Six Sigma to the Extreme Habitat

Today I found out what Six Sigma means. It was explained at length at our Progress Meeting for Pardee Homes. It is our company's attempt to improve in a very analytical way. It reminded me of my college classes in statistics. Sigma is the greek symbol (a number 6 fallen over to the right) that has come to mean a measure of significance of deviation from a set standard ie. mean. The number 6 is considered the best. The company has a "hand-picked" elite team of key, leaders who can attain "green belts" and then "black belts" with projects that do indeed improve the companies bottom line through improved procedures etc. Their guiding questions...How can we know what we don't know? How can we improve what we don't know etc. Their process is 5 fold: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control. They do it exhaustively thru pareto charts, flow charts and statistical analysis. It was all very fascinating but too detailed for the mixed crowd of employees we had there. It was over most of our heads and way too long. This doesn't take away from its worthiness. I would love to be involved in such a study eventually.

We also saw our company's "behind the scenes" DVD of the recent Extreme Home Make-Over we did in Santa Fe Springs for ABC-TV. What a wonderfully rewarding experience it was. I'm sure the company learned alot from what they had to go through during that 5-day monsoon. I felt pride and identity in what expired. What a wonderful company and opportunity I have with Pardee. It is very motivating to see what can be done and is expected. Much was made of the "internal customer" vs. the "external customer". It is a whole new culture that I am learning about.

Mention was made of possible future projects involving Habitat for Humanity. This would be a very worthy cause. They could contact Thane Smith who is in charge of the HFH in Orange Co. I think. They also talked about future communities possibly in Arizona and Norther Nevada. I couldn't believe there are only 650 employees in this growing company. I'm impressed with the leadership and proud to be associated with it. Bob