Customer Reviews

Six Sigma Simplified, 3rd ed - Breakthrough Improvement Made Easy

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2 star:		(1)
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It's so refreshing to review a six sigma publication that doesn't pretend to be "rocket science", I particularly enjoyed the extremely simple application of the six sigma methodology and the de- mystifying of the six sigma methodology that tends to be extremely mystified in the majority of six sigma publications. This publication would be an excellent addition to any internal training initiative endeavouring to educate and inform employees of the intentions of this quality tool in a non intelectual way that allows for the integration of more complex mathematical methods of data collection, the clear way that the selection and use of control charts were presented was even understood by my colleauges who admit to being affraid of math. All in all this publication is a practical handbook for breaking the uninitiated into the six sigma philosophy.

As I was reading this book, I felt like I was at a sales presentation. Lots of razzmatazz and little substance. It just skimmed over everything and didn't really explain anything. Then I got to the back of the book and found all the pages of products for sale by the author's company and realized that it was a sales presentation.

The author skillfully manages to make learning relatively advanced statistics easy through stories, examples and anecdotes. Where the skills comes in is the wide range of complex topics that are introduced and clearly explained. To a highly technical reader this may come across as either condescending. However, the fact is that all of the important details and techniques are covered in great detail, and are wrapped in friendly prose. This ensures that hard-to-learn concepts need not be hard to learn, nor the learning process intimidating.

What I like is the systematic coverage of key concepts and knowledge areas, each of which builds upon the preceding topic. The book starts with compelling business reasons for embarking on a 6-Sigma initiative, and what 6-Sigma entails. It them introduces an approach for reducing cycle time and improving quality in a 2- and 4-step process. After establishing that framework, the book shows how to sustain the improvements using key indicators for process stability and capability, and how to effectively employ statistical process controls to proactively track them.

The foregoing alone would make this an excellent introductory book on 5-Sigma, but the author goes on to tackle advanced topics such as design of experiments, quality function deployment and benchmarking. These are certainly integral components of a complete 6-Sigma initiative, but I didn't expect to find them covered in an introductory book. I also liked the complete coverage of basic TQM tools and techniques at the end of the book.

If you need to either learn the fundamentals of 6-Sigma or train a non-technical workforce this is an ideal book. If you are going to teach or facilitate a 6-Sigma workshop you'll also want the author's "Six Sigma Instructor Guide" (ISBN 1884180140), which provides a syllabus and learning objectives that use this book as the student text.