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Finance Six Sigma & Quality Article Archive
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Quality Spotlight Archive | Management Spotlight Archive | Tools Spotlight Archive Readers' Choice: View All Top-Rated Articles Archives by Year: 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 - VOC Advances: Complementary Innovation for Growth
Many companies are creating new growth and value by addressing their customers' hassles and issues with the organizations' existing product/service rather than by improving the original offerings. The idea is called "complementary innovation." Read the full article. December 15, 2004
- Six Sigma Strategy: Understanding the Customer Process
Companies need an organized approach to making change happen in order to enhance the customer experience and positively impact the company's profitability. The initial step for top management is to define and document a customer strategy. Read the full article. December 1, 2004
- VOC Advances: New Paths to Understanding Customers
Competing businesses usually have the same customers and the same market information. The company that best understands those customers will end up with the edge. Enter ethnography, the next step beyond the traditional VOC collection methods. Read the full article. November 17, 2004
- Yellow Belts: Creating a Corporate Sense of Inclusion
A more general knowledge across an organization may pay bigger dividends than deeper knowledge in fewer Six Sigma experts. Yellow Belt training mitigates potential impediments to improvement and change by creating a sense of corporate inclusion. Read the full article. November 3, 2004
- Turning Judgment Calls into Reliable Data with Gage R&R
One of the biggest challenges in making improvements in transactional processes is getting data which can be relied upon. An often-overlooked tool in the Lean Six Sigma toolbox, Gage R&R, can be of immeasurable help in improving data reliability. Read the full article. October 20, 2004
- Important to Understand the Process Before Improving It
To sustain continuous improvements in organizational processes, an organization must first understand its processes. And in a services environment, this can be difficult. A single process may be perceived as diversely as the people performing it Read the full article. October 6, 2004
- Minimizing Risks: How to Apply FMEA in Services
FMEA, which has become widespread among Six Sigma practitioners, is a system for analyzing the design of a product or service system to identify potential failures, then taking steps to counteract or at least minimize the risks from those failures. Read the full article. September 22, 2004
- Customer-Centric Risk Management Via Hoshin Planning
Risk management should be a "best practices strategy" aligning data, technology, people and processes across the organization, and not an "audit compliance task." That is especially true in the face of implementation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and Basel II. Read the full article. September 8, 2004
- Why a Team Cannot Afford to Overlook the C in DMAIC - An iSixSigma Case Study
The initial results of a new quality improvement effort at a Midwest lockbox operation were disappointing - the error rate seemed to be increasing. When the SixSigma team got to the Control phase it began solving the problem of excessive errors. Read the full article. August 25, 2004
- Reducing Delays in Service Processes with Rapid Setup
Job processes that include non-value-added work which increase delays and extend work in progress are common in service functions. They usually are accepted as "the way work is done." But a rapid setup method can help streamline those processes. Read the full article. July 14, 2004
- Using 'Preferred Roles' to Assure Best Team Performance
Considering "preferred roles" and "allowable weaknesses" when planning a Six Sigma project and selecting members of the project team makes sense. It provides a more scientific approach to helping assure better team performance and project success. Read the full article. June 30, 2004
- Before Deployment: ‘Minding Your Ps to Get Your Q’
Within an organization, it is easy to find agreement on the need to be quality-focused. What cannot always be agreed upon is an assessment of an organization’s maturity in continuous improvement process and its readiness for adopting a culture change. Read the full article. June 16, 2004
- Six Sigma Methodology for Credit Risk and Credit Scoring
Six Sigma is a mindset that ensures problems are approached with rationality and based on a scientific procedure. So why do science-oriented credit risk managers sometimes resist Six Sigma, even in organizations that embrace the methodology? Read the full article. June 2, 2004
- Pull System Speeds Up Work Flow and Project Cycle Time
A "pull system," in which work enters a process at the same rate it exits. The result is a faster work flow and faster project cycle times. And with the "exit rate" controlled by customer demand, the customers' needs are always met. Read the full article. May 19, 2004
- Salvaging a Call Center’s Big Software Investment
The call center handled technical problems and policy issues for a financial institution's branches across the country But complaints and cost overruns indicated problems. New software did not help. The company found the answer is a Six Sigma project. Read the full article. May 5, 2004
- Art of Integration with the Help of Lean and Six Sigma
It may seem un-Six Sigma-like to use art concepts in a discussion of Lean/Six Sigma and the merger of two large financial institutions. But in fact, any serious approach to integrating two complex organizations can benefit from thinking in terms of art as well as science. Read the full article. April 21, 2004
- Combining the Power of DMAIC with Testing Processes
Companies today make great financial investments in testing their processes and systems. If they want to ensure they can meet customer expectations, it is sensible to bring the testing processes under the DMAIC method of Six Sigma. Read the full article. April 7, 2004
- Learning to Recognize Process Waste in Financial Services
To help Six Sigma practitioners in financial services begin developing a “waste-sensing” ability, here is a description of seven specific types of process waste that someone is doing somewhere in virtually every company right now. Read the full article. March 24, 2004
- Fast Start Collecting Data on Financial Service Process
In any financial service process that is being studied for the first time, it's common for Six Sigma teams to spend one-third to one-half of their project time on data collection alone. Here are three tips that may help teams get a fast started. Read the full article. March 10, 2004
- How to Make Interbank Image Exchange a Reality
More and more banks are using Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) to help them to take full advantage of such modern processes as electronic check presentment, thereby reducing expenses and increasing profits. Read the full article. February 25, 2004
- Balancing Roles and Responsibilities in Six Sigma
One simple way for a company to assign and balance Six Sigma roles and responsibilities is to use RACI analysis. RACI can help track what responsibility those with each different role in a process improvement project should have in each decision. Read the full article. February 11, 2004
- Balancing Roles and Responsibilities in Six Sigma
One simple way for a company to assign and balance Six Sigma roles and responsibilities is to use RACI analysis. RACI can help track what responsibility those with each different role in a process improvement project should have in each decision. Read the full article. February 11, 2004
- Comparing and Blending ISO9000 and Lean Six Sigma
Though each methodology was originally seen as distinct from the other, businesses are now coming to see that there are valuable synergies between ISO9000 and Lean Six Sigma. And the two can be blended to achieve maximum effect. Read the full article. January 28, 2004
- Improving Financial Services Through TQM: A Case Study
A young, rapidly expanding company in the financial services sector with no previous experience with Total Quality Management takes its first steps toward TQM. And it immediately learns the value of a formal program to improve quality. Read the full article. January 28, 2004
- Using Triage to Manage Process Workloads in Services
Finding ways to manage workflow and minimize congestion, and the delays it causes, is a common challenge in service businesses. One of the most effective tools for dealing with congestion is triage. Read the full article. January 1, 2004
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