Over at the LinkedIn Continuous Improvement, Six Sigma & Lean Group, I posted a discussion question that generated some great responses. Here was my original question:Lean Six Sigma practitioner's ad hoc data surveyRecently I was talking with a black belt who told me "I know exactly what you mean by the data shuffle. Three hours [...]

Last February, I started writing down the reading on our electrical meter every morning when I got to work. I subtracted the prior day's reading to get the amount (in Kilowatt Hours) that we used the prior day. After about a month I pasted the data into GainSeeker Suite SPC Software and came up with this chart... I also calculated the average daily cost and sent out a memo to my staff....

Forrest Breyfogle posted a great question over at Linked-In: Does our corporate leadership's relationship-building strengths make it a challenge for them to truly understand and resolve the fundamental system improvement and re-engineering needs of the financial crisis? From examination of the myers-briggs personality types we note that not everyone thinks the same. One observation is [...]

It doesn't take a lot to imagine what an 18%+ unemployment rate does to ancillary businesses. These days you probably don't need to make a reservation at a restaurant, and my friends in plumbing and construction businesses are - well - hurting. As I've read all this coverage about our neighboring city I want to say "Yes, but..."

A recent article on SearchDataManagement.com about a Gartner Group conference on Business Intelligence (BI) discusses the fact that business intelligence is probably the number one priority for CIOs, but most companies have not translated that prioritization into high value. That conclusion doesn't surprise me. I've been arguing for sometime that most businesses under-utilize their data [...]

This post is a departure from my usual ramblings about how real-time access to accurate, actionable data can help drive business transformation, save money and increase profits. Actually it is still about data and how we're responding to data, but has a slightly different twist. There has been a lot of buzz in the mainstream [...]

Hertzler Systems Inc. is planting hundreds of trees to sequester carbon dioxide and beautify neighborhood. Wayne Stanger of Stanger Trees Plants 600 Trees for Hertzler Systems Goshen, IN, March 27, 2009 – Hertzler Systems Inc., a leading provider of SPC Software, KPI Software, and Operational Intelligence software, announced today that is planting 600 trees at [...]

Here is a chance to participate in Hertzler Systems' development effort. Sometime in the next few months we'll be releasing Version 8 of GainSeeker® Suite. One important capability in this new version is a brand new report writer. I saw a sneak preview of it the other day, and my jaw dropped open several times [...]

A couple years ago we sponsored a research report by the Aberdeen Group on best practices in Six Sigma deployments. You can download a copy of the report, and a companion white paper that I wrote for the report called "Leveraging Technology to Transform Culture." For me the most astonishing thing about that 2006 report [...]

I love this post from Thomas Wailgum at CIO.COM. His title says it all: "Wake Up People! Forget Twitter and iPhone Apps, and Focus on SAP and ERP Apps." I've been on Twitter now for several months and I confess that I find it addicting. I still can't decide if it is irrelevant or useful. [...]