Early this year, I attended a benchmarking forum on the Best of Six Sigma Practices in the Philippines. In that seminar, a representative of a big, popular multinational healthcare company asked a very interesting question about choosing Six Sigma projects and having Six Sigma projects on a regular basis.
Well, it’s easy to say that choosing Six Sigma projects should not be a problem if you know your organization and its processes very well. But, I guess the question is valid in the sense that Six Sigma doesn’t really promise to be the only solution to all our operational problems.
Today, I found this article on iSixSigma. It’s titled “Six Steps to Keeping Six Sigma Project Pipeline Full.” The article can help Six Sigma Champions and Master Black Belts identify appropriate projects properly and create an organization’s project pipeline.
Click on the photo for a larger version.
Step 1: Understand the Issues. Meet individually with senior managers to discover the problems underlying the overall business. Big Y type issues can be found by asking senior division managers (e.g., human resources manager, maintenance manager, plant manager, etc).
Step 2: Consolidate the Issues and Confirm. Structure the ideas and areas of concern from Step 1 and categorize them into areas of similar subject (i.e., production, maintenance, human resources, etc.) making use of affinity diagrams. Be prepared to pull out just-do-it projects during this step. Then consolidate the issues and confirm the categories with senior management.
Step 3: Review Meeting with Senior Management. Determine the specific, key issues senior management wants fixed.
Step 4: Develop a Picture of Projects. Validate each issue by asking for numbers, trends, performance charts, etc. Also, determine which level of Six Sigma expertise may be most appropriate for each project (i.e., Black Belt, Green Belt or just-do-it). At the end of this step, a clear picture of specific projects should emerge.
Step 5: Prioritize Project List. Prioritize the list of projects from Step 4 using tools such as the pay-off matrix, criteria rating or Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA).
Step 6: Assign People to Projects. Assign the right people to the right projects. Six Sigma project leaders and team members must have the appropriate training, skills, energy, experience and authority to make improvements on their assigned projects. They also must be allowed time to investigate, analyze and improve the issues properly.
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*Photo from the iSixSigma article.
