In several Six Sigma workshops that I’ve been to, the most common question that participants ask during the open forum is how to begin a Six Sigma project.
Not many actually know how to begin despite the available mountain of info about DMAIC, statistical tools, among other things. So, I’m sharing here a first of a series of how-to’s. I stumbled upon this article on eHow.com. The article cites six ways to begin a Six Sigma project:
- Train the team. Train executives, champions, black belts and green belts. Training takes up to four months as a black belt and employees will often need to leave their daily duties.
- Define an opportunity. Decide what is most important for the customer. Collect any background information pertaining to the process.
- Collect data to measure the performance of the process. Use parameters set when the opportunity was defined.
- Use statistical tools to analyze the data. Use the procedures learned during Six Sigma training.
- Implement solutions. Use what was learned from data analysis. All levels of the team need to support the solutions and believe in them.
- Check the improvements. Don’t take anything for granted. Don’t get frustrated because progress is slow.
But the crucial part actually before beginning a Six Sigma project is choosing a project. This is often asked, too: how do we choose a project?
For that, I suggest the following:
