Business901

This week podcast guest was Aqua Porter, a Vice President of the Corporate Lean Six Sigma Strategy at Xerox Corporation. She is an advocate for Lean Six Sigma at Xerox and has led many Black Belt projects including the nomination of Black Belt candidates and the growth of Xerox Team Accelerator. Team Accelerator is a workshop program that utilizes the Belbin Team Role system to help teams draw on the strengths of each team member and work together. I seldom find the enthusiasm that Aqua brings to the Lean Six Sigma world. If you need your Six Sigma team to get pumped up about their next Six Sigma project this might be the podcast for them.

Aqua Porter has been with Xerox since 1984 and has held a variety of positions including Engineering, Marketing, Product Development, Purchasing, and Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management. She is a senior manager with extensive experience in all phases of product development and delivery, and is adept in building strong teams who deliver exceptional business results.

Xerox has made a major commitment to using Lean Six Sigma tools and methodology - both to drive improvements in our own business and to deliver measurable results for customers. Our unique, disciplined approach involves analyzing business processes and identifying ways to eliminate both errors and unnecessary steps. Xerox Global Services looks for ways to deliver improvements quickly and focus on leveraging your existing IT investments. From streamlining paper-choked workflows to automating labor-intensive functions, the results can be remarkable.

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Bob Sproull was my guest on the Business901 podcast. Bob is an experienced manufacturing executive with a distinguished track record of achieving improvement goals in Manufacturing, MRO, Quality, Product Development, and Engineering. His experience base ranges from low-volume custom products (truck bodies) to process industries (tires) to service industries (Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul). He is a nationally known speaker and author on problem-solving and statistical techniques, as well as his latest book on implementing an integrated Lean, Six Sigma and the Theory of Constraints.

Our discussion centered around The Ultimate Improvement Cycle: Maximizing Profits through the Integration of Lean, Six Sigma, and the Theory of Constraints show you how to draw the best from Lean and Six Sigma by employing principles drawn from the Theory of Constraints. He says, this approach will ensure that your effort is focused in the right place, at the right time, using the right tools, and the right amount of resources. This multi-pronged approach addresses cost accounting, variation, waste, and performance measurements. But most importantly, it focuses your organization on the right areas to optimize.

I enjoyed many of his thoughts, especially on Value Stream Mapping and his description of focusing on the matter at hand, the constraint.

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Hear some ideas on how the financial markets may be the ones to be listening to on product marketing advice.

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