis	165
Chapter 8	Quantifying the Critical Few	169
	Finding the Best Partner	169
	Viva Las Vegas: The central limit theorem	170
	How sure are you? Confidence intervals	171
	Confidence intervals for means	172
	Confidence intervals for standard deviations	176
	Four out of five recommend: Confidence intervals for proportions	178
	Understanding Relationships	180
	Correlation	180
	Curve fitting	183
Chapter 9	Achieving the Objective	195
	Why Experiment? The Improvement Power of Six Sigma Experiments	195
	What is an experiment, anyway?	195
	The purpose of Six Sigma experiments	196
	Experimenting with words	197
	The end game of Six Sigma experiments	197
	Look Before You Leap: Experimental Considerations	198
	Frankenstein should have planned	198
	Simple, sequential, and systematic is best	200
	2[superscript k] Factorial Experiments	202
	Plan your experiment	202
	Conduct your experiment	206
	Analyze your experiment	207
	You've Only Just Begun - More Topics in Experimentation	216
Chapter 10	Locking in the Gains	217
	The Need for Control Planning	217
	The process management summary	219
	The process control plan	219
	Statistical Process Control	221
	Monitoring the Process: Control Chart Basics	222
	Understanding control limits	223
	Using control charts to keep processes on track	226
	Using control charts to detect patterns, shifts, and drifts	227
	Collecting data for control charts	229
	Control Charts for Continuous Data	230
	Individuals and moving range chart (I - MR)	232
	Averages and ranges chart (X - R chart)	234
	Averages and standard deviation chart (X - S)	235
	Control Charts for Attribute Data	235
	The p chart for attribute data	237
	The u chart for attribute data	238
	Poka-Yoke (Mistake-Proofing)	239
Part III	The Six Sigma Tool and Technology Landscape	241
Chapter 11	Identifying Six Sigma Practitioner Tools	243
	The Practitioner's Toolkit	244
	Process Optimization Tools	245
	The SIPOC	246
	What's critical? Look in the CT Tree	248
	Modeling a process	251
	Simulating a process	256
	Cause-and-effect (C&E) matrix	258
	Dem' fishbones	259
	FMEA: Failure mode effects analysis	260
	KISS and tell: Capability-complexity analysis	262
	Funnel reports	264
	Plans	265
	Statistical Analysis Tools	267
	The basics	268
	A picture's worth a thousand ... dollars	268
	The time machine	270
	Analysis of variance: ANOVA	271
	If the shoe fits	271
	Design of Experiments	272
	How capable is your process?	273
	Regression	275
	Multivariate analysis	275
	Exploratory analysis	276
	Measurement systems analysis	276
	Back to the future	278
	Platforms and Protocols	278
	Software products	278
	Technology architectures	280
Chapter 12	Mastering Six Sigma Manager Tools	283
	The Manager's Toolkit	284
	The gallery	285
	Types of management tools	286
	Through the Looking Glass	287
	Project Management	288
	Eureka!	289
	Pick a winner	290
	Project definition	291
	Project planning and tracking	293
	Just the Facts, Ma'am	295
	Knowledge Management	298
	An Apple for Your Apple	299
Part IV	The Part of Tens	301
Chapter 13	Ten Best Practices of Six Sigma	303
	Set Stretch Goals	303
	Target Tangible Results	304
	Determine Outcomes	304
	Think Before You Act	305
	Put Your Faith in Data	305
	Minimize Variation	306
	Align Projects with Key Goals	306
	Celebrate Success!	306
	Involve the Owner	307
	Unleash Everyone's Potential	307
Chapter 14	Ten Pitfalls to Avoid	309
	Not Allowing Enough Time	309
	Who's the Leader?	309
	Taking Too Big a Bite	310
	Focusing On Isolated Areas	310
	"But We're Different"	310
	Overtraining	311
	Blindly Believing Your Measurement System	311
	"Remind Me Again, Is It CLs or SLs?"	312
	Exaggerated Opportunity Counts	312
	Not Leveraging Technology	312
Chapter 15	Ten Places to Go for Help	313
	Colleagues	313
	Six Sigma Corporations	314
	Associations and Professional Societies	314
	Conferences and Symposia	314
	Publications	315
	Web Portals	316
	Periodicals	316
	Technology Vendors	317
	Consultants	317
	Six Sigma Trainers	318
Appendix	Glossary	319
	Afterword	329
	Index	331