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Title: The Six Sigma Way Team Fieldbook: An Implementation Guide for Process Improvement Teams by Peter S. Pande, Robert P. Neuman, Roland R. Cavanagh ISBN: 0-07-137314-4 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Trade Pub. Date: 14 December, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.75 (8 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Six Sigma and Project Management Tips
Comment: This Six Sigma book is for those who have little direct experience as a project manager. In addition to an introduction to Six Sigma (albeit not as efficient introduction as "What Is Six Sigma?"), the authors go into depth on team dynamics and other project management information.
While the project management information is good and an excellent refresher for those who are only peripherally involved with project management, it helps to feed the Achilles heal of Six Sigma: the perception that it's the same old stuff repackaged and given inflated value.
A quick read of the reviews on Amazon will give you a feel for why people are skeptical of 6 Sigma: the feel-good tone of most writing on 6 Sigma and the insistence that it "is not a flavor-of-the-month management trend" make many of us suspect that 6 Sigma is not much more than hollow jargon and acronyms.
Lets accept that these criticisms are valid and further that many "practitioners" are just self-aggrandizing or worse. But that still leaves us with the essential difficulties of positive change in any organization: you need to overcome assumptions that your organization's subculture may not even realize it has. What a corporation does by accepting Six Sigma is that it empowers people to gather data to challenge what "everybody knows". Most importantly, it sets a very high quality standard, which further sanctions data-driven change.
I was not surprised to see that this book was used successfully in a college-level course on Six Sigma. That audience is less cynical that many in the corporate world and certainly could use exposure to project management.
I feel that the greatest flaw in Six Sigma is that many practitioners and even the books permit the basics to be lost in the shuffle. If one listens to people talk about Six Sigma, its easy to forget that a critical part of Six Sigma is that the data comes first, not the solution. I often hear co-workers say "we need to finish this project to improve our six sigmas" or "if we could get rid of this server we'll all get our green belts".
The term Six Sigma is derived from statistics. This book covers all the necessary statistics and other "tools".
If you just want an introduction to Six Sigma, I would recommend "What Is Six Sigma?" (by some of the same authors). If you'd also like to read about project management, this book will serve you well. But be warned, you'll see feel-good digressions such as an explanation of why Sherlock Holmes would have made a great Six Sigma Black Belt. Some will find these digressions annoying.
I would also recommend Michael Lewis' Moneyball as a companion book. Lewis (author of "Liar's Poker") uses Wall Street trading as an analogy to explain why the Oakland As baseball team is one of the successful teams with much less money than most. But I also see an analogy relevant to the topic of Six Sigma. "Moneyball" also shows how one can achieve superior results by testing what everyone thinks they know with fact gathering and rigorous analyses. "Moneyball" may prove to be an inspiring book for those about to measure processes and look for opportunities for dramatic improvement: precisely what Six Sigma practitioners SHOULD be doing.
Rating: 5
Summary: Just right for Green Belt training
Comment: The Six Sigma Way Team Fieldbook is an excellent companion to the original Six Sigma Way. I'm using it as a primary textbook in the Green Belt course at the college where I teach. The Fieldbook does a good job of laying out the "nuts and bolts" process of attacking a problem and making improvements. The book is a little light in some of the more techinical areas, specifically in the Analysis Stage of the DMAIC model. That's where I come in as the course instuctor. I supplement the Fieldbook with the QCI CSSBB Primer and use MiniTab software for statistical analysis. It all blends together, and is held together, by the very well written descriptions of DMAIC methodologies in the Team Fieldbook. This book is exactly what it is intended to be -- A Team Fieldbook for Six Sigma practitioners. Used with the guidance from an experienced Six Sigma practitioner (Black Belt), it is an excellent tool for both training and basic reference.
Rating: 1
Summary: Black belt, here I show you the book of idols
Comment: Lets analyze this book deeply. Actually this book is totally useless. Here the authors dig deeper into the magic, the sophistry, of Six Sigma. Please tell us more practitioners of this blind faith.
This book details how to create the teams needed for Six Sigma. First it explains the role of the 'black belt' and 'master black belt'. We're not given insights into why a business model for grown ups has to treat us all like children, having teams and coaches and lots of 'feel good' language invovled. How bout a chapter on firing lazy employees? How bout a chapter on what to do when 10% of the items coming off the line are defective? No, that would be too realistic. No wholesome language, Just wizardry. When every single item coming off the line is defective we must sic the teams on it and analyze the issues, the diversity, the feel goodies of it. How bout just firing every single person on the line? This book is pure sophistry detailing a fad, a flavor of the week approach developed at GE and now appearing in every book in the world on business.
Business existed before Six Sigma and it will exist when this flawed system is gone.
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Title: The Six Sigma Way: How GE, Motorola, and Other Top Companies are Honing Their Performance by Peter S. Pande et al, Robert P. Neuman, Roland R. Cavanagh ISBN: 0071358064 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Trade Pub. Date: 27 April, 2000 List Price(USD): $32.95 |
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Title: Rath & Strong's Six Sigma Pocket Guide by Rath & Strong ISBN: 0970507909 Publisher: Rath & Strong, Inc Pub. Date: 17 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: What Is Six Sigma? by Peter S. Pande, Lawrence Holpp, Larry Holpp, Pete Pande ISBN: 0071381856 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Trade Pub. Date: 26 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Lean Six Sigma for Service : How to Use Lean Speed and Six Sigma Quality to Improve Services and Transactions by Michael L. George ISBN: 0071418210 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Trade Pub. Date: 27 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: The Six Sigma Handbook, Revised and Expanded : The Complete Guide for Greenbelts, Blackbelts, and Managers at All Levels by Thomas Pyzdek ISBN: 0071410155 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Trade Pub. Date: 20 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $89.95 |
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