Wisdom on the Green : Smarter Six Sigma Business Solutions

by Phil Flories, David Enck, Forrest W. Breyfogle III, et al.

This book follows four successful friends who met in graduate school while pursuing their MBAs. Now they meet for a monthly golf outing to continue their friendship, discuss their careers, and compete... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0971322201
• ISBN13: 9780971322202
• Release Date: August 2001
• Publisher: Smarters Solutions
• Length: 170 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.5" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

Great Story - Entertaining and Educational

As an avid golfer, engineer, MBA student and Manufacturing Director I easily related to the characters. The setting was not unlike my own Sunday group. The golf backdrop was a wonderful way to outline the six sigma approach. The stories presented (the hospital, Mexican plant, etc.)were real-life situations that illustrate the power of the six sigma approach to problem solving.I also found the glossary to be very well done.

An Excellent Portrait of Six Sigma

Using golf as a backdrop, this book paints an excellent portrait of implementing Six Sixma as a business strategy. The picture comes alive with the realism of the characters and their experiences. Wisdom on the Green is a call to change. This change is accomplished through process definition, measurement, analysis, improvement, and control. Whether the output of the process is your golf score or days sales outstanding, change is required to improve. The book is an enjoyable and easy-to-read story, which gives the reader an understanding of the Six Sigma implementation approach. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in business or golf. It would be a great gift for an executive in your company.

Six Sigma in perspective!!

-Book is as insightful as it is easy to read!!-Excellent job of contrasting Lean,TQM, and Baldridge to Six Sigma and why Six Sigma is different (and in fact works!). I always suspected the things you elegantly described in the book as each of the four golfers described their experience. It is so clear after you understand Six Sigma (why it works that is), yet so elusive if you don't. -I always suspected that simple control charts are an effective way to track an organizations performance of high level metrics (Satellite Metrics as described in the book ). Thank you for confirming my suspicion and crystallizing the concept! -The type of infrequently sampled metrics for control charting (described in the book) could further enhance our Project selection process and help the organization recognize improvement over time at a level higher than the Six Sigma Project KPOV.-Thought you did a great job encouraging DOE in transactional & Business projects. I think we have been too dismissive of DOE in these type of projects and resort to something we call "piloted solutions"..which have their place but lack the power of DOE. I guess the one fear Ive always had is the discrete nature of the KPOV's in such DOE's, and if treating count data (like the mailers you described in the book) as continuous data is appropriate. Certainly discrete data can be used..but usually requires a pretty hefty sample size. The other concern we have had is the ability to control noise in such an extended time frame needed in Sales/Marketing DOE's. I think you are right and there is much power in a balanced and orthogonal approach to such projects. After reading your book..I understand perfectly why you have a concern about absolute focus on short term process capability analysis in all Six Sigma Projects. It has its place in some projects (like PC boards)..but in others it can be totally misleading depending on definition of opportunities (read..too much non-value add time spent trying to determine what an opportunity is). I agree with you 100%!. Im actually feeling good now that Ive seen someone say that in print!

Easy Read backed by Substantial Message

I finished this book in one day - like "The Goal", I found myself caught up in the story line behind the message. And the message is substantial - bottom line profits accrue to those who wisely apply the Six Sigma methods described in the book. For those new to the Six Sigma improvement approach, I highly recommend this as the first book you read on the subject. It provides the information necessary to understand Six Sigma and Lean Production in non-technical everyday language. The book also provides the reader with an example of a typical implementation of Six Sigma to help understand what it may look like in their own company. And for those already knowlegeable in the subject, it provides a deeper understanding of how the different quality approaches, e.g., TQM, Baldrige and Lean, compare and contrast to the Six Sigma approach.Truly enjoyable.

Wisdom on the Green or ways to change a company

I read this book with a critical eye on what's in it for me, since I feel like I understand the change strategies & philosophies referenced in the book. What I found was that through the use of golf and the various characters that it brought the concepts more in focus and provided some "storytelling" capability to my elevator talks within our company. It's fun reading and should help executives grasp the fundamentals at the same time. This would be particularly useful to an executive contemplating major change approaches.