Whats this about…?

I have always wondered if I will ever be able to maintain a blog someday. It’s not about having a blog and about some random posts once or twice a year, which off course, I did in last three or four years. It has to be about something which is interesting enough for the readers, which adds some value to there lives, either personally or professionally, which can put some perspective on some subject, which shares some experiences which are worth sharing. That being said, the question always remained, What should I blog about?

Its been always said that the topics that one should blog about should be from your areas of expertise, although not necessary that you are an expert. And the topics should be interesting and relevant to your readers, to your social circle or to your professional peers.

Working as Lean Six Sigma (LSS) – Black Belt for close to a decade provided me with immense exposure to the exciting world of various quality methodologies such as Six Sigma and Lean, various other process improvements and business process transformation tools and techniques. The best part of this role was (and still is) to facilitate LSS trainings and even to my surprise, I seem to like it. Facilitating LSS trainings, or for that matter, simply talking/discussing about the tools and concepts of LSS fascinates me.

There is one particular challenge that I have noted in almost every session that I conducted for Six Sigma. It can get really tough to explain the tools, techniques and concepts to people with no statistical background, where you need to start right from explaining what data types are and what a distribution or shape of data really mean. Even with people with statistical background, connecting the statistics back to the process, seems to be a complicated task. And the irony is, most of the people who can or who need to use this tools and techniques are with no statistical background ( not the BBs/MBBs/QLs etc, but people managing the processes, in all functions of all business, who face varied problems in there routine work and who want to solve for those problems ).

The simple solutions to this is to explain the tools, techniques and concepts in very simple, layman language, through day-to-day examples and then linking them back to process improvements, managing to keep it far from statistics as much as possible.This simple strategy helped me a lot during facilitating the sessions that I conducted and the results were really good. The understanding seemed to be far better than that in a statistics class. Most importantly, it made the topic interesting, interactive and not at all boring.

And that is exactly what I wish to write here. Statistical process improvement, Six Sigma tools and concepts, Lean methodology, DMAIC etc explained in the most simple ways possible. I will try and cover the various aspect of process improvement, the statistical tools, tests that six sigma uses, approach to define and solve a process problem, all different methodologies etc, almost everything that one should know about process improvement.

By the way, do check out the Certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Handbook – it is one of the most essential guide for anyone trying to get certified as LSS Black belt or in general wants to understand LSS and improve processes. – check it out here.

I will also make an honest effort to post in regular intervals, atleast 2-3 posts per month. The list of topics that I intent to cover in the next couple of months is already build. In the  first post, I will try and address the basic question, where should one look for process problems to pick up and solve using LSS.

Sachin Naik

Passionate about improving processes and systems | Lean Six Sigma practitioner, trainer and coach for 14+ years consulting giant corporations and fortune 500 companies on Operational Excellence | Start-up enthusiast | Change Management and Design Thinking student | Love to ride and drive

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