Hello to all of you again!

I just want to share with you my 2 days experience i had in a seminar i attent to with the title : "SPC & 6 sigma".

Here in Greece you can hardly find seminars for 6σ so when i saw this seminar i arranged very early to be there!

What a dissapointment!!!!!!! The 16 hours seminar devoted 20 minutes in the end of the second day to 6σ!!! Moreover the man who stood there as a teacher and he had the title of GM in the company who was organizing the seminar was not at all communicable!

1000 sorry for all this bad mood from me but i in my 31 , working as a QAM in a very big company , having known some things about SPC, i felt as a jerk giving 580 Euros for that seminar. I really don't think SPC and the like are difficult when you are "thirsty" to learn and have the appropriate people to teach you!!! In my Msc for Quality System Management there was a teacher who introduced me into SPC and 6σ and thank God (from today more) he explained to 20 people with simple words what was all about. This man in less than 20 lessons of 3 hours each started from the basics and ended almost with Taguchi's noise theory! I participated the seminar with one friend. He saw the fact that this teacher was uncommunicable but he insisted saying that : "if this man comes to a company he would improve the quality". From my side i insisted that i can't believe that because IF this man comes to a company to improve quality he has to "educate" some people in the company who are going to RUN the quality system after he leaves. IF he can't explain well what he knows how anybody expects that the team which was "educated' will run efficiently the system?

Well for once more sorry for all this but i had to tell it to sb who could understand me! If you have some other opinions feel free to share them with me! :thanx:

vasilist

Hello to all of you again!

I just want to share with you my 2 days experience i had in a seminar i attent to with the title : "SPC & 6 sigma".

Here in Greece you can hardly find seminars for 6σ so when i saw this seminar i arranged very early to be there!

What a dissapointment!!!!!!! The 16 hours seminar devoted 20 minutes in the end of the second day to 6σ!!! Moreover the man who stood there as a teacher and he had the title of GM in the company who was organizing the seminar was not at all communicable!

1000 sorry for all this bad mood from me but i in my 31 , working as a QAM in a very big company , having known some things about SPC, i felt as a jerk giving 580 Euros for that seminar. I really don't think SPC and the like are difficult when you are "thirsty" to learn and have the appropriate people to teach you!!! In my Msc for Quality System Management there was a teacher who introduced me into SPC and 6σ and thank God (from today more) he explained to 20 people with simple words what was all about. This man in less than 20 lessons of 3 hours each started from the basics and ended almost with Taguchi's noise theory! I participated the seminar with one friend. He saw the fact that this teacher was uncommunicable but he insisted saying that : "if this man comes to a company he would improve the quality". From my side i insisted that i can't believe that because IF this man comes to a company to improve quality he has to "educate" some people in the company who are going to RUN the quality system after he leaves. IF he can't explain well what he knows how anybody expects that the team which was "educated' will run efficiently the system?

Well for once more sorry for all this but i had to tell it to sb who could understand me! If you have some other opinions feel free to share them with me! :thanx:

vasilistI sympathize with you completely.
Were there many others in the seminar who were as disappointed as you were? Did you get the impression the seminar leader (or his company) had only added "6 Sigma" as an advertising gimmick to get more people to attend?

In the USA, we call that "bait and switch" - a fraudulent scheme.

My first suggestion is you write to the head of the seminar company or the sponsor and ask for a refund, based on the premise you didn't get the information you expected.

The second part of your complaint - the presenter was not a good communicator - is something you can figure out almost immediately without spending 16 hours of agony at your expense. My advice, if it happens again, is to stand up, yell STOP! and demand a refund as soon as you are aware of the inadequacy of the presenter.

Finally - were you given an evaluation sheet at the end of the seminar? How did you respond?

Hello to all of you again!
The 16 hours seminar devoted 20 minutes in the end of the second day to 6σ!!! Moreover the man who stood there as a teacher and he had the title of GM in the company who was organizing the seminar was not at all communicable!
vasilist

Perhaps 20 minutes was all six sigma deserved :lmao:

Sorry, I couldn't resist . . .

I suppose I will acknowledge that it is very hard to teach statistics. I'm told I do very well, but there are still instances where a student and I won't "connect". There really are three different skills out there - how to do statistics, how to teach statistics, and how to manage statistics. It is very rare to find someone who can do all three. And within "teaching", you really can't "teach" statistics by lecture. You need a combination of experience (like the Red Bead Experiment) and real world examples/stories and theory and practice. And if the teacher has never worked with statistics themselves it just goes down hill from there, usually.

Were there many others in the seminar who were as disappointed as you were?
...

Finally - were you given an evaluation sheet at the end of the seminar? How did you respond?

Dear Wes,

at first thank you for your reply and sympathy!!!

All 20 people were not satisfied - actually - (they all said the same in the breaks during unofficial talks) but in the end when the evaluation sheet came out happened sth i didn't like. In the field "Communication - Communicable teacher" i evaluated him with 3/10. I managed to saw the evaluation of other 3 people and the lowest i saw was 5 and the other two marks were 8 and 9!!!!!!!! Moreover the teacher after collecting the papers asked the personal opinion of all!! Nobody said the truth! I told him i came because of 6σ (sth i declared first day in the ice-breaking discussion), but i saw no 6σ, only 20 minutes in the end of the 2nd day. His answer was that a few people are searching 6σ!!! :confused:

I don't want to be missunderstood as a 'know all" person. But in the class the crucial questions came by me not by them. When i asked him in the first day to tell us some measuraments that give non-normal distributions his reaction was to tell us that he will say to us later the answer and then he continued!!! And of course he forgot to do it! But i asked him the next day and he replied with 1 example : phone calls in a call center! When i asked him when to use Cpk and Ppk he just found sth to continue with an excersice!!! When he asked for someone to come to the board and sketch the normal distribution of 6σ i got up , i sketched it and he told me i was wrong because after 3σ you cannot SEE the rest of the curve!!! I could write down more but i am already very bad , i know and please forgive me.

This man earns a lot of money! I don't believe it.

As for your reply Steve , i really appreciate it. You are 100% right! BUT ...when a professional like him (55 years old, being for over 15 years the GM of a very big company in Greece, with so much experience etc) reaches the point to say that "TQM is dead, long live 6σ" and he must be sufficient to support that saying (to which i don't agree). Moreover i could ask : did he ever heard the term : "self evaluation"?

I understand that you and a student don't connect but as i wrote down before you have to have BOTH sides eager to cooperate, right? When you Steve giving the 100% of your power to pass to the students the SPC and some of them don't want to learn because of different reasons (we know they always are) you can't have "connection"

THANK YOU very much for your replies. I really appreciate the fact that at least 2 people heard me and told me sth small that i even learnt from it.

BTW Steve what is that "Red Bead" experiment?

Dear Wes,

at first thank you for your reply and sympathy!!!

All 20 people were not satisfied - actually - (they all said the same in the breaks during unofficial talks) but in the end when the evaluation sheet came out happened sth i didn't like. In the field "Communication - Communicable teacher" i evaluated him with 3/10. I managed to saw the evaluation of other 3 people and the lowest i saw was 5 and the other two marks were 8 and 9!!!!!!!! Moreover the teacher after collecting the papers asked the personal opinion of all!! Nobody said the truth! I told him i came because of 6σ (sth i declared first day in the ice-breaking discussion), but i saw no 6σ, only 20 minutes in the end of the 2nd day. His answer was that a few people are searching 6σ!!! :confused:

I don't want to be missunderstood as a 'know all" person. But in the class the crucial questions came by me not by them. When i asked him in the first day to tell us some measuraments that give non-normal distributions his reaction was to tell us that he will say to us later the answer and then he continued!!! And of course he forgot to do it! But i asked him the next day and he replied with 1 example : phone calls in a call center! When i asked him when to use Cpk and Ppk he just found sth to continue with an excersice!!! When he asked for someone to come to the board and sketch the normal distribution of 6σ i got up , i sketched it and he told me i was wrong because after 3σ you cannot SEE the rest of the curve!!! I could write down more but i am already very bad , i know and please forgive me.

This man earns a lot of money! I don't believe it.

As for your reply Steve , i really appreciate it. You are 100% right! BUT ...when a professional like him (55 years old, being for over 15 years the GM of a very big company in Greece, with so much experience etc) reaches the point to say that "TQM is dead, long live 6σ" and he must be sufficient to support that saying (to which i don't agree). Moreover i could ask : did he ever heard the term : "self evaluation"?

I understand that you and a student don't connect but as i wrote down before you have to have BOTH sides eager to cooperate, right? When you Steve giving the 100% of your power to pass to the students the SPC and some of them don't want to learn because of different reasons (we know they always are) you can't have "connection"

THANK YOU very much for your replies. I really appreciate the fact that at least 2 people heard me and told me sth small that i even learnt from it.

BTW Steve what is that "Red Bead" experiment?Let me answer for Steve! I consider it one of the high points of my life that I know Steve. Take a look at his website http://www.hanford.gov/safety/vpp/trend.htm and especially the link
http://www.hanford.gov/safety/vpp/redbeadreach.pdf

Lots of points can be made about the Red Bead Experiment created by W. Edwards Deming. The most telling is that management, not the worker, controls whether the worker can do a quality job by means of the process and tools it provides the worker.

Dear Wes ,

thanks! The web pages you written down are very interesting! BTW when it says MOVED for my topic is it something wrong? I hope i didn't insulted somebody! I am not watching these pages often :o and i don't know some codes!

But from now on i will try to watch more often since this site is MORE than helpfull. I have already persuaded a friend of mine to join the forum and ask some SPC questions (or to see the previous ones!)

Vasilist

BTW when it says MOVED for my topic is it something wrong? Nothing to worry about. It's just a bit of housekeeping. It indicates that a moderator has moved the thread to another forum, usually because the thread subject fits better and can be expected to draw more replies there.

Keep posting :agree1:

/Claes

But from now on i will try to watch more often since this site is MORE than helpfull. I have already persuaded a friend of mine to join the forum and ask some SPC questions (or to see the previous ones!)

VasilistWelcome back, vasilist! :bigwave: Visit the Cove often and you may not need to go to some of those courses..

As a training provider, I have run into this problem from both sides. I was forced to attend a class so I could meet the Ford requirement for teaching internal auditing (even though I used to teach the very subjects for the AIAG). The class was four days, and on the fourth day we spent a total of 10 minutes covering the core tools. But hey! Ford is happy, I now have a certificate with my name on the front (instead of my signature).

On the other hand, we had a client that wanted us to develop a class just for them. We had several meetings where we hammered out a syllabus, an outline, and even pre/post tests. We sent them a CD with the finished class and upon their approval, we set up the class. At the end of the class, the participants ripped us up! The subject material was not what they had been told (by their training department, who had been working with us all along). The bottom line was they refused to pay for the training!

The important thing is it is the training provider's responsibility to ensure the class information is correct. It is the trainee's responsibility to ensure the class they are attending is what they want.

As a training provider, I have run into this problem from both sides. I was forced to attend a class so I could meet the Ford requirement for teaching internal auditing (even though I used to teach the very subjects for the AIAG). The class was four days, and on the fourth day we spent a total of 10 minutes covering the core tools. But hey! Ford is happy, I now have a certificate with my name on the front (instead of my signature).

On the other hand, we had a client that wanted us to develop a class just for them. We had several meetings where we hammered out a syllabus, an outline, and even pre/post tests. We sent them a CD with the finished class and upon their approval, we set up the class. At the end of the class, the participants ripped us up! The subject material was not what they had been told (by their training department, who had been working with us all along). The bottom line was they refused to pay for the training!

The important thing is it is the training provider's responsibility to ensure the class information is correct. It is the trainee's responsibility to ensure the class they are attending is what they want.Sounds to me like training needs a "continuous process" of feedback to assure everyone is on the same track, rather than "after the fact" evaluation.

Such a continuous process "could" have forestalled an ugly scene and lots of wasted time for teachers and students.

Yes. You did almost everything right in Contract Review, EXCEPT nail down the part about getting paid if you presented the "tailor made" course as it was approved, regardless of class feedback.

The organization erred by not having a multi-discipline team review the curriculum.
:topic: In my experience, most organizations "dump" training responsibility in the lap of HR folk. How many HR folk are competent to judge the merits of a Quality training course? Especially when they don't make the effort to assess the proposed student's level of readiness?

I understand that you and a student don't connect but as i wrote down before you have to have BOTH sides eager to cooperate, right? When you Steve giving the 100% of your power to pass to the students the SPC and some of them don't want to learn because of different reasons (we know they always are) you can't have "connection"


:thanx: First, thanks for the compliment, Wes.

:topic: As a note on learning and teaching - I will say there are many times when a willing student and a willing teacher don't "connect" (and I don't have a much better word for it). I know I have had a small (less than 5) number of teachers in 22 years of taking various courses in my life (about half my life, a scary number) that others have thought wonderful and I thought stunk. And yes, I have had some unwilling students at City University but also a few that their mode of learning was different than my mode of teaching. So although it does not appear to be the case in this discussion, I just did want to point out that how people learn varies from person to person, and that whole line of theory can make a great discussion topic.

- Steve

In my experience, most organizations "dump" training responsibility in the lap of HR folk. How many HR folk are competent to judge the merits of a Quality training course? Especially when they don't make the effort to assess the proposed student's level of readiness?

You are a good person,Wes, and as usual quite perceptive.

In some cases, HR cannot get the support of the departements they are trying to arrange the training for. In my case, the department leaders were involved, but they did not understand what their own people needed.

Training and HR departments that do not employ theories and tools in planning and assessing value may find themselves targets of budget cuts or worse. So sayeth Jac Fitz-enz in "How to Measure Human Resources Management."

He agrees with the four levels of measuring training value as found in "Evaluating Training Programs" where the "Smile Sheet" (training evaluation Level 1) at the end of the first session could have given the trainer an opportunity to correct the steering of the content, or delivery before the course is ended and the chances to recover are gone.

Of course where content has been approved, I would ask the question of whether delivery was a problem? A Smile Sheet might have given db time for adjustments and might have saved a fee. It's also possible that HR simply doesn't understand Quality well enough to know what they are asking to be trained for.

The GM guy 6S trainer has the early disadvantage of not knowing his students' learning levels, which impact how well they can be taught key concepts. This makes the Smile Sheet even more important, as he could have adjusted at that point--if he was capable. :rolleyes:

The students are responsible for leveling with the trainer. Being honest, and as soon as practical, is key to that GM guy haveing any learning curve at all.

Lastly, I would be bothered by such slogans as "TQM is dead--long live 6 Sigma!" because TQM is not dead at all. 6S has a valid place inside an organization-wide focus on maximizing value for the stakeholders. :mad: