Nancy Eickelmann
Accelerating Change in Your Organization Using Six Sigma
Wednesday, December 3, 2003
Building 3 Auditorium - 3:30PM
(Refreshments at 3:00 PM)

Dr. Nancy Eickelmann will talk about Accelerating Change in Your Organization Using Six Sigma. Six Sigma is a quantitative approach to strategic management through analytical and experimental initiatives. The primary goal of the Six Sigma methodology is the implementation of a measurement-based strategy that focuses on process improvement and process variation reduction to provide high quality products and services. Motorola developed the Six Sigma approach in 1986. Six Sigma provided Motorola the key to addressing quality concerns throughout the organization, including manufacturing and support functions. Motorola has documented more than 16 billion dollars in cost savings as a result of Six Sigma initiatives between 1986 and 2003.

The defined, rigorous and disciplined approach of Six Sigma is encapsulated in a five-phase process called DMAIC or Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control. The define phase requires a project charter which must include a business case with (financial impact), problem statement, goal statement, project scope, team member roles, milestones/deliverables and support required. The measure phase goal is to build a factual understanding of existing process conditions and problems. The analysis phase is applied using multiple analytical and experimental methods such as a full factorial Design of Experiments (DOE). The improve phase consists of implementing the process changes isolated in the analysis phase. The control phase is applied to monitor and ensure that the new process is being followed. This presentation will describe successful Six Sigma initiatives and how they are used to effectively implement rapid change in an organization and subsequently institutionalize it.

Dr. Nancy Eickelmann is currently a research scientist for Motorola Labs and is leading the Motorola Six Sigma for software and systems measurement and evaluation research initiative. She is a Six Sigma Black Belt and provides a leadership role in the development of Six Sigma tools and technologies. Prior to joining Motorola she was a member of the research staff at the NASA/WVU Software Research Laboratory, located at the NASA Independent Verification and Validation research facility. Her research focused on integrating core metrics into the NASA context to provide a measurement framework for software test technology improvements. As a member of the Advanced Programs Research Group at MCC she developed a measurement framework for guiding the decision-making process in product line development. Dr. Eickelmann began her research career as a member of the technical staff at Hughes Research Laboratory (HRL) in Malibu, California while completing her doctorate at the University of California, Irvine. She was named a Hughes Doctoral Fellow while working at HRL and received several research awards while working with Dr. Debra Richardson’s Formal Methods and Software Testing Group at UCI. Dr. Eickelmann has collaborated internationally on research projects for defense systems and global software development and has published extensively on software and systems quality. She is currently co-editor of the IEEE Software Quality Time column, a member of IEEE and ASQ. Dr. Eickelmann holds a B.S. Finance, M.B.A., M.S. and Ph.D. Computer Science.

IS&T Colloquium Committee Host: Walt Truszkowski,
Walt.Truszkowski@nasa.gov

Sign language interpreter upon request: 301-286-8313
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