SQT Blog

At this time of year, the line of the Christmas Carol,

A ray of hope flickers in the sky,

comes to mind.

At this time of year, at dawn on the winter solstice, a beam of sunlight illuminates the floor of the chamber at Newgrange.

A ray of hope, this time from the CSO: The economy technically emerged from recession in the third quarter, according to new data from the Central Statistics Office (Source Irish Times 17th December).

This news from the CSO as the year draws to a close, is very welcome.

As 2009 draws to a close, we here at SQT thank you for your support in 2009 and sincerely wish you all a good 2010.

Nollag Shona agus Athbhliain faoi shonas is faoi rath.

A ray of hope flickers in the sky
A tiny star lights up way up high
All across the land dawns a brand new morn
This comes to pass when a child is born

The photograph shows Joe Queenan, (left), Chairman of the Governing Body Institute of Technology Sligo presenting the SQT medal to Dermot Radford. This medal is awarded to the student who achieves the highest grades on the BSc in Quality Management and Technology at Sligo Institute of Technology.

Sligo Institute of Technology has a long tradition in delivering third-level education in Quality. It’s interesting to note that Dermot’s complete programme was delivered on-line.

Congratulations Dermot from all in SQT!

Eamon, one of our Lean Six Sigma tutors wrote the following:

Given the relenting pressure on all businesses to drive costs downwards and improve their competiveness the question is where do we start? Which areas should we focus on?

A very simple technique is what they call the ‘wall of pain’. This is whereby the Management Team based on their every day experiences list the top 10 activities which they consider a pain in the …

This top 10 is then correlated against the annual goals and objectives in terms of their impact to shortlist the top 3 opportunities and equivalent continuous improvement projects. This correlation uses a scoring method as illustrated below.

Whether we undertake the Project using Lean Six Sigma or another Continuous Improvement Program depends on the company preference … the important thing is that we have a starting point!