O.S. Global Earth Simulation

A couple days ago I participated in a game called Global Earth Simulation. The first time, I have heard about it, I got a little bit confused because I did not understand what kind of game it was, but when I searched about it more online, I realized that it was an interactive game.

In the place where we have played the game, there were around 150 students ready to get into a harsh competition. There were 2 different worlds divided from each other and many countries, organizations. Every team started the game with a limited amount of money and they had duties to be done. My teammates and my country was Japan which was counted as a developed country, so we had a higher amount of money in comparison to the other countries. However, we had much more responsibilities, and duties to get accomplish because of our society's higher level needs, such as, technology, environment, human rights, or health. In order to do so, we had to bargain with other countries and most importantly with the organizations which had got these needs in their hands.

I think bargaining part of the game was so fun, but we had to rush all the time to divide our sources and figure out the goals to cover our society's needs. There were 3 10 min-long games, and each one was counted 10 years in the game time. We got a chance and improved our level and made it advanced which meant for us the end of the game because it was the highest level, but responsibilities were still on and we helped other countries as much as we could.

I know that it is a little bit complicated for those who have never played this game before, but I can say that it was one of the best things I had ever experienced. Communication with people all the time, and trying to take care of your country by supporting other countries was such a harsh task to do, but as soon as I started playing, I forgot the real world, and focused on the artificial world which was a copy of our world.

I strongly recommend this game to everybody because it is such a great opportunity to show your leadership skills, and create practical solutions to the current problems. At the end of the game, even though our country had a advanced level of total wealth, the world got into a disaster because nobody had enough care to each other, and we all got responsible with the disaster. Therefore, we realized that the important thing was not only to make your country stronger, but also, to support and improve other less developed countries too.

I hope that you can get a chance and check this link.

O.S. Global Earth Simulation

Six sigma: the result of creativity and innovation

In today's business world which has such a harsh competition, taking a strong part by producing or serving to the customers has significantly become harder. Of course, it is a kind of "survival-of-the-fittest" game for most of the companies, and "big fish eats the little fish" is still a strong statement even though the innovation has made some little companies faster and stronger than other bigger ones. However, we are well aware of the fact that most of today's leaders do not have any doubt about that if you can not improve customer satisfaction with the improvement of your products and supply chain management, being a big fish and taking a strong part in a difficult business environment is such a dream. Therefore, Six Sigma has been developed to fill up this gap with creativity and innovation.

What is Six Sigma? I think firstly we should ask this question to ourselves. Six Sigma is a process of identifying and defining the variation in our production process and of finding correct techniques to minimize them. It was first established by Motorola in 1986, and in a short period of time, it was started to be used by many other big and middle size companies. For example, General Electric (GE) is one of the most popular and the biggest followers of this process under the authority of the company's legendary CEO Jack Welch. Also, as he has stated, "in such a big supply chain which GE has, embracing Six Sigma brings the help and the support to suppliers and the most importantly customers."


What are the rules and six steps for Six Sigma? What kind of advantages does it bring to our organization? First of all, we should clarify that Six Sigma is a way of checking quality by identifying and counting the defects (errors) in a production process. If a company is aiming for minimized deviation and applying Six Sigma into its process, the company managers from bottom to top have to understand the importance of making each employee in the organization understand what Six Sigma means, and how and why they are applying this method into their production process. Also, all employees including especially top managers must believe in the process and take it in a serious way. Secondly, we always aim customer satisfaction by applying Six Sigma which means that Customers are our target. Customers have to get the non-defected productions. By the same token, Six Sigma helps us minimize the deviation. Once Jack Welch has said that "deviation is an evil for the company". What he means is that deviation (errors, defects) has to be got rid of or at least minimized to satisfy the customers even though we know that whatever happens in a production process, defects are always going to happen. Hence, how much we are minimizing the defects is the important question. "Keep the process on target by reducing variation to satisfy the customers." is the popular saying of Six Sigma.


Now I would like to explain with really easy terms how Six Sigma process reduces the deviation. As all of us know, the normal distribution which is also called Bell Curve is given above. The lines are representing our variations, and the more we have errors, the steeper our curve is. Therefore, when we apply Six Sigma method on our product process by aiming an important target which is customer satisfaction, we see that the line gets more smoother and wider as red line represents. That means we are decreasing the errors by using 6 different sigma processes.

There is one more thing that we should take into consideration. In terms of using Six Sigma, always lean to the customer satisfaction, do not forget that people are the most valuable resource, and always keep continues improvement which means Six Sigma is a process which needs applying in the long run to get the correct results. Therefore, the companies have to solve the problems one by one and eliminate waste and variation in every process by aiming the perfection and by using team work.

I will try to write more about Six Sigma which is a subject that I am interested in, so it will be continued.

I am posting some of the webpages and articles that I have used to write this entry.

For Six Sigma Motorola articles

The Six Sigma Sweep

Wikipedia Source - Six Sigma

GE Six Sigma source

Six Sigma web page

It is a joy to work there!!!

Google, one of the most successful companies of our century. Actually, it would be much better to say one of the most innovative, creative, and most successful companies.

In fact, Google was a research project of 2 brilliant Ph.d students at Standford University. They started it around 1996, and then realized the gap in online world: the need for a strong and useful searching site which includes a wide range of web area. They launched it in 1998 and the company has become the best since that day. Of course, they did not realize that it would have been such a great success, but they found the need and created the best company which has the best working environment in comparison to other companies.

Yes, Google has the best working environment for its employees, and I would like to cover that point. In my opinion, the most important fact is empowering its employees, and the company is doing it so well. Everybody has a voice in most of the decisions, and what most of the employees say is that even though you are a new employee who started working one week ago, you can still change many things in the company because your ideas and you are valuable. Also, in terms of structure and culture, Google has always believed in creativity, and innovation and it has gained its reputation by taking always care of its employees, customers, and by providing the best environment for its employees in which you can be yourself far from bureaucracy, high job stress and arguments. There are a lot of recreation centers in the building. The design is extraordinary and beautiful. The food is extremely nice and delicious including a lot of options. Moreover, yoga, pilates, and different kinds of activities are always reachable. Therefore, these kinds of advantages make Google the most desirable work place in the business world.

Of course, it is not something easy to get in, but the company provides many opportunities to its employees from day care of children to day care of the pets.

Keep Google watch to catch the innovation and creativity.