Rating: 
Summary: A must have
Review: This book is a must have for anyone that uses Six Sigma, is learning Six Sigma, or wants to advance their Quality career.This book gives insight into the "why". Why Six Sigma is being implemented, Why it's so "hot", Why it can turn any company around, and Why it's better than TQM. While the book is mainly aimed at those in leadership positions, I believe that anyone that has a thirst for knowledge on Six Sigma should pick up this book. For those of you who need to implement Six Sigma buy it in conjunction with The Six Sigma Way Team Field Book. Everything you ever wanted to know about Six Sigma can be found in these two books.
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Summary: Finally a "How-to", not just an Overview
Review: This book not only gives a great overview of the Six Sigma Strategy, it explains the details around the Six Sigma tools. I recommend this book to both the first time interest reader and the Six Sigma practitioner.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth your money -- if you don't know anything yet
Review: This is a great introduction if you're new to the subject: you'll get the concept, why firms go Six Sigma, etc. The book is likely to gain you to the cause. At the same time, it's very superficial on methodologies and hardly tells you anything about similar efforts of effective engineering like Design for Cost, Design of Experiments, Taguchi methods, etc. Well written and entertaining.
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Summary: The One We've Been Waiting For
Review: This is, without a doubt, the most useful book on gaining and sustaining organizational improvements that I have read in the last decade. It is straightforward in approach and drives toward application and implementation. It is the perfect blend of context, models, tools, & case studies and is a must-have for consultants, internal consultants, black belts, project leaders, and process managers. Not only is this book loaded with tools and techniques, it is remarkably readable. This is the one we've been waiting for.
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Summary: Best of the Bunch
Review: Well done and the best of the Six Sigma overview books. Yet so comprehensive that you'll have to step back and take a deep breath, or run the risk of being whelmed. Even though it's an overview, there is enough detail that you'll understand what you're into. If you're looking for the details of the tools, such as statistical methods, House of Quality...you'll need to look elsewhere. On the other hand, you'll understand when these tools are best applied and what they're designed to achieve. I wish all business books were this well executed. Delivers on its press promises.
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Summary: A guide to Six Sigma for execs, managers and project teams.
Review: What IS Six Sigma? Is it really just statistics? How does it position a business to be more profitable and competitive? What are the steps that leaders, implementers and "Black Belts" should follow to achieve results? Why is Six Sigma succeeding where TQM "failed"? These are some of the questions my colleagues and I answer in The Six Sigma Way. This book was developed to help demystify this influential and growing force in American business. While Six Sigma is often positioned as a highly quantitative approach to improvement, the reality-as demonstrated at Six Sigma leaders such as GE and AlliedSignal-involves much more. We define Six Sigma as: "A comprehensive and flexible system for achieving, sustaining and maximizing business success. Six Sigma is uniquely driven by close understanding of customer needs, disciplined use of facts, data and statistical analysis, and diligent attention to managing, improving and reinventing business processes." The Six Sigma system brings together many management "best practices" of the past two decades years into an approach well-tuned to the challenges of the 21st century business environment. The Six Sigma Way is based on our extensive experience with Six Sigma at GE as well as other companies in a variety of industries. We suggest that each organization adopting Six Sigma needs to develop its own approach and implementation, and we provide guidance on how to plan your own effort. The primary audience for the book will be the business leader, manager or professional who wants to understand Six Sigma and how it can help create a more profitable organization-as well as project leaders and teams trying to implement Six Sigma-driven improvements. Unlike other Six Sigma books to-date, this is not a technical manual, but offers plenty of practical tips and tools to understand and apply Six Sigma in a wide variety of business environments. The Six Sigma Way is divided into three sections to make it easy to use according to the reader's interest and need: Part One, An Executive Overview of Six Sigma, covers the essentials of this system for performance improvement and business leadership, including success stories, fundamental concepts, advantages of Six Sigma over "TQM," and a review of the Roadmap to Six Sigma. Part Two, Gearing up and Adapting Six Sigma to Your Organization, examines essential organizational issues of a Six Sigma initiative, including how to decide whether to do it at all, what scale and scope of effort is most appropriate, and how to prepare "Black Belts" and other key roles for the initiative. Part Three, The Way to Six Sigma, presents practical guidelines on each of the major activities of the Six Sigma Roadmap, from identifying core processes to executing improvement projects to instituting "process management" to sustain Six Sigma gains. A number of realistic stories are used to illustrate the concepts, tools and challenges. We also provide a summary of many of the advanced methods-statistical and otherwise-associated with Six Sigma. This section is for those involved in the hard work of implementing the Six Sigma system and making it pay off. We close with 12 "Keys to Success" summarizing many key points of the book. In the Appendices, the reader will find a series of Six Sigma "job aids"-worksheets and checklists to help in key steps of the effort-and instructions for many basic tools. A comprehensive Glossary and References are also included. Our hope is that you'll find this book informative, enjoyable to read (we've tried hard to keep it light and accessible to readers of any experience level) and even inspiring. We'd welcome your comments and questions.
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