Recent Updates

Tuesday, June 23, 2009 - 03:59

Summary

  • The rules for effective leadership have changed and strong leaders need to be able to adapt
  • Both companies and employees are facing new challenges that will make or break many organizations
  • The leaders of tomorrow will be the people who helped usher organizations through the turbulence of today
  • By embracing some new ideas, the recession can be turned to your advantage and you can prepare yourself, your company and your people for greater success
Sunday, June 14, 2009 - 23:38

Selecting a new vendor for onsite or offshore work can often be a difficult and arduous task.  How to choose from the myriad of offerings,  determining who is best in class, how to gauge what the sales reps are telling you are all common questions.  Selecting a vendor and ramping them up for your project while maintaining a budget and schedule can seem impossible.

Sunday, June 14, 2009 - 12:56
  • ASQ announces a Quality Body of Knowledge (QBOK®)
  • QBOK Embraces Personal Excellence
  • QBOK declares Pursuit of Personal Excellence as, Personal Mastery, Quality Fit, Interpersonal Skills, Leadership, and Personal Quality Philosophy
  • How will it be integrated into certifications?
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - 06:40

View this message [online].

Here's the latest news from the team at Ceptara, a company dedicated to helping organizations and individuals focus and achieve their goals.

Upcoming Events

Monday, June 8, 2009 - 21:07

Process management is at the heart of an excellent quality system.  If you're interested in reducing defects and waste, and building an organization that can scale as you're successful, process management needs to be a tool embraced and practiced by everyone in the organization. 

This presentation is used as part of the Process Management Introduction class which provides a summary and introduction to the Process Management Workshop.  The deck covers an introduction to a quality system, why process management is important and an introduction to managing processes.

Monday, June 8, 2009 - 09:46

When kicking off a cross organizational event such as a Kaizen event, Six Sigma initiative, QI Story, or other improvement program certain challenges are inherent. People can have competing agendas, team members have various degrees of capabilities and skills, and everyone has their own way of doing things. Since none of the members of the team 'work' for the program owner, relying on an organizational hierarchy is out of the question.

Sunday, June 7, 2009 - 12:08

Summary

  • Five lessons learned: use 360 reviews, goals apply to your whole life, connect daily tasks to your goals, think win/win doesn't apply to every interaction, block time to sharpen the saw.
  • Engineers (technical types) have a difficult time with the soft skills, i.e. there are soft skills?
  • Self reflection and growth only comes when you're ready to hear it.  Just like many programs, you can't work on something until you admit that it's an issue.
  • A personal mission statement is the foundation upon which all decisions and actions are based.
Thursday, June 4, 2009 - 12:52

On several occasions, we've had the chance to present how to use six sigma to individuals whose role included managing a company's supply line.  Included in the Supply Line Management processes are; supply strategy management, qualification, selection, purchasing (transactional processing), performance monitoring, supplier auditing & review, and supplier recognition.  The attached resource provides an overview of each process, the six sigma tools that can help to perform the process more efficiently and effectively, and case studies that provide examples of how the six sigma tools were used.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 - 12:28

This template is by far the best one we've found to help new businesses make sure they are following a plan while designing and building their business.

The main topics include:

Thursday, May 21, 2009 - 19:15

View this message [online].

Here's the latest news from the team at Ceptara, a company dedicated to helping organizations focus and achieve their goals.

I hope you find these articles interesting and useful.  We're working on an HTML version of the newsletter, which will make this email look much better.  However, the team has published some really great information this month and I didn't want to wait to get it to you. Read on to learn more about the exciting topics we've been working on.