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Guides and articles on Lean Six Sigma, continuous improvement, and project management.
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What Is SixGrid?
SixGrid is project management software built for continuous improvement work. Charters, phase-based milestones, and financial tracking are built in, so practitioners run DMAIC and Kaizen projects without rebuilding the structure in spreadsheets.
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Continuous Improvement
Guides and explainers on running continuous improvement programs, from a single DMAIC project to a full CI portfolio.
DMAIC
Phase-by-phase guides to the DMAIC method: charters, baselines, root cause verification, pilots, control plans, tollgate reviews, and the final report.
Latest articles
Why Your Six Sigma Project Tracker Spreadsheet Fails at Ten Projects
A spreadsheet tracks one Six Sigma project fine. It breaks in a predictable order as the program grows: status and results split into separate files, every belt tracks differently, leadership gets no roll-up, and nobody can say who changed a number. The break points, and what a tracker must show.
Writing a Six Sigma Problem Statement That Survives the Define Tollgate
Six weak-versus-strong problem statement pairs from manufacturing, healthcare, finance, logistics, IT, and contact centers, with the reason each weak one fails the Define tollgate and a drafting procedure that passes it.
How to Set a Defensible Baseline in the Measure Phase
A baseline is defensible when it survives four questions: which period, which source, can the gauge see the change, and when was it frozen. How to answer them in the charter before the sponsor and finance ask.
Cost Avoidance vs Cost Savings in Six Sigma Projects
Why cost avoidance feels like savings to the practitioner and vanishes at the controller's desk, the three-condition test that makes it hard, how to document the would-have-been baseline, and why it needs its own benefit type.
The DMAIC Tollgate Review Checklist, Gate by Gate
The questions the champion asks and the evidence the project leader brings at each of the five DMAIC tollgates, with the exit condition for each gate. A gate is a go, revise, or stop decision, not a status meeting.
How to Structure a CI Program: Groups, Roles, and Governance
The four structural decisions that outlive any single project: where visibility boundaries sit, how roles split authority, how tollgates govern the work, and how ideas enter the pipeline.
Hard Savings vs Soft Savings: Getting Finance to Sign Off
The controller strikes your $400k claim down to $61k, and every future number gets the same red pen. What separates hard from soft, where cost avoidance belongs, and the classification discipline that makes finance a validator instead of an adversary.
Six Sigma Financial Tracking That Finance Will Sign Off On
Why controllers reject CI savings claims, and the classification and validation discipline that makes every benefit auditable: two-field benefits, typed costs, net reporting, and an independent Financial Rep.
The Six Sigma Project Charter, Field by Field
A blank template tells you the field names, not what a strong entry looks like. The charter field by field: quantified problem statement, SMART goal, baseline and target, explicit scope, and the draft-to-final lifecycle that makes it a contract.