impooratant resource links for lean sixsigma

Open Courseware (free) – Six Sigma, Lean, Process Improvement, and related topics




A. Lean Six Sigma and Process Improvement

-- "Lean Six Sigma", from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Engineering-Systems-Division/ESD-60Summer-2004/CourseHome/index.htm



-- "Integrating the Lean Enterprise", from MIT

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Aeronautics-and-Astronautics/16-852JFall-2005/CourseHome/index.htm



-- Operations Management, from MIT (some Lean-related materials in this course)

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-Scho...Home/index.htm



-- "Process Improvement in Healthcare" course, from George Mason University (GWU), one of the state universities in Virginia USA -- lots of audio material included, too:

http://gunston.gmu.edu/healthscience/708/default.asp



-- "Decision Analysis in Health Care", from GWU

http://gunston.gmu.edu/730/default.asp



… which includes “Root Cause Analysis” in healthcare settings (lots of healthcare examples included):

http://gunston.gmu.edu/730/Presentations/root.html



-- Tutorials about Lean, from the U.S. military:

http://www.dau.mil/educdept/mm_dept_...s/navbar/lean/





B. Statistics



-- a VERY good Elementary Statistics course from Foothill-De Anzwa Community College District in California

http://sofia.fhda.edu/gallery/statistics/index.html



This on-line course from Foothill-De Anzwa deserves special attention. It has a lot of extras, included embedded videos and tests (with selected answers provided, too) -- HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. It even has some videos to help you (or your high-school student) understand how to use a TI-83 calculator:

http://sofia.fhda.edu/gallery/statis...alculator.html



-- Applied Statistics, from MIT

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-Scho...03/CourseHome/



-- Introduction to Probability and Statistics, from MIT

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Mathematic...05/CourseHome/



-- Entry-level statistics course from Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU)

http://www.cmu.edu/oli/courses/enter_statistics.html



- - Data Analysis and Basic Statistics in Healthcare

http://gunston.gmu.edu/healthscience/597/default.asp





C. Creativity and Innovation



-- Managing the Innovation Process, from MIT

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-Scho...Home/index.htm



-- Creativity (including the use of "mind maps"), from MIT

http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Engi...creativity.pdf





-- Creative Thinking, from the University of Hong Kong (UHK):

http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/creative/index.php







D. The Art and Science of Training



"Training and Human Resources Development", from the University of California at Irvine (UCI):

http://ocw.uci.edu/courses/AR0103061/pages/l1t1p1.html





E. Change Management



-- A series of quick change management tutorials:

http://www.change-management.com/tutorials.htm



-- A free change management webinar training series (the next repetition of the series starts Tuesday, May 1, 2007):

http://www.change-management.com/webinars.htm





F. Reasoning and Logic



-- Argument mapping, from UHK

http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/mapping/



-- Mistakes in reasoning (including fallacies of inconsistency, inappropriate assumption, relevance, and insufficiency), from UHK:

http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/fallacy/







2. Freeware (Free Software)– for various Six Sigma-related topics



A. Statistics freeware





-- STATS4U

http://www.statpages.org/miller/openstat/Stats4U.htm



This package has a lot of functionality, and it is free. A companion textbook about performing data analysis using this freeware is available at this link:

http://www.statpages.org/miller/open...%20Stats4U.pdf



-- “R” : Here are sites for downloading R:



http://cran.r-project.org/

http://cran.us.r-project.org/



or, in the United Kingdom:

http://www.stats.bris.ac.uk/R/



The good news is that R is free and very powerful, especially for complex statistical or graphical needs. The bad news is that R is complex and takes a lot of study to master it. Various pieces of documentation for using R are available from quite a few sources on-line, including:

http://www.math.ilstu.edu/dhkim/Rstuff/Rtutor.html

http://cran.r-project.org/other-docs.html

http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/r/



Here are some tutorials about the "R" statistics package:

http://www.math.ilstu.edu/dhkim/Rstuff/Rtutor.html

http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/r/notes/

http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/R/semin...d_measures.htm





B. Graphics freeware

-- yEd Graph Editor (for flow charts, UML diagrams, mind maps and other kinds of diagrams, graphs and networks): http://www.tucows.com/preview/411263



-- InfoRapid Knowledge Map (for knowledge maps, organizational charts, decision trees, and work breakdown structures):

http://www.tucows.com/preview/416448



-- ASKMAN (helps you to centralize your thoughts and focus on the more important issues, which is important for Six Sigma or any other improvement methods):

http://www.tucows.com/preview/356952



-- DIAGRAM DESIGNER (flowcharts, etc)

http://www.tucows.com/preview/415032



-- XL-Flow 1.0 (business process workflows and automation, kind of, sort of)

http://www.tucows.com/preview/332870





C. Project management freeware





-- EASYPROJECT (decent project management tool; includes reports for project costs, gantt charts and resource utilization tools):

http://www.tucows.com/preview/327691



-- PROJECT IN A BOX (another project management tool, based on the "PRINCE 2" project management standard)

http://www.tucows.com/preview/501850



-- PROJECT ENGINE – PERSONAL (yet another project management tool)

http://www.tucows.com/preview/337832



-- IN-STEP (and yet another project management tool, specifically for software development)

http://www.tucows.com/preview/371484





D. Other useful freeware



-- The Query Tool (For data mining):

http://www.tucows.com/preview/248796



-- ISSUES TRAKCER (for issues management)

http://www.tucows.com/preview/500186



-- STRATEGY MAP BALANCED SCORECARD (mind-map style flowchart that defines the mission, goals, perspectives and objectives that are then used to drive the balanced scorecard to develop individual employee scorecard-based business plans.)

http://www.tucows.com/preview/422443





3. e-Books: Six Sigma and Statistics



-- Asian Productivity Organization's (APO) Lean Six Sigma Institute has posted a free e-book about "Lean Six Sigma" (mostly Six Sigma, very little Lean actually):

http://www.leansigmainstitute.com/do...O_SixSigma.pdf



-- NIST/SEMATECH e-Handbook of Statistical Methods, published by the U.S. federal government's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) -- VERY thorough reference for everything about stats:

http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/

http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/index.htm



-- "Electronic Statistics Textbook" from StatSoft covers a very wide variety of statistics topics, including basics statistics, ANOVA, Design of Experiments (DOE), cluster analysis, nonparametric statistics, data mining, linear regression, control charts, and process analysis.

http://www.statsoft.com/textbook/stathome.html





-- “Statistics: Power from Data!”, from Statistics Canada:

http://www.statcan.ca/english/edu/po...c/contents.htm



This is also available in French (Francais):

http://www.statcan.ca/francais/edu/p...contents_f.htm







4. Getting ready for Six Sigma Certification



A. The Green Belt "Body of Knowledge" (BoK)

http://www.asq.org/certification/six...-belt/bok.html



B. The Black Belt "Body of Knowledge" (BoK)

http://www.asq.org/certification/six-sigma/bok-07.html



C. Statistics Practice Questions (with Answers) -- The is a lot of statistics in the BoK for Green Belts and Black Belts. Here is a good source for statistical questions (with answers!!!) to test yourself in preparation for the statistical portion of the GB examination:



http://www2.gsu.edu/~dscbms/ibs/qcontent.html



These 811 questions are part of huge database of questions and answers developed under a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) -- covers a lot of differenc stats topics.



D. Some Practices tests

http://www.isixsigma.com/exam/