Are Leaders are born or made?

After a very beneficial day for our learning process, we as a group strongly brainstormed to sort out the ideal elements of leadership. Although it was our duty to find the definition of leadership for next presentation, I really enjoyed working with this group as a family, thanks to my all colleagues.

Actually, I believed that great leaders are born; however, I’ve changed my mind. Because according to our findings which all of you guys will see it tomorrow, leader can be made too. With respect to one research which has performed in 53 countries, 52% of responders believe that leader can be made and 29% of responders though that they are equally born and made. While creating a leader, 46% and 35% of people believe respectively that it is all about experience and training; however, 20% of them though that trait plays important role too. Regardless of what a person was born as or which horoscope he/she is, a person who hopes to be a future leader needs hardy train yourself and gain more experience on field than others. But for sure there are some leaders that really are born for that job!

Watch out our presentation (B1) in order to learn the main elements of leadership.

Ps: I uploaded the article which i got influenced85148255.pdf, if you want to know more about it. Thanks Osama Qassim for article.

: 11 Feb 2014 22:17 |  Tags: Group B1 Leader Leadership Mbe Wmg |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Effective Leadership/ Good Leadership

Writing about web page http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3K92uugO9o

Let’s try to guess that how many presidents, vice presidents, deputies are existed in the world, more than 1 million or maybe more than 10 million; however, how many of them are effective leaders? Probably less than 10.000 people out of 7 billion people! How many of them are good leader? Probably less than 1000 people

Today, I want to talk about the difference between effective leadership and good leadership. Although both of them seem similar to each other, the difference is morality. The effective leadership may not care about morality. Have you watched the Wolf of Wall Street? (If you haven’t watched it yet, do it as soon as possible) The movie is about the life of Jordan Belfort who is an impressible effective leader; however, he was convicted of fraud crimes related to stock manipulation and penny stock boiler room. So basically every effective leader is not a good leader. In the movie he seems as a very influential leader, reinvented the business culture.

The effective leadership is more about how effective the leader when influencing his/her followers and motivating them. According to me, it is not so easy to run into with either a good or an effective leader in the meantime, because there are not plenty of them. Good leadership is something slightly different than effective leadership in terms of morality issues as I mentioned. Good leaders are generally well-known by almost everybody, such as Gandhi, or Martin Luther King. In this module we aim to be good business leaders that have respect to business ethics, pay attention to morality.

Up to today, I haven’t had a chance to work with or study with a great leader, but I believe that one of the most effective leaders in the world is my homeland’s prime minister who is Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

: 11 Feb 2014 01:35 |  Tags: Effective Leadership Good Leadership Jordan Belfort Leadership Mbe The Wolf Of Wall Street Wmg |  Comments (9) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Better Coffee!

Most of the WMG student wants to get good coffee from vending machines in common room. However, even coffee machine works properly, it doesn’t provide good coffee. The coffee is all watery and does not have good taste and proper coffee feel to it. This issue was raised in SSLC meeting, but wasn’t solved. Actually we could get good coffee from Digital Lab Building; however, this week it is prohibited by unknown people. All in all we request WMG to provide us good coffee in common room, at least provide the same coffee machine as the one in IDL. Support us and intensify our voice!

Here is the link to support:

http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/wmg-students-we-the-students-request-better-quality-coffee-for-students-in-the-common-room

: 22 Jan 2014 18:25 |  Tags: Coffee Wmg |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

DesignX and Case Study

After one week break, it was a good beginning with Design for X. Design for X can be seen as a design for everything such as design for manufacturability or design for environment. For instance, if we assume that we are dealing with a project which is about manufacturing a water pump. We can categorize our design aims into different categories just I did as above. Actually this module provides us how much design has a role or impact on innovation. Yes, I will call it innovation! DesignX looks the project from different perspectives of views. For instance, not only covering the issues about serviceability or reliability of product in future, but also may include design for environment. Actually, DesignX wants to show that designing a product is not just manufacturing the product, but also being ready to following issues.

In today’s case study was about an aircraft crash in 1989. As a mechanical engineer, I exited about both today’s topic and case study, because I am very familiar with this topic and I have been doing this kind of analysis more than 5 years. The video showed us that due to explosion at the tail engine, hydraulic system was lost. With pilot’s outstanding exertion, 185 people were survived surprisingly, even 111 people died.

According to our team’s great investigation and my interpretation, due to lack of know-how of one more vacuuming process which is called triple-vacuum process in the beg-70s, the melted titanium reacted with air and had impurities in its micro-structure. These impurities caused cracks on the edge of fan disk which could be seen minor issues on those days, when the engine was freshly manufactured by GE. However, cracks can propagate over time due to fluctuating pressure levels and then reduced the strength of parts furtively. Even though engineers estimated fatigue life (useful life) of engine 25, it suddenly exploded in 17^th year and gave damage to hydraulic system. Second major design failure was that there was no back-up hydraulic system that can be operated in case of emergency. Actually, nowadays aircraft are supposed to be checked by ultrasonic devices in order to prevent any fatigue problems and the aircrafts have 3 have hydraulic systems.

: 20 Jan 2014 21:35 |  Tags: Casestudy Dfss Peuss Ua232 Warwick Wmg |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Matrix for choosing the best suited business tablet/laptops

After we learned the QFD method in product excellence with using Six Sigma module, I was considering about how I can use it in my individual life. Actually, I have been dealing hard times deciding to buy a new tablet/laptop/ultrabook (whatever it is), after I met the awesome product which is Microsoft Surface Pro 2!! By the way, I was using my current one more than 6 years. However, in order to choose the best one, I checked other brand's collection like “Asus-Taichi” as well.

After I watched hundreds of reviews on YouTube, I eliminate other opportunities and focus on Microsoft Surface pro 2 and MacBook air. Then, I made a matrix on Excel. Although I wanted to do QFD, it doesn’t make sense to me due to irrelevancy between choosing a notebook and complex design tool (QFD). However, I have influenced from Paul's speech on class, and prepared a matrix.

Steps of Matrix:

1) Wrote down my criteria such as CPU performance

2) Determined the significance levels of each criteria according to me

3) Compared the two products with respect to criteria

4) Calculate the overall score

My expected criteria from business product are "price, CPU performance, Video Card Performance, RAM, Touch Screen, Ease of design with Pen, Portability, Estimated Durability, Battery life, Resolution."

And here is the matrix:

ultrabook_comparison.xlsx

Consequently, the overall scores are almost same; however Surcafe Pro 2 get higher score than MacBook Air.

Guys please write your own feedbacks and experiences about this topic, I need it. Thanks!

: 16 Jan 2014 23:50 |  Tags: Apple Macbookair Microsoft Microsoftblog Microsoftsurfacepro2 Surfacecomparison Surfacepro2 |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Reflections about QFD

Even though I feel a bit late to express my ideas about QFD (Quality Function Deployment) due to pma, I am still exited to start a new module.

I want to tell my opinions about QFD. I believe that QFD is very common; but not widely used. I never heard anything about QFD before the class on Tuesday. 80% of cost of new product development comes from designing a suitable product, developing it, and testing it. If the designer team could not handle producing suitable products for their focused customer, the product will disappear in short-time as other cases. (Paul told that 7 out of 10 products do not succeed!)

I believe that the most distinctive QFD feature is more customer-based than other tools. The engineering criteria are chosen with respect to customer anticipations and also QFD shortens the time to provide all of the elements on the sheet. I can continue explaining every features, it might take hundreds of page and dozens of days to cover one by one.

Let’s talk deeply about QFD

Customer Requirements which are clearly seen on the left side of chart might be especially gathered from feedback data or anticipations, and they are categorized according to significance level. With respect to those elements, management team and engineers have to meet (I know this part is the hardest!) and decide the engineering norms which is seen at the product design requirements. With the expected commitment, they decide all of the product design requirements. On the very right side of the chart, QFD compares the other rival products according to customer expectations and evaluates, so the team can understand the product’s drawback and benefit quicker and can enhance easily. This will surely save them a lot of money because they are starting from even before creating something which saves a lot of money. On the top matrix, in order to determine the trade-off between criteria QFD shows the interrelations between product design requirements. One of the important rows is technical difficulty and technical evolution.

Also it seems it seems when comparing this tool to taguchi, QFD is more concerned with more aspects, such as engineering requirement, competitors in the market, and the importance of quality, while taguchi is mainly focus on the financial aspects.

: 12 Jan 2014 04:34 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

First impressions about Design for Six Sigma

Even though the DFSS and original Six Sigma sound like similar terms, there are several differences between them. The Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) module is more end user based than Six Sigma, because Six Sigma aims to get rid of variability and incapability in the system and cares more about internal issues in the business. However, DFSS captures the wide perspective of market. Although it is stated in many sources that DFSS is product based, I don’t agree that it is simply product based because products are purchased by customers and they should be designed with respect to customers’ desires and beliefs, just as how we were taught in our Creating Busıness Excellence course. Paul Roberts wrote in class: “product and customer” on the board, and asked which one king is. Then he said that CUSTOMER is the KING! Customers have a free will and they can buy whatever they want, though the product is foolish! Even your product may be the most qualified product ever on the market or the most innovated, in some cases it doesn’t work!

However, DFSS catches and interprets customer feedbacks or thoughts, and then produces a new product according to the design X approach. Design for reliability, and maintainability are the subgroups of designX.

Lastly, I am enthusiastic about PEUSS and glad to have 1 week break :) Now we should read and prepare for the lecture week!

: 10 Jan 2014 19:09 |  Tags: Dfss Mbe Peuss Wmg |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

My reflections about PIUSS

Honestly, I haven’t realized how much the PIUSS module improves my knowledge about applied statistics in industry. Although I have taken statistics class during my undergraduate, I haven’t been curious about how to use them in business life. However, after the PIUSS module, I learned not only the most common statistics tool, such as SPC and Taguchi Method, but also the importance of Six Sigma. It is really interesting to me because now I am applying statistical principles to practical uses.

I have been reading lots of sources about the Six Sigma since the beginning of the study week and I realized that during just one week of the module week I understand almost the whole context perfectly. Of course this is not true but that is how I felt at that time. Also I am going to select Lean Six Sigma as my project topic as well because of this interest.

: 21 Dec 2013 23:21 |  Tags: Mbe Piuss Sixsigma Wmg |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Steps of drawing SPC

As I mentioned on my previous post, SPC is the one of the important tools for monitoring the system behaviour. SPC can be seen as a six sigma tool; however, the people can use it without any 6 sigma knowledge as well.

Okay , let’s come to draw a SPC chart.

Assume that we work on the quality department and we take regularly 2 samples for checking the dimensions of the products. And we do this observation 3 times: at 11am, 3pm, and 6.30pm in a typical working day (Totally we can say that we measure 6 products a day). Moreover, customer told us that the parts suppose to be (150,00mm- 151,00mm) in those dimensions. Okay I am going to create my own measurement chart step by step.

I wrote the every sample which is collected from production. Firstly I wrote down the difference between highest number and the lowest in the same day. And then I calculated the average of difference by adding whole ranges of days and then dividing to 6. And it is 1,035(Range_bar). X_bar means that average of samples which are collected in same day. After I calculated X_bar, I can reach X_bar_bar easily which is average of average of samples.

Finally, the Upper Control Limit equals to X_bar_bar+ (0,483*Range_bar). And Lower control limit equals to X_bar_bar – (0,483*Range_bar).

[0,483 is a constant and can be founded on almost every tables.] My n is 6, so it is 0,483

I drew my own SPC chart according to assumed values. Actually we can use this tool for almost every application on the industry. As you can see Brown line was our “upper control limit” and green one is “lower control limit”. And Blue demonstrates the system behaviour.

As you can see from the graph the system behaviour stays in the limit; however, the limits are not capable of customer tolerances which is 150,00-151,00, even though the flow is stable.

On the next post, I am going to calculate capabilities!

Important Note: Before reduce the common variations in the system, system or application should be removed from any special causes.

: 30 Nov 2013 14:13 |  Tags: Mbe Wmg |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Why does industry need 6σ?

Six sigma was developed by Motorola engineers in 1980s. Motorola saved more than $ 16 billion as a result of six sigma effort. So how did Motorola save that much money? And what is the aim of the six sigma? Before Process Improvement using 6 sigma (PIUSS) lectures started completely, I always thought like that this 6 sigma methodology must be a miracle. The exact aim of the six sigma is reducing the defect levels by eliminating the variances in the system. By reducing the defects level on the production, we use Statistical Process Chart (SPC) in order to monitor the volume of production. Before we start to reduce common variances in the production, the system must be stable which means that there has to be no special cause. Special causes can be emerged by either passing the upper /lower control limits or stays on the almost same level for 8 measurements. After we understand special causes on the system and solve them by using cause and effect diagram (fish bone method), we are ready to investigate the common variances that affect system behaviour. We need at least 20 points for drawing a real SPC. I will talk about SPC more on the next post!

Industry needs 6 sigma, because it reduces defects by decreasing the variances. Moreover, the most important point on the six sigma ideology is that industry does not reduce its number of defected parts by producing more products (they do not affect to overproduction) and spending more money. On the contrary, 6 sigma helps company saves money by reducing the some types of wastes (defect, inventory, motion, etc). Actually six sigma creates by According to six sigma levels, if a typical industry reaches 6 sigma levels; it means that they can run maximum 3.4 defected parts into in a million! It sounds like a dream! For instance, one of the significant users of 6 sigma methodology in industry is General Electric. GE announced that they saved around $ 350 million in 1998. A Fortunearticle stated that “of 58 large companies that have announced Six Sigma programs, 91 percent have trailed the S&P 500since”.

By the way, I am really interested in 6 sigma methodology and I think that I will apply green belt to PMI in order to gain more knowledge about it.

: 23 Nov 2013 17:13 |  Tags: Mbe Wmg |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem