Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Pyzdek Institute Announces Online Lean Training

Friday, October 28th, 2011

New online products added that teach the Lean approach to operational excellence

Tucson, AZ October 28, 2011 – The Pyzdek Institute LLC has added two online Lean training classes to its portfolio of online courses on Process Excellence topics. The new courses are written and presented by Thomas Pyzdek, author of The Six Sigma Handbook, The Handbook of Quality Management and numerous other authoritative works.

Pyzdek Institute E-Learning

Thomas Pyzdek, Author of Lean Training

All Pyzdek Institute online lean training utilizes the latest e-learning technology and methods. “Although I have decades of experience teaching in classrooms, I realized that online e-learning was a fundamentally different way of teaching. I consulted with experts in e-learning as I developed the training,” said Pyzdek. “These are the same people who provide consulting to the University of Arizona for their e-learning. Their guidance and insights were invaluable in making my courses highly effective learning experiences.”

Among major providers of online Lean training, the Pyzdek Institute is the only one to utilize the popular Moodle Learning Management System. Worldwide there are over 54 million users enrolled in courses which use Moodle. Moodle allows organizations to carefully monitor the progress of all students, including lesson modules completed, resources downloaded, quiz results, and so on. With Moodle, when a student says that they have successfully completed their training, they can provide documented evidence to prove it. In addition, The Pyzdek Institute’s lesson modules are SCORM compliant, making it easy to integrate them into corporate learning management systems.

The Pyzdek Institute allows companies to have private areas on the training site so that communications among students, such as forum posts, are not visible to people outside of the company. Companies can also have designated Group Leaders who can help students enrolled in the training.

Complete Online Lean Training

The Pyzdek Institute’s Lean course consists of 11 modules covering the entire Lean body of knowledge. It is designed for people actually leading Lean teams and Lean implementation. According to Pyzdek, “Organizations benefit by implementing Lean before Six Sigma. Lean implementation can be done quickly using a simple tool set. Our Lean course provides these tools in a set of easy-to-use online training modules.” Topics include: mura/muri/muda, value, value streams and value stream mapping, A3 thinking, takt time, spaghetti diagrams, push and pull systems, 5S, constraint management, level loading, flexible processes, lot size reduction, Kaizen, quick changeover and SMED, and much, much more.

Online Lean Fundamentals Training

“Many organizations are interested in a 10,000 foot overview of Lean.” Pyzdek said. “That’s what our Lean 101 course provides. We want to introduce Lean to the organization and show them what it can do for them.”

The course, dubbed Lean 101, provides an overview of the Lean approach to process improvement. “Any new initiative is intimidating, until people understand what the initiative is all about. This course provides that background.” Pyzdek explains. The course is aimed at the people in the organization who will be impacted by Lean, but who may not need to be trained in the nuts-and-bolts of Lean techniques. For example, people who work in support organizations, people working in an area where lean is being applied, or people working in other areas of the company who need to know what Lean is, even if it’s not yet being employed in their area. These “stakeholders” learn the Lean philosophy, concepts and terminology and how these things come together to improve the workplace for them and for customers.

Lean 101 training is organized in three modules. Module 1 introduces Lean, provides a brief historical overview and context, and covers the principles of waste and value. Module 2 discusses value streams, flow, and push and pull systems. Module 3 presents continuous improvement, Kaizen, strategic and tactical considerations for Lean, and the synergistic relationship of Lean and Six Sigma. In addition to a course reading assignment, each module contains a narrated video lesson, a storyboard, and a self-scoring quiz. The company estimates that completing all of the coursework will require approximately four hours of student effort, including online and off-line work. Moodle tracks each student’s progress through the training and provides detailed reports. Training is self-directed and self-paced. Students are allowed 90 days to complete the 3 modules.

Lean training is priced at $395 and Lean 101 training is priced at $99. Group discounts are available.

Persons interested in complete details, or in ordering the training, should click here.

Media Contact:

Thomas Pyzdek (520) 204-1957

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Fox Lifetime Achievement Awards Announced

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

September 26, 2011

Continuous Process Improvement Symposiums, sponsored by California State University at Northridge, has announced that their first posthumous Lifetime Fox Award will honor quality improvement legend Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Dr. Deming’s award will be accepted by the Deming Family. It is scheduled for presentation on November 18, 2011 during the 2011 CSI symposium which runs from November 17-19.

A Fox Award for Lifetime Achievement will also be presented to Thomas Pyzdek. Considered a world authority on quality and Six Sigma, Thomas Pyzdek has written over 50 works, including such classics as The Six Sigma Handbook, The Quality Engineering Handbook, and The Handbook for Quality Management. Pyzdek’s work is widely acclaimed for its ability to make the seemingly complex subject of process excellence understandable. Pyzdek’s works have been studied by hundreds of thousands in their preparation for various certification exams. He is also a skilled trainer, hired by industry leaders worldwide to aid in their process excellence programs. Pyzdek also offers online certification and training on his website.

The CPI Symposium’s primary emphasis is to bring continuous improvement methods, including Lean, Theory of Constraints and Six Sigma, to light in an integrative, synergistic approach. It is also the occasion for the presentation of the prestigious Robert E. Fox awards. Lifetime honorees for the Fox Award are considered living role models in the field of organizational Continuous Improvement. This award recognizes those outstanding individuals whose pioneering spirit and inventiveness have improved our society and inspired others. The Fox Awards Review Board selects individuals they feel have contributed significantly to this endeavor, either with the creation, or passionate propagation, of breakthrough concepts. Past Lifetime Recipients include: Steven R. Covey, Peter Senge, Joel Barker, and others.

Click here to register for the 2011 Continuous Process Improvement symposium. Both live and Web Streaming registration is available.

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CBO Director Underestimates Public Sector Waste

Friday, September 16th, 2011

At a meeting of the Supercommittee Tuesday, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf cautioned that ferreting out waste, fraud and abuse would have a negligible impact on the panel’s work. “There is no evidence that suggests that this sort of effort can represent a large share of the $1.2 trillion or $1.5 trillion or the larger number that some of you have discussed as being the objective in savings for this committee,” Mr. Elmendorf said. The Washington Times story goes on to say that Vice President Joseph R. Biden is touting his efforts to find $1 billion in wasteful government spending here and there.

$1 billion dollars of waste in a federal budget that for 2012 alone is estimated to be $3.729 trillion? By my math this amount represents 0.027% of the budget. And that assumes that the Vice-President is looking at only one year’s savings. Such a pittance is hardly worth the bother.

My experience with the private sector suggests that there is in the neighborhood of 25%-40% waste in any organization which hasn’t applied Lean Six Sigma or any similar technique. This is well documented by research. The public sector certainly has at least this much room for improvement. At the low end of the estimate this represents a potential savings of $932 billion in the 2012 budget alone, or about 85% of the projected 2012 deficit. The fact that the CBO Director believes that public sector waste reduction opportunities is negligible indicates that he is completely unaware of the reality of the situation. It is unfortunate that he is spreading his ignorance to the Supercommittee charged with finding real savings. The implications for true reform and for eliminating non-value added activities rather than value-added activities are ominous.

The Operational Excellence community of professionals in the Quality, Six Sigma, Lean and Lean Six Sigma fields know from experience that the amount of waste is huge. This presents governments at all levels with the opportunity to eliminate deficits completely while not cutting value for the beneficiaries of programs. The question is, when will our political leaders begin to take this seriously? There is currently some work being pursued by the folks at Strong America Now to make this happen. Some Presidential Candidates, such as Newt Gingrich, are speaking out. The comments of Mr. Elmendorf and Mr. Biden’s efforts indicate that the current leadership has yet to understand the magnitude of the opportunity before them.

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Demand for Six Sigma Skills Remains High

Thursday, August 25th, 2011

The jobs site indeed.com reports that the percentage of job postings requesting Six Sigma skills remains near an all time high.

Six Sigma Job Graph

Six Sigma Job Graph

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Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Salaries 30% Higher Than Average

Thursday, August 18th, 2011

The site indeed.com reports that the average Lean Six Sigma Black Belt salary is $95K. The site reports that the average salary paid for Lean Six Sigma Black Belts is 30% higher than average salaries for all job postings nationwide. Lean Six Sigma Green Belt salaries average $5K less than Black Belts.

graph

Lean Six Sigma Black and Green Belt Salaries Remain High

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Lean Six Sigma Radio Chat Tonight

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

Like it or not, governments around the world are slashing budgets left right and center. Can they cut costs and still improve services? Some are looking to Lean Six Sigma methodologies – a quality and waste reduction tool set popular in corporate America – for answers. But is it the right tool set and how can governments use it effectively?

Listen to Quality Conversation LIVE as a panel of Lean Six Sigma and quality experts debate the practicalities of using LSS in government operations. Tonight’s panel discussion will be moderated by Diana Davis, Editor PEXNetwork.com at IQPC. Thomas Pyzdek, President of The Pyzdek Institute LLC, is one of the panelists.

Click here to listen to the conversation at 9:00PM Eastern Time.

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Conference call on Lean Six Sigma in Government

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

Author’s Note: Neither I nor The Pyzdek Institute endorse any candidate for any office.

Americans deserve a government that is both limited and efficient. They deserve to have politicians that look for ways to save taxpayer money and get back to a balanced budget. One way to get there would be to apply Lean Six Sigma to every aspect of the federal government, which could save taxpayers over $500 billion a year. The Lean Six Sigma Group on LinkedIn will hold its first of many Lean Six Sigma networking calls. The first call is to focus on the first topic will be on “How Lean Six Sigma can be used to Reduce Government Waste and/or Value Creation by $500B.”

Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich-Presidential Candidate

Guest Speakers:

  • Mr. Newt Gengrich, candidate for President of the United States.
  • Thomas Pyzdek, Author of The Six Sigma Handbook
  • Dr. Mikel Harry, co-author of Lean Six Sigma
  • Jim Bowie, author of Lean Acres
  • Vanessa Lovitt, Director of the Process Excellence Network
  • Joseph Paris, President of XONITEK

And others…

If you plan to attend please act quickly. There is a limit of 1000 persons on the call and the limit is being approached rapidly. If you work in the Six Sigma field, please join Newt for a conference call so he can listen and learn from you, get your feedback and ideas, and answer your questions – so together we can shrink and reform government to get back to a balanced budget.

Wednesday, August 17
8:15pm ET

RSVP for the call-in details

Click here to RSVP

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isixsigma.com may be closing its doors

Friday, July 22nd, 2011

According to a post by Larry Goldman, iSixSigma.com, the venerable online process improvement community, is probably closing its doors, due to the collapse of its parent company, Schofield Media. Launched in 2000, iSixSigma began as the hobby and passion of Mike Cyger, a MBB at GE Capital Commercial Equipment Finance. Mike constructed and nurtured a vibrant online community that captured the energy of the Lean Six Sigma movement and provided a central forum for discussion and resources.

There was a time when isixsigma.com was the dominant online presence in the Six Sigma world. Its lively forums were a place where the veterans and noobs alike came to discuss the basics as well as arcane topics. Like all Internet forums, the discussions were not always civil. (I used to post there anonymously and was amazed to discover just how little I knew and how stupid I was. At least according to the forum’s frequent fliers.) However, if one sifted through the forum responses the answer to the original forum post was usually in there somewhere.

My opinion is that the site never recovered from the hacker attack it suffered in May, 2009. The attack took the site offline for several months and afterwards the community never really came back to the site in the earlier numbers. There’s something about a “dangerous site” message appearing on your screen that makes you delete your bookmark. I also can’t say that I was impressed with management’s response to the attack. They did little or nothing to comfort their former visitors or to keep them informed of the status of repair efforts. When they came back online I saw no press announcing the fact, nor any effort to bring back visitors.

All-in-all, it’s sad to see isixsigma.com fade from the scene. I hope that it can be rescued and returned to a semblance of its former glory days. While we’re waiting for this to occur, why not join sixsigmatraining.org. Better still, contact me and request that your membership on this site be upgraded to author status. Let’s keep the community going!

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Tom Pyzdek and Mikel Harry to Appear on Web TV

Monday, July 18th, 2011
Thomas Pyzdek
Thomas Pyzdek

Dr. Mikel Harry

Watch a Live Broadcast Featuring Two of the World’s Leading Experts on Six Sigma

Quality Digest will be broadcasting a live TV broadcast entitled The Future of Six Sigma. Guests are Thomas Pyzdek, Author of the Six Sigma Handbook, and Dr. Mikel Harry, Principle Architect of Six Sigma. In addition to the interview by Dirk Dusharme and Mike Richman of Quality Digest, viewers will be able to ask questions live.

Topics

  • Why is Six Sigma still going strong after more than 25 years?
  • Will Six Sigma continue to thrive?
  • Using Six Sigma in government to address education, budget, trade, health care and more.
  • What’s the next frontier of Six Sigma?

Event Details

Date: July 25, 2011
Time: 11 a.m. Pacific / 2 p.m. Eastern
Where: http://www.qualitydigest.com/QDL-Special.html
Cost: Free

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Demand for Lean Six Sigma Skills Skyrockets

Monday, May 23rd, 2011

Quality Digest reports that a study by The Avery Group shows that companies flush with strong balance sheets after taking drastic actions during the recession are clearly making aggressive moves to bolster their internal talent pools by seeking both lean and Six Sigma talent, according to the seventh annual study from The Avery Group, which this year comprised reviews of nearly 6,700 recent Internet job postings. This study found that the combined demand for lean and Six Sigma talent has increased by more than 90 percent since last year.

“This year’s dramatic increase for lean and Six Sigma skills may have more to do with ensuring corporate performance and leveraging expected rising demand versus an early signal of overall hiring,” says Tim Noble, managing principal and partner of The Avery Point Group. “Companies are seeking lean and Six Sigma talent as a way to help their organizations better leverage their performance during the ongoing recovery. They don’t want to add back one-for-one on head count, inventory, and operating cost as the economy recovers and volume returns. Rather, they see continuous improvement talent as an enabler to help them gain and maintain significant performance leverage.”

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