Teams drive your Six Sigma deployment. Good teams and brilliant teamwork move your Six Sigma initiative more efficiently.
There are however situations and circumstances that teams encounter problems. This happens for several reasons. Are you in that stage where you feel that your team is not going anywhere? And that you’re trying to see what’s stopping your team from moving forward?
You may be encountering the roadblocks below, and may have yet to discover the solution. Check each one out and its corresponding solution.
Pitfall No.1: Starting a team when you have no data (line graph and pareto chart minimum) indicates you have a problem that cannot be solved using Six Sigma. Without data to guide you, you don’t know who should be on the team, so you end up with different people trying to solve different problems.
Solution: Set the team up for success. (1) Work with data you already have; don’t start a team to collect a bunch of new data. (2) Refine your problem before you let a group of people get in a room to analyze root causes.Pitfall No.2: Question data. To throw a team off its tracks, some member who doesn’t like the implications of the data will state in a congruent voice that the data is clearly wrong. If you let it, this will derail the team into further data analysis. I know from experience that all data is imperfect. It has been systematically distorted to make the key players look good and to manipulate the reward system, but it is the “systematic” distortion that allows you to use the data anyway.
Solution: Recognizing that this member is operating on gut feel, not data.Pitfall No.3: Whalebone diagrams. When searching for root causes, if your fishbone diagram turns into a “whalebone” diagram that covers several walls, then your original focus was too broad.
Solution: Go back to your pareto chart. Take the biggest bar down a level to get more specific. Write a new problem statement. Then go back to root cause analysis.
Source:
ExpressComputer, a Six Sigma Zone featured link
*Photo from Stock.Xchng
