Process and Quality Excellence Pointers

Radio host Robert Skrob asks Tom about Six Sigma. What is it? How is it useful to small businesses? Can it be used to improve sales, marketing, operations? This wide-ranging interview covers a tremendous variety of topics relating to business process excellence.

Let's be honest, America's healthcare non-system has its problems. What are the root causes? Do any of the proposed solutions address them?

Kaizen means "improvement" in Japanese. In Japan businesses view Kaizen as a way to engage everyone in improvement without spending much money. Improvements are usually small, and overall improvement is gradual. Americans have little patience for such an approach. This podcast describes the American version of Japan's successful approach to improving products and processes.

What can you do to help yourself and your organization during tough times? Tom provides a few pointers to help.

There are many reasons an organization might consider doing Six Sigma. For example, survival! This podcast presents a list of 10 other reasons.

Is Lean or Six Sigma a Flavor of the Month? What does this derisive label actually mean? Listen to this podcast and learn more!

We all want leadership support, right? But if you're not careful to specify precisely what you want your leaders to do for you, you may find yourself worse off than before.

Tom presents the audio track of the first lesson of his online Black Belt training. His approach is unique because it presents the various tools in the context of how they are applied. If you are not yet a Six Sigma Black Belt, you will discover what is taught in Black Belt training. If you're already a Black Belt, this podcast will help you understand when and how each tool is applied.

One important Black Belt activity is to use the organization's data warehouse to explore cause and effect relationships by building models using multiple linear regression. This isn't as easy as just throwing all of the candidate Xs into a software package and crunching away. This podcast describes the technique Tom teaches in Black Belt training.

Mindtool's Rachel Salaman interviews Tom about a wide range of Six Sigma topics. Listen to hear what Six Sigma is, where Six Sigma should (and should not) be used, what are the benefits and pitfalls that await Six Sigma users, where Six Sigma is heading in the future, and much more!