How DMAIC Improve Processes

The DMAIC roadmap is always associated with Six Sigma methodology. Many Six Sigma projects have been successful because of DMAIC.

I will share with you today one company that was successful in their project through DMAIC.

Systems and Electronics Inc. (SEI), a manufacturing facility in West Plains, MO, received one of the 2005 awards given by the Excellence in Missouri Foundation. The foundation annually presents quality awards to organizations and teams with excellent performance.

SEI, a subsidiary of Engineered Support Systems Inc. (ESSI), specializes in heavy metal fabrication (including Army tank trailers, Air Force aircraft loaders, and ballistic armor kits). It supplies diversified defense products and advanced sustainment solutions for the U.S. military and other government customers.

At one point the company was commissioned to provide ballistic armor kits for the U.S. Army’s Family of Medium Tactical Vehicle (FMTV) trucks. Each kit is 2,275 separate parts, and many require painting with a special U.S. Army Chemical Agent Resistant Coating system. The painting task proved daunting. The painting would ultimately pace production and delivery. The company estimated that capacity must be increased by 20%, utilizing all available shifts to meet customer needs.

Here’s how DMAIC was used.

SEI initiated the Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control (DMAIC) methodology, selecting team members based on skills and resources needed to define and implement improvement, with particular consideration given to stakeholders.

Teams report progress for each project phase during DMAIC gate reviews. Reviews are constructed around a checklist outlining specific deliverables. The team developed a data collection plan and baseline performance data using Voice-of-the-Customer (VOC) models and Critical to Quality (CTQ) diagrams. The measure phase revealed a problem larger than originally estimated. Rather than 20%, a 31% improvement was necessary to meet the customer’s schedules. Using Six Sigma tools (process maps, Pareto charts, statistical control charts, etc.) the team analyzed the process to define the critical elements with the greatest impact to paint conveyor line output. They identified and prioritized potential solutions based on anticipated impact, ease of implementation, and cost using trial runs to assess effectiveness. Improvements were evaluated for impact with primary Critical to Quality metrics. SEI teams are empowered to implement improvements and because most key stakeholders were team members, changes were implemented with immediate output improvements.

The results were amazing. The final gate review showed improvements over 60% in output and 19% in overall cost, enabling SEI to manufacture and ship armor kits per the customer’s schedule. The added capacity also facilitated additional contract awards for ballistic armor kits. SEI has delivered over 2,000 armor kits, receiving numerous reports about the armor kits produced by the West Plains facility saving lives of U.S. soldiers.

With the global red alert on terrorism, what SEI is able to do definitely takes some of the worries out from our minds.

Source: Team uses DMAIC to ramp up armor painting capacity

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Six Sigma Project Charter

I often hear the phrase, “All’s well that ends well.” I get the impression that I shouldn’t mind the bumpy road to my destination so long as I get there safely. Well, yes. Getting to my destination or achieving my goal should be the most important. But wouldn’t it be better to start out my journey the right way? I’m sure there’s no harm in that. I believe that if I start right I will most likely end right, too.

The same goes for any Six Sigma deployment. Sure, the bottomline, or company profits, is all important, but there’s no harm in starting the deployment right. For the deployment to start right, the Six Sigma team needs to develop a project charter.

A project charter is part of the Define phase in the DMAIC roadmap. It defines all the interactions of the team members. According to Zack Swinney, the project charter can make or break your deployment project. It can make it by specifying necessary resources and boundaries that will in turn ensure success; it can break it by reducing team focus, effectiveness and motivation.

Thomas Pyzdek identified the six steps in the chartering process.

1. Obtain a problem statement.
2. Identify the principal stakeholders.
3. Create a macro flowchart of the process.
4. Select the team members.
5. Identify the training to be received by the team.
6. Select the team leader.

Swinney, on his part, identified the necessary project areas as follows:

1. Project Title. Name the project with a properly descriptive title that will allow others to quickly view and select your project based on the keywords and phrases.
2. Black Belt/Green Belt. Identify the project leader so management knows who’s leading the efforts, and others can locate the leader for gathering further knowledge at a later date.
3. Mentor/Master Black Belt. Identify a resource for the project leader to ‘lean on’ if any project questions or issues arise (and they always do).
3. Project Start Date. For documentation purposes.
4. Anticipated Project End Date. The duration of the project will provide the leader and team adequate time to complete the project, given business conditions, work-load, holiday schedules, and such.
5. Cost of Poor Quality. Quantify any cost of poor quality, may it be in the form of scrap, excess hours, or violations and fines.

The following areas echo that which are identified by Pyzdek above.

6. Process Importance. Identify the process that you’re improving and determine its importance of doing so.
7. Process Problem. Identify the problem of the process you’ve selected to improve.
8. Process Start/Stop Points. Bound the project with a start and stop point.
9. Project Goals. Set challenging but realistic goals.
10. Process Measurements. Specify all measurements you think may be necessary, but make sure that they are within the scope (process start/stop points) of your project.
11. Team Members. Identify the poeple who wil act as sponsor, project leader, and subject matter experts.
12. Project Time-Frame. Monitor the phases of Six Sigma methodology and emphasize the major milestones. Read more…

Download project charter templates here.

Sources:
Project Charter
Defining Six Sigma Projects

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Sustaining a Six Sigma Performance

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” ~Aristotle

Sustainability is one crucial point in any Six Sigma initiative. Okay, you have launched your Six Sigma projects. These projects are actually delivering what they’ve promised in terms of benefits and savings. Your processes are improved and the overall company performance is working efficiently.

But are you sure that if you used the DMAIC Roadmap you reached the Control phase?

Control the improvements to keep the process on the new course. In doing so, you prevent reverting back to the “old way.” You require the development, documentation and implementation of an ongoing monitoring plan, and institutionalize the improvements through the modification of systems and structures (staffing, training, incentives).

Or the relevant questions (taken from “Sustaining Six Sigma and Spreading The Success” article) would be: how to follow-up on your first Six Sigma successes, how to build upon those results, how to keep the energy level high, and how to spread Six Sigma throughout the organisation and beyond?

To continue what you’ve started, you need to initiate new projects, find more dollars, raise your quality levels, and maintain the momentum of your initiative. Six Sigma is ongoing; it’s a constant, “living” methodology that needs to continue as long as your business does. The article cited a two-year scheme by which you can follow up on your recently-concluded Six Sigma project. Read it here.

If you get the picture, all these efforts mean to sustain the feeling of achievement across the organization. Better yet, you publicize what had transpired to encourage similar initiatives. In other words, work and enthusiasm should not stop just because the project is finished and is successful. It’s easy to fall into the complacency trap.

Another is to document the lessons you learned every step of the way. Every success and missteps should not be forgotten so that you can learn from them. One way to spread the learning is to have open communication lines. Everyone should share his experience with another and transfer the technology to others, especially those who were not part of the project team(s).

More importantly, keep your focus on the customer. Keep on getting inputs from them by listening to complaints, do surveys, focus groups, one-on-one interviews, and test the product or service with them. In the end, it pays to find ways to discover the customers’ obvious needs and expectations.

It’s another interesting topic for research to go back to companies who’ve been into Six Sigma for years and find out if they have sustained it.

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What is the Focus of (Six Sigma) Deployment?

One of my interview questions is “What was the most significant component of the project? Was it training?” Most answered, “Training took place first, so I guess we can consider that as the most important aspect.”

Many will surely nod in agreement to this observation. In fact, training eats up most of the Six Sigma’s budget, not only initially but throughout the program. It’s true that without quality training, your Six Sigma project is not going to be successful. But should organizations focus on that?

Bonet Lobo a Master Black Belt at Tata Consultancy Services, thinks otherwise. He said,

“the purpose of Six Sigma is to make a positive difference to the bottom line. Although critical, Six Sigma training—certifications like Green Belt, Black Belt, Master Black Belt and others—is just a means to an end. Certifications are not an end in themselves. In Six Sigma parlance, certifications are the Xs, or the causes, and benefits are the big Y, or the effect.”

The reason for the deployment are the benefits, dollars and continuous process improvement, that can be realized after the projects have been undertaken.

Organizations fall into the trap of gving so much importance to training or certification. Many times the Green Belts and Black Belts candidates are asked to use tools and techniques that are not really required for a complete analysis. In the real-world Six Sigma projects, you do not need all the Six Sigma tools and techniques. Some successful projects use effectively a simple Pareto diagram or a fishbone diagram, while some others turn to an elaborate quality function deployment (QFD) or design of experiments (DOE). Also, you can do a comprehensive process mapping exercise by using just two simple tools – level 1, level 2, level 3 deployment flowcharts and an failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA).

Lobo understands though why organizations feel the need to use the entire gamut of Six Sigma tools and techniques. That is because certification and credibility of the projects rely on having the Green Belts and Black Belts demonstrate knowledge and skills in these. But then again, Lobo said that cannot be the case every time.

“When evaluating the performance of Green Belts and Black Belts the criteria should focus on how effectively the process changes have been implemented and how rigorously the benefits have been quantified. Such details as the number of tools used, number of slides in tollgates, etc. are secondary and should not be considered as major roadblocks for certification or Six Sigma project completion.”

Your focus therefore should be on the benefits the projects will bring in to the organization. After all, management’s primary concern is how much savings can be realized and how quickly the solutions can be implemented with what constraints. And I’m sure the bottomline is not always how much dollars you rake right now but how much dollars you will be continuously raking in as a result of your continuous process improvement.

Source:
Deployment Focus: Certifications or Project Benefits?

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The (Six Sigma) Roadmap for Every Industry

I found this news article today: “To Use DMEDI or to Use DMAIC? That Is the Question.” Glad I found this because this is a crucial question for companies that are going into Six SIgma, such as those on my interview list.

So far only DMAIC and DFSS are mentioned. I think because when we talk of Six Sigma, DMAIC often comes to mind. But because of this article, I will definitely ask my succeeding interviewees about the roadmaps that they tried or have used.

The article introduced another roadmap, DMEDI, which is said to be useful for initiatives when the process being improved does not currently exist in any form. This statement is suspicious, though. Because there may be process improvements that don’t have properly placed documentation, yet the organization is currently working on it. Or the the process may even be performed differently by different teams. In that case, even in a very loose form, the DMAIC roadmap is more appropriate to follow through the Define and Measure phases to set a statistical baseline and to measure improvement.

At any rate, it will be helpful to look closely at these two roadmaps and how each benefits a particular industry.

DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) is an analytical, data-driven approach to eliminating weaknesses in active processes, products and services. DMAIC, which focuses on reducing variation and defects, produces incremental improvements.

DMEDI (Define, Measure, Explore, Develop, Implement) is a creative approach to designing new robust processes, products and services. This roadmap is focused on obtaining significant competitive advantages or quantum leaps over current environments. DMEDI projects typically require more time and resources to complete.

You may read a brief comparison of the DMAIC and DMEDI Six Sigma Roadmaps here.

Let’s see now how the two roadmaps benefit each industry or business environment.

View the complete table.

To help you decide which Six Sigma roadmap is right for your kind of organization, view this flowchart.

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Working on Your (Six Sigma) Process Improvement

The premise of Six Sigma is eliminating wastes by continuous process improvement, echoes one of my interviewees. One thing crucial about eliminating wastes is time. All companies no matter its nature cannot afford to be wasteful for a long time, or even for one production/service cycle.

With the latest advances in technology, popular notion has it that automation is the answer to speeding up your processes. Many tend to believe this. All those paper work and signature sequences for every approval of a document is time consuming. Those who do not know better will find value in those detailed steps. After all, it is for the security of company’s processes.

However, not all sucessful companies turn to automation as the answer to process improvement. An isixsigma.com article says so. Companies only need to know the 95/5 rule—typical processes consist of 95% non-value adding time and only 5% value adding time.

Six Sigma defines value added as to be a value added action the action must meet all three of the following criteria:

• the customer is willing to pay for this activity
• it must be done right the first time
• the action must somehow change the product or service in some manner

To be competitive, you must reduce costs that do not contribute to value adding, not passed on to customers. Thus, you must eliminate waste. As a review, waste in a process is any activity that does not move the process closer to final output, or even add value to final output. Overproduction, inventory, waiting, transportation, motion, process (useless steps in a process) and defects are the examples of wastes.

The practice of process improvement involves the following:

1. Select a process that, if improved, will have a positive impact on the organization. The object is not to eliminate people – it is to improve the process so people can be freed up to increase throughput or take on additional business for customer satisfaction.

2. The process must have a clearly defined beginning and end.

3. No process improvement can take place without involvement of a process owner.

4. A team has to be organized by the process owner to map the process, reengineer it and implement the new process plan.

5. The process must be mapped (or diagrammed) as it actually is, not as people think it works or how it was originally designed to work.

6. After the map is complete the team studies each of the steps with the goal of shortening the process.

7. Shorten the process: eliminate all non-value adding operations where possible; consolidate related operations; simplify or automate by looking at remaining operations and evaluate them as processes within the larger process. BUT automate only when you are sure all waste has been eliminated or minimized.

8. The biggest failures in process improvement are lack of implementation of the redesigned process and reexamination of the process on a regular basis.

Source: Process Improvement—Is Automation Always the Best Answer?

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Six Sigma in the Service Industry

On my list of companies to interview, two are service firms—Citibank and UnionBank. I have yet to talk with the quality director of the former. As to the latter, I was able to talk to its Six Sigma Leader a few days back. He says that the bank is yet to launch its Six Sigma project middle of this year.

Six Sigma has always been associated with manufacturing firms. Seeing the benefits and savings that it brought to these firms, service firms wanted to take a bite of the pie. Soon enough, financial institutions, health care companies among others began implementing Six Sigma.

An article on Working Knowledge gives some advice on how to adapt Six Sigma methods to service processes.

1. Determine which parts of your service processes are the best candidates. Classify your processes into highly customized (e.g. complex IT systems implementation), mass-customized (e.g. media buys), or standardized (e.g. credit card account services or fast-food service). Take for example, website development. Highly customized website developers are likely to achieve benefits from Six Sigma in project administration: client set-up, billing and collection, and, perhaps, in project status reporting. Mass-customized web developers can apply Six Sigma to hone their core service. Standardized services have the greatest Six Sigma potential because they use software or websites to take clients through the entire process. A human gets involved only to answer a question.

2. Define what you mean by a service defect and how you intend to measure it. Most Six Sigma programs for services define a defect as a flaw in a process that results in a lower level of customer satisfaction or a lost customer. In short, a service defect means your processes are not delivering on your promise to customers.

3. Probe relentlessly for root causes. Once you’ve identified and measured specific service defects, it will be easy for you to streamline rules and procedures and improve the training for process improvement.

4. Remember, this is a long-term commitment. This initiative takes a while to bear fruit, and you can never put the initiative on autopilot. A successful Six Sigma effort requires relentless communication and reinforcement—well beyond what most leaders assume is enough. Thus it pays to scope your projects well and monitor your organizational culture.

Read more: Six Sigma: It’s Not Just for Manufacturing

Definitely, Six Sigma methodology will be good for the services industry as well. After all, as Edward Baker, author of Scoring a Hole in One, says, “It is application of the technique that matters.”

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Six Sigma at the Semiconductor Industry

AMI Semiconductor Philippines, Inc. (AMIS) is next in line on the list of companies I will interview. AMIS is a leading designer and manufacturer of silicon solutions, such as integrated circuits or ICs, used in autmotive, medical, industrial, communications, computing, defense, and consumer products.

The company belongs to the semiconductor industry, which is the dominant sector of the electronics industry. It accounted for 57% of the total exports in 1999 amounting to $14.4B while representing only 12% of the total population of electronic companies during that year.

The semiconductor industry focuses on the manufacture of ICs. These are very small chips and weigh lightly. Large-scale integration ICs (LSI), for example, contain 1000 to 10,000 components per chip. Very large –scale integration IC’s (VLSI) contain up to 1 million components per chip, while ultra large-scale integration (ULSI) IC’s contain more than 1 million chips.

Thus we are talking here of minute products, each of which are vital to the development of an integral component of any electronic equipment. If Six Sigma can bring about significant improvements to the manufacture of large by-products, it can definitely effect the same to microchip development.

Nestor Raneses, AMIS Quality Director for Quality and Test Operations, wrote in his working paper submitted to the Society for the Advancement of Technology Management in the Philippines (SATMP) that productivity initiatives in the semiconductor industry includes the use of Six Sigma.

Because of the competitive pressures and dynamic technological advances in the industry, productivity improvement is a natural focus. Increasing throughputs, elimination of wastes, faster cycle times, and higher quality levels are consistent moving targets. High-leverage activities and “value-adding“ processes are constantly scrutinized and re-engineered. Best–known methods and technologies are regularly introduced and adapted. In improving processes and methods, the use of formal tools such as six sigma methodologies, statistical process controls, SMED ( single minute exchange of die ) system, automation and automation, computer-aided manufacturing, ergonomics, and agile manufacturing is very common.

Having this as background, I know my interview with them will be a useful, exciting one. Till then…

Source:
Measuring Productivity in the Semiconductor Industry

Filed under: Six Sigma Organizations

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Certification for Six Sigma

Mr. Reden Rodriguez‘s comment on my previous entry reads…

“Is there a certification program that measures the effect of six sigma on corporations that have implemented the program?”

I’m sure this is also the question of many of you out there who may be familiar with the ISO certification given to companies. In fact, I toyed with the same idea last Saturday when I was at the WorldBex International at the World Trade Center, Manila. In most, if not all, exhibitor’s booth, I saw the ISO certification. Several times, I was tempted to ask them if they were also deploying Six Sigma, but I thought it was not the proper venue to be asking.

At any rate, when I got the abovementioned comment, I checked out my archives because I was sure I had written about Six Sigma certification before. True enough, I found one: Be a Six Sigma Certified Organization (8/16/05). This entry discusses the trainings one has to undergo to be able to launch a Six Sigma initiative.

Six Sigma certification is not given to the organization itself. The strength of Six Sigma certification is felt only by the organization in terms of benefits and savings it has acquired by implementing Six Sigma. What Six Sigma practitioners give to advocates are certification trainings. Thus, we find members in the Six Sigma project team who are Yellow Belt-, Green Belt-, BlackBelt-, Master Black Belt-, Champion-certified. Each Belt candidate has a corresponding number of hours to comply with, projects to undertake, and tests to undergo, which a company granting the certification requires of him. These certification trainings render a Six Sigma project team credible.

In other words, Six Sigma certification is a confirmation of an individual’s capabilities with respect to specific competencies. Many organizations give out these certification trainings and the quality of the training may differ accordingly. A worthwhile certification involves training, a written proficiency exam, and a hands-on competency display of the methodology to real world problems.

There have been questions floating around as to whether these trainings will be standardized. One Six Sigma author, Charles Waxer says that there’s the possibility but it won’t be happening soon. The rule of thumb I guess is to choose those training companies that have built a good reputation.

Just recently, on March 2, 2006 online edition of PRWeb (featured on isixsigma) to be exact, Dr, Mikel Harry launches MindPro, a Six Sigma computer-based training software. Mikel Harry is considered to be the Father of Six Sigma.

MindPro is a complete Six Sigma training on a three DVD set that costs US$895, a price far lower than other training. Successful users can get certified through Dr. Harry’s Six Sigma Management Institute. Asked why he developed the software, Harry had this to say.

“Large companies have had such great success with Six Sigma, I kept asking myself how do we make it affordable for businesses of all sizes, even individuals who want to enhance their professional credentials. My vision was to see Six Sigma not only used by a very small percentage of a Fortune 100 company’s workforce, but to be made simple and affordable enough to be implemented at all levels of an organization so all employees could benefit from this proven training.”

The press release: Dr. Mikel Harry, Father Of ‘Six Sigma,’ Launches ‘Mindpro’ Computer Based Training Software.

Read more: Six Sigma Certification

Filed under: Software/Technology, Training

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Your Regular Task Prepares You for Your Key Six Sigma Role

I’ve written about Six Sigma project teams, how they should perform and be formed. Thus, we learned that to succeed in a project we need to involve our top talent—our best performers—persons that are capable of leading well.

Also, we want our senior managers to be skilled in using Six Sigma to help run our business. It will be a mistake to place only technical specialists (engineers, statisticians, etc.) in key Six Sigma roles. A major culture change may require them to be experienced and skilled in leadership.

This is partly true.

I learned in my interview yesterday that an employee’s experience in his regular or corporate task can contribute a lot to how he will perform in a Six Sigma project. For example, if an employee has experience in the production line, he will bring with him his knowledge in production to the process improvement he’ll be undertaking. My interviewee even attributed some project failures to this as some team members are newbies and are immediately thrown into Six Sigma work. To me that is a valuable information.

I won’t give away the entire interview transcript just yet. You will have to wait until I finish my special project.

For now, let me share with you some overviews of real-life Six Sigma projects. Thanks to Thomas Pyzdek.

Printed wiring board components—The Six Sigma team received its project from the material review board. The MRB identified the project as a significant and chronic contributor to the problem of failures at final product test. The assembly was a complicated piece of hardware and final test failures caused shipping delays, resulting in penalties and loss of customer goodwill. The team’s project focused in the PWB assembly area. There were three major subprojects: errors at manual insertion, errors at automated insertion, and errors at semi-automated insertion. A few examples of the issues addressed include kitting errors, the layout of the manual insertion workstation, the positioning of axial lead parts on the automatic insertion machine’s parts tape, and the speed at which semi-automated insertion was performed. Problems were prioritized and addressed, leading to dramatic reduction of test failures.

…

Etched circuit boards—The Six Sigma team was directed by a senior executive to solve the problem of photoresist breakdown. This problem occurred at the very end of a long sequence of process steps, which produce a bare printed wiring board. The problem was sporadic, and when it occurred, it resulted in delays throughout the production process. This wreaked havoc with schedules and resulted in extensive overtime work, shipping delays, penalties and angry customers. Through data mining, the team was able to focus the project on work which took place in the “yellow room,” where the photoresist was applied. The project eventually focused on the settings of the lamination and the expose processes. The root causes of the problems were identified, and the problem was completely eliminated.

Source: Real Life Six Sigma

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