This is an incredibly great article.

PLEASE expand it into a book.

With Detroit in front of Congress today, having flown into Washington DC in private jets
is so out of touch that this is a perfect time for your book.

Write it!

Thanks,

Steve Johnson

This is a wonderful article that Obama’s
next “Chief of Technology”,
whoever that person may be,
should read and consider carefully.

Thank you.

SteveJ

If I may attempt to economize:

• Synergy: The entire is greater than the sum of the parts.

• 1 + 1 > 2

• ? + ? > ?

• ? + ? > yin yang

“Don’t let school interfere with your education.” Mark Twain

Imagine a Venn diagram - one black circle and one white circle, same radius, in two plane space nowhere touching – converging to concentricity.

Visualize the results:
A disc, white on one side, blank on the other?
A disc, yin-yang on both sides?
A white marble with colored continents painted on the surface?
An earth,… revolving within a concentric, clear and white paisley spherical atmosphere?
Back to the Big Bang,… now,… moving forward?
… to Beethoven’s 9th?

Thank you.

I think one key word idea in your comment is “…good implementation of six sigma..” There is, of course, variation in how Six Sigma is defined and carried out.

It is also true that a planned approach to improvement efforts is better than some helter skelter arrangement.

But planned approach to improvement, good implementation, top management support, etc., are not the exclusive domain of Six Sigma. In 1950 Deming told the management of Japan’s industry that they had to be in the leadership. Nothing new about that.

As for dramatic yield improvement, it happens. I have seen it many times and often before there was such a thing as Six Sigma. Again, there is nothing particularly Six Sigma about that, not is it particularly new.

Another example is the DMAIC methodology. In one form or another it’s been around for years.

As I pointed out in another post, I have advocated the use of in-house, specially trained resources to guide improvement efforts. I didn’t name the role after Karate belts, I called them statistical quality consultants, but it’s basically the same idea. I was advocating that to clients in 1980. Six years before Six Sigma hit the scene.

In an article I wrote for an Australian Business Journal, I called Six Sigma, largely a matter of the “…same soup in a different can…” Six sigma has basically changed a lot of terminology, added some statistical smoke and mirrors and other than that is not terribly different from the traditional ASQ approach to quality. That is why it has been so completely embraced. It’s nothing really new. It is a defect oriented program. Set the spec, find the defect via inspection, segragate the defect, find the “root cause” (is if there were such a thing) and take corrective action. In part III I point out why that falls short in my opinion.

Other than that what is unique to Six Sigma is the statistical part of it and that is also what I criticized. It is theoretically unsound and I don’t think that there is much argument with that….at least not among statisticians.