Wisdom on the Green : Smarter Six Sigma Business Solutions (Paperback)

~ Forrest W. Breyfogle III (Author), David Enck (Author), Phil Flories (Author), Tom Pearson (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

This book follows four successful friends who met in graduate school while pursuing their MBAs. Now they meet for a monthly golf outing to continue their friendship, discuss their careers, and compete in a friendly golf game for the price of dinner. The challenges they face in business and in their personal lives are all too familiar. Golf provides an intriguing metaphor for the game of life, with its complexities and challenges, changing conditions, chances for creativity, penalties, and rewards. Moreover, golf is the game most often associated with business. As Hank, Jorge, Wayne, and Zack share their experiences and pursuit of improvement in Wisdom on the Green, they discover powerful new insights that help them see how they can improve their games, both in business and in golf.

This book will focus on the implementation of Six Sigma as a business strategy. Part of this strategy will include the integration of the Lean Enterprise philosophy with that of Six Sigma. We will also discuss ISO-9000:2000, Malcolm Baldrige Assessments, Total Quality Management (TQM), Balanced Scorecard, and Theory of Constraints (TOC).

For implementation of Six Sigma, we will describe our strategy, which we call Smarter Six Sigma SolutionsSM, or S4 SM. This step-by-step roadmap has evolved over the years within the training and coaching sessions conducted by Smarter SolutionsSM, Inc. An initial roadmap for this methodology is described in Implementing Six Sigma1 and Managing Six Sigma2.

The Smarter Six Sigma Solutions strategy calls the highest-level measurement a Satellite-LevelSM Metric, which is for tracking the high-level business measures to which Six Sigma projects are aligned. This approach also uses 30,000-Foot-LevelSM Metrics to track Key Process Output variables (KPOVs) of projects. These metrics are useful for establishing a baseline for Six Sigma projects, detecting when project change has occurred, and giving a high-level control measure that can monitor overall process change during and after a project is completed. To make improvements, focus is given within Six Sigma projects to identifying one or more Key Process Input Variables (KPIVs) that affect the KPOV variable. With the S4 approach, many KPIVs are referred to as 50-Foot-LevelSM Metrics, which are used to control the KPOV(s).

The mathematical relationship Y=f(x) is sometimes used within Six Sigma training to represent the principle that in a system, outputs are a function of inputs. In Six Sigma terms: KPOV=f(KPIV).

Some how-tos will be included within this book; however, we will reference other books, articles, and websites that give more in-depth descriptions of implementation.

The glossary elaborates on both technical and golfing terms used within the book that may not be familiar to all readers.

About the Author

Forrest W. Breyfogle III

Forrest W. Breyfogle III is a Professional Engineer, ASQ (American Society for Quality) Certified Quality Engineer and Reliability Engineer, and an ASQ Fellow. He has conducted many Six Sigma training and coaching sessions throughout the world. He has taught classes or conducted external workshops for many professional societies, including Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), American Society for Quality (ASQ), and Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME).

David Enck

David has eight years of experience as a Master Black Belt and over 15 years of experience with measurement capability, statistical process control, and design of experiments for process and product development in a variety of industries. He has worked with flexible circuits, medical devices, IC manufacturing and environmental assessment. In addition to his extensive industrial experience, David has broad teaching experience that includes three years of lecturing in the Statistics Department at the University of Florida and teaching DFSS and process characterization methods to all levels of a business operation, from VP to operator.

David is a Ph.D. candidate (A.B.D.) in Industrial and Systems Engineering, with a minor in Statistics, from the University of Florida at Gainesville. He holds both an M.A. and a B.A. in Statistics, with an emphasis in Computer Science and Engineering, from SUNY at Buffalo, New York.

Phil Flories

Phil is an instructor and course developer for Smarter Solutions. Previously, he spent 25 years with Motorola as a Quality Engineer. Phil is a certified lead examiner for QS9000 (Lloyds). His ASQ certifications include Certified Quality Engineer, Certified Quality Manager, and Certified Quality Auditor. He also prepares and teaches ASQ certification preparation classes (CQE, CQT, CMI, CQA, CQM).

Phil has served with the Texas Quality Award, six years on the panel of judges and seven years training examiners. He lives in the Austin, Texas area with his wife and three children.

Thomas A. Pearson

Tom Pearson is a Technical Fellow and co-founder of Praedictus Corporation, an Indianapolis company that provides predictive process management software tools and methods for real-time operations management and business improvement. Tom received his BA in Physics and Mathematics from University of Indianapolis and MS in Operations Research from The George Washington University. Tom is a systems scientist, designer, consultant, speaker, and author in the field of business improvement and information systems. He co-holds US patents for Real-Time Quality Management and Entity Relation Data Base software. He also designed the Exploratory Quality Control software and co-authored the Exploratory Quality Control Handbook. Tom was elected a Fellow in the American Society for Quality in 1998, and completed his S4 Black Belt training in 1999.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Smarters Solutions (August 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0971322201
• ISBN-13: 978-0971322202
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,188,388 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Six Sigma in perspective!!, October 23, 2001

By	Paul E. Brown (Lockport, New York United States) - See all my reviews

-Book is as insightful as it is easy to read!!

-Excellent job of contrasting Lean,TQM, and Baldridge to Six Sigma and why Six Sigma is different (and in fact works!). I always suspected the things you elegantly described in the book as each of the four golfers described their experience. It is so clear after you understand Six Sigma (why it works that is), yet so elusive if you don't.

-I always suspected that simple control charts are an effective way to track an organizations performance of high level metrics (Satellite Metrics as described in the book ). Thank you for confirming my suspicion and crystallizing the concept!

-The type of infrequently sampled metrics for control charting (described in the book) could further enhance our Project selection process and help the organization recognize improvement over time at a level higher than the Six Sigma Project KPOV.

-Thought you did a great job encouraging DOE in transactional & Business projects. I think we have been too dismissive of DOE in these type of projects and resort to something we call "piloted solutions"..which have their place but lack the power of DOE. I guess the one fear Ive always had is the discrete nature of the KPOV's in such DOE's, and if treating count data (like the mailers you described in the book) as continuous data is appropriate. Certainly discrete data can be used..but usually requires a pretty hefty sample size. The other concern we have had is the ability to control noise in such an extended time frame needed in Sales/Marketing DOE's. I think you are right and there is much power in a balanced and orthogonal approach to such projects.

After reading your book..I understand perfectly why you have a concern about absolute focus on short term process capability analysis in all Six Sigma Projects. It has its place in some projects (like PC boards)..but in others it can be totally misleading depending on definition of opportunities (read..too much non-value add time spent trying to determine what an opportunity is). I agree with you 100%!. Im actually feeling good now that Ive seen someone say that in print!

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wisdom on the Green or ways to change a company, October 2, 2001

By	William H. Baker, Jr. (Allen, Texas United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I read this book with a critical eye on what's in it for me, since I feel like I understand the change strategies & philosophies referenced in the book. What I found was that through the use of golf and the various characters that it brought the concepts more in focus and provided some "storytelling" capability to my elevator talks within our company. It's fun reading and should help executives grasp the fundamentals at the same time. This would be particularly useful to an executive contemplating major change approaches.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth the Read, March 7, 2004

By	Maj M. Phillips "Retired Grunt" (Republic of Texas) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I didn't know much about either Six Sigma or golf, but this book presented Six Sigma in a way that I could understand it. The golf lesssons were interesting without getting me lost in the terms. This is not a book for someone looking for Six Sigma certification. It is a book for that person's boss, who won't have the time or inclination to read the massive volume that the practitioner needs.