Featured content from Catalyst’s experienced team of Trainers and Consultants. Themes include Lean Six Sigma Training and Consulting, Continuous Improvement and Operational Excellence
If it was easy to distil the art of good management to a few hundred words of advice then there’d be no such thing as a bad manager and, as anyone who has ever worked in virtually any kind of organisation or business will tell you, there quite definitely is such a thing as a…
How do you work? ‘Hard’ will undoubtedly be the answer you give to that question, since everybody thinks they work hard and, indeed, most of us do. There are exceptions, of course, and if you’re reading this in the workplace then the chances are that you just raised your eyes from the screen to glance…
Throughout a DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control) improvement project, developing a storyboard summary of the key decisions and outputs helps you review progress and share what you’ve learnt. A storyboard builds up as you work your way through your project by capturing the key outputs and findings from the DMAIC phases. And it also…
In much the way as Lean methodology and Six Sigma synergise into Lean Six Sigma to form a perfect partnership, so, too does Lean Six Sigma with the EFQM Model and its fundamental concepts. Let’s start by looking at the relationship between Lean and Six Sigma and the formulation of Lean Six Sigma. We need…
In part one we covered the importance of process mapping. In this second and final part we will get down to brass tacks and discuss how to create process maps and how to use them to greatest effect. How to process map Process maps can take a number of different forms and, depending on complexity,…
Already recommended by the British Quality Foundation, we are pleased to announce that our Lean Six Sigma Foundation Green Belt programme is now formally accredited by ICiPS (Institute for Continuous Improvement in Public Services)! Following her assessment of the programme, ICiPS CEO, Debbie Simpson said, “I am delighted to confirm that the depth, content and quality of subject matter covered…
Learn how to get it right first time Consider Apple. Right now we have the iPhone 6, there will be an iPhone 6s, and even rumoured to be an iPhone 7 this year. But what about iPhone 8, 9 or even 10? You can be sure they are working on these, behind the scenes. This is…
Take a tour through 40, Acacia Avenue, the House of Quality, it’s at the heart of the road to better design Last time we provided a brief introduction to the DMADV (Define, Measure, Analyse, Design and Verify) method for innovation and design. This time, we’ll take a tour through the House of Quality, otherwise known…
When designing a new product, service or process I’m reminded of ‘Lean on Me’, the old Bill Withers song, which opens with the lines: “Sometimes in our lives We all have pain, we all have sorrow” At work, this pain and sorrow is often caused by poorly performing processes that are full of waste and…
In Shakespeare’s famous play, Juliet tells Romeo that a name is an artificial and meaningless convention: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” This encapsulates the central struggle and tragedy of the play, and is one of Shakespeare’s most famous quotes. What’s more, it’s…
