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Heretic Articles

ROI President Steve Ouellette writes a popular monthly article for Quality Digest's InsideSixSigma online newsletter. These articles humorously (and usefully) discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of how Six Sigma is implemented. You can access those articles here.

If you want to be notified via an RSS feed as new articles are published, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the RSS Logo icon.



Show Me The Money

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If you have been following my articles for the last few months, you know that we’re almost done with an experimental analysis and that today we will be doing the final step—making our company money. If you haven’t been following my articles, then you should probably be flogged with a soggy noodle until you admit to your other crimes in a tearful confession posted on YouTube.

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Homoscedasticity

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For the last couple of columns, we have been analyzing a simple experiment where we look for the best choice for a new gear material. We have used analysis of variance (ANOVA) to detect a difference in the mean wear for the four different materials. In the last column, we performed a post-hoc test to determine which means were actually different from one another. However, to find the best solution, we need to know true costs, and to get that I need to know the variability associated with the different materials. At the end of the article, I’ll give you a chance to show off —the first one to e-mail me the correct cost analysis will get bragging rights and their name (or reasonably tasteful nom de plume if you prefer) in print.

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ANOVA by any other name

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By the time you are reading this, you will have made your New Year’s resolutions, and I will have already broken mine. But I have an idea for a resolution that you might be interested in keeping, and one that could make your New Year happy and profitable. It is something that most Black Belts I talk to have never heard of. Before we get there, we need to talk about another powerful tool, with which you may be familiar.
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Was it Colder in Grandpa's Day?

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Digging out from a data blizzard

As I’m writing this, our first big snowfall of the year is piling up outside and it is –10°C (15°F). This brings to mind the many times my grandfather told me of how he walked to school in winter uphill (both ways) with no shoes. So I wondered, will I be able to spin the same yarn for my girls and tell them about how much colder it was when I was young? And could granddad have been exaggerating about more than the fish he caught? So (of course) I did what any data-geek would do and downloaded the data. Let’s take a look and see how this time series pertains to Black Belts.
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Sample Size

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Greek alphabet soup

Harvest time—vegetables fresh from the local farmer’s market going right into a homemade soup, eaten with fresh bread. Yum! This month, I’d like to talk about a recipe for a Greek alphabet soup, which you had better know about if you plan on doing an experiment. This may be the first recipe that might save your bacon, rather than use it up.

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Testimonials

After reviewing several online courses, I finally told myself to make a decision based on the information I had.  I could have easily spent another 6 months reviewing my many options, but I really wanted to get started on a course this summer while I had a little more free time.  Your course definitely stood out among the others - especially in the area of personal mentoring which is very important to me.

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Our Economic Stimulus Package: $200 Off (click to learn more)

During this recent economic downturn, we have been contacted by a number of people who are looking to add more qualifications to their resume, either to increase their value at their current job or open some options as they seek employment after a layoff, as well as businesses looking for training with a high return on investment.  Six Sigma Online would like to do what little we can to help you out if this is your situation.

Six Sigma Online already offers one of the lowest price ways to get your Black Belt while still offering much greater depth of knowledge than you can get anywhere else.  In addition, for a limited time we will offer you a 10% discount to make it that much easier to get the skills you need to achieve your employment objectives.  Just contact us directly before ordering and let us know.

Businesses right now desperately need to find ways to improve profit and reduce the costs of quality.  Black Belts are the "edge of the blade" in this endeavor and so are in demand.  Our training will maximize the success of your projects with knowledge you will need as you encounter real-world problems to solve.  Here at Six Sigma Online, we hope that our training, and the discount above, will go some way to help individuals and businesses survive these tough times.

 

Heretic Articles

This article was originally published in InsideSixSigma, a monthly online newsletter published by Quality Digest. Subscribe to InsideSixSigma if you would like to receive these articles when they are published.

Random Heresy

Prurient Photographs

I had a lot of feedback from interested readers in regards to Stupid Six Sigma Tricks #5, which I jokingly called “Pop Stars Without Clothing,” and which was about the frequent misuse of statistics in the Six Sigma world. Taking heart from this response to what might have been viewed as dusty old statistics, I decided forthrightly to call this Stupid Six Sigma Trick #3, Prurient Photographs.

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In the News

Six Sigma's lead instructor Steven Ouellette wrote an article with Dr. Jeffrey Luftig on "The Decline of Ethical Behavior in Business."

 


 

Six Sigma Online's lead instructor Steven Ouellette was profiled in the June 2008 issue of Quality Digest magazine. If you want to learn more about Steve's peculiar view of the world, as well as what he studied for a year in Europe, read the profile online.