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The Six W’s: A Tool for Continuous Improvement

The Six W’s is a technique used in continuous improvement projects (posts about six sigma) to gather essential information and improve problem-solving capabilities. This approach is rooted in the principles of journalism and is commonly used in project management and marketing to gather information.

In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at the Six W’s, explain the theory behind this technique, discuss each of the six questions, give examples of each, and provide an example of use in the context of continuous improvement work.

The Seven Wastes of Personal Finance

Back when I was in cubicleland, in my last corporate job, I went through the very good Six Sigma training and certification program offered by my company: Green Belt, Black Belt, and Master Black Belt. I did not get the MBB certification though, time was ripe to quit before I finished it…

Six Sigma, or continuous improvement, had three “tracks” (three ways to go about it): “Variation” would be the traditional way of improving processes with stability and control, “Lean” is the waste-reduction way (and the subject of this post), and “Design” is likely the best and most difficult way because processes are optimal from their inception.

Lean strives to eliminate seven “types” of waste, the “seven wastes”. This technique was developed initially in Japan by Taiichi Ohno but now is learned and used everywhere.

seven wastes

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