SUMMARY
Six Sigma Roadmap Step 4B requires an organization to prioritize, analyze, and implement improvements. It must select improvement projects and develop a Project Rationale. To be able to do this, it needs to do two activities: analyze, develop, and implement cause-focused solution(s); and design/redesign and implement effective new work processes.
You will gain a lot of benefits from developing a Six Sigma Design.
First, you will be able to put value on your customer, resulting in significant improvements in productivity, speed, and efficiency.
Second, your redesign efforts will enable you to focus on specific segments of a business or on critical opportunities. This brings about smaller, more manageable projects.
Third, you will obtain a broader application of design/redesign projects, achieving better range of ideas and skills. Also, involving a broader range of people in your initiatives will help your business not only fix problems but also design efficient processes.
Fourth, you will be able to apply technology to your processes wisely. The Internet, database technology, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and the increasing processing power of computers enable companies better manage their inventories, respond faster, customize products and services, among others.
Getting started with process design/redesign is not however that easy. You may need to observe in your organization the following conditions:
If these conditions are present, your organization may now be ready to design/redesign your charter. The basic purpose of the Project Charter in a process redesign are the same as in an improvement project, which is to set direction and define project parameters. For the Design Charter, however, the purpose should be slightly different.
While a Process Improvement team is to analyze and fix problems, a Redesign team designs and inspires a new way of doing things in the organization.
Some of the most successful defining and revising process outputs and requirements were those done by organizations that bravely redefine their understanding of customer needs, and even went as far as changing the customers’ understanding of their own needs. It begins and ends with questioning existing assumptions each time, if not all the time.
Over the course of the Design/Redesign process, you can use the DMAIC method. Customer needs clarify the output and requirements of an organization. In turn, the Output and Requirements form the rationale of the process. While on the designing effort, you need to consider the following actions:
At the Measure stage, you establish performance baselines so that you gain enough understanding about the current process and ensure dramatically improved performance. To do this, you need to benchmark and evaluate external measures as well as define future measures. Remember your organization must establish a long-term measurement strategy.
At the Analyze stage, you build a foundation for redesign so that you create a new process that applies new workflows, procedures, technologies and other processes. As a result, your organization will achieve a much-improved performance.
This again goes back to meeting customer requirements. To do this, you need a process value analysis and process time analysis.
Value analysis looks at an organization’s processes from the external customers’ eye. You concern yourself with value adding (tasks that are valuable to the external customer), value enabling (activities you do to do work for the external customer more quickly and effectively), and non-value-adding (aspects that may break the business, such as delays, inspections, reviews). You should therefore learn to balance the value-adding and the non-value-adding tasks.
Process time analysis involves work time and wait time. Work time is the time you spend doing something to the product or service as it flows on its way to the customer. Wait time is the time the product or service spends waiting for something to be done.
At the Improve stage, you design and implement the new process. The high-level steps of the process design/redesign improve phase are:
As your team begin to improve the processes, it is important to check the following essential ingredients for process design:
Likewise, there are also a variety of useful techniques to help you evaluate and improve your initial process design: Process walk-throughs and simulations, moments of truth assessment, focus groups and feedback sessions, etc.
Implementing the new process should always start with a “pilot.” Piloting allows you to test the assumptions, procedures, and people-challenges of the new process, try out your measurement systems, and limit any damage that might occur if things don’t go perfectly.
Preparing a pilot may mix and match the following actions:
When you are ready to roll out the final process, you should consider the following critical ingredients for a successful launch of a redesigned process:
In other words, you must concentrate on seeing the process in a new way, set performance criteria for the design analysis, refine and enhance the process iteratively, pilot the process in multiple phases, but do not run a “downtime” pilot.
COMMENTARY
Two schools of thoughts define the manner of improvements you want to benefit for your organization. Their impact differentiates one from the other. The first is “incremental” improvement, meaning small but continual improvements. This is the TQM style. The 2nd is “breakthrough” improvement, meaning major and abrupt change improvement. This is the Re-engineering way. Six Sigma follows both styles, though many say it favors the latter.
The chapter explains that when planning Six Sigma design or re-design, the said types of improvements should be considered. What do you want to achieve? How big is the improvement you want? When do you want it done? How do you want it done? This is why the concept of Six Sigma Design/Redesign is considered a critical element in this endeavor.
There are many simple and small improvements down the factory floor or in the field which can just be addressed by designing work simplification methods, value engineering or resource management. Efficiency improvement is done gradually in short terms. For example, if your % product defect now is 20%, you can design improvements where say every 3 months, you reduce it by 3%. On the other hand, re-engineering can be done by completely revamping the organization, or changing or modernizing the equipment or technology.
This is where the value of Six Sigma Design/Redesign should come in. The conditions needed to come up with this design will dictate what type of improvement you need. If the need is urgent and big which may mean survival, breakthrough designs are recommended. But if the organization is not yet ready to embrace all the changes and if the survival issue not an immediate threat, incremental improvements may be designed.
These are the concepts the chapter wish to explain. In the end however, the chapter reminds the readers the need to apply the DMAIC method in whichever way they go.
