Keeping your Six Sigma Project Pipeline Full
Posted by: meikah | 12 April 2007 | 9:52 pm
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.
Continue reading…
*Photo from the iSixSigma article.
Filed under: Deployment, Processes, Six Sigma References, Team Dynamics, Tips, iSixSigma
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Upcoming Lean & Six Sigma Conferences
Posted by: meikah | 11 April 2007 | 9:30 pm
Continuous improvement requires continuous learning. So, today, let me highlight the Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma conferences in the coming months.
On April 17, 2007, there is the 8th Annual Six Sigma Summit 2007 in UK. You will learn how to rate your market performance against fellow Six Sigma practitioners through onsite benchmarking programme; discover proven Six Sigma strategies; and learn from Europe’s award-winning Six Sigma projects .
The 3rd Annual Lean Six Sigma Summit in Chicago, USA will have workshops on April 24 & 27, and the summit from April 25 to 26. During the event, you will learn how Lean and Six Sigma drive business improvement in manufacturing, services and transactional environments.
From May 8 to 10, 2007, WCBF will host the 4th Annual Six Sigma in Financial Services Conference in New York. This conference will address the real challenges for leadership and senior executives who are striving to reduce their operational inefficiencies and maximize revenue in highly competitive markets.
On May 22-24 is the 4th Annual Six Sigma in Sales & Marketing Conference in Chicago, USA. You will learn how to implement Six Sigma to improve your sales process, develop a compliance and control plan for product development, and identify metrics to track marketing contribution on new product development.
The 8th Annual Asian Six Sigma Summit 2007 in Singapore is happening on June 4-7, 2007. With a focus on innovation, the event will teach you how to engage leadership commitment to extract faster results from Six Sigma, Innovation, & Lean Thinking.
For more upcoming Lean and Six Sigma conferences visit GoingToMeet.com. Or if you have upcoming events, you can add them to the site.
*Photo from Morguefile.com
Filed under: Events/Announcements, Finance, Lean Six Sigma, Manufacturing, Marketing, Sales, Services, Six Sigma References, Training
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Six Sigma Book Feature: Improving Healthcare Quality and Cost with Six Sigma
Posted by: meikah | 10 April 2007 | 12:11 am
Improving Healthcare Quality and Cost with Six Sigma sounds like an interesting book. It is newly published and featured on Informit.com.
The book has been described as:
The Definitive Six Sigma Guide for Healthcare: Methodologies, Tools, and Metrics by Brett E. Trusko, Carolyn Pexton, Jim Harrington, Praveen Gupta
Drawing on their unsurpassed experience, the authors offer step-by-step methodologies, tools, and metrics—all thoroughly adapted to the unique realities of healthcare. They demonstrate how to utilize Six Sigma’s Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control (DMAIC) process to address even the most challenging problems. They also offer realistic guidance on rolling out Six Sigma initiatives that deliver rapid and sustainable value.
Filed under: Healthcare, Six Sigma References
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Putting Value to Six Sigma Project Charters
Posted by: meikah | 9 April 2007 | 8:51 pm
About this time last year, I posted a preview of what would constitute a Six Sigma Project Charter, and how important it would be to the success of a Six Sigma deployment. In that post, two Six Sigma practitioners could attest that for a 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 the project successful 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 steps in the chartering process, starting with having a problem statement and ending with selecting the team leader. Swinney also identified the necessary project areas from deciding on the project title to determining the cost of poor quality. Related areas are also outlined by Pyzdek from determining the importance of the process to the setting of the project’s time frame.
These initiatives toward developing a project charter form part of a company’s effort to reduce wastes or unnecessary processes.
Now, R. Eric Reidenbach poses a couple of questions on adding value to content of Six Sigma Project Charters: Does Project Detract from Value Being Provided? and Does Project Add to Value Being Provided?
To answer each question, Reidenbach says that an organization needs to listen to what the customers will say about quality and how customers are benefitted by the continuous improvement that is being undertaken. He mentions about CTQs, and if cost-cutting measures are actually good for the customers. He then concludes by saying that a project charter that clearly articulates consequences to the organization’s competitive value proposition reduces the risk of compromising value and insures a more strategic and value laden outcome.
Source:
iSixSigma.com, “Adding Value to Content of Six Sigma Project Charters”
*Photo from Stock.Xchng
Filed under: Deployment, Processes, Team Dynamics, Tools/Toolkits
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SixSig Interviews Ron Pereira of Lean Six Sigma Academy
Posted by: meikah | 4 April 2007 | 12:37 am
HOT NEWS: Check out Six Sigma Interviews and read our interesting interview with Ron Pereira.
What benefits so far are derived from it? Could you quantify them, even in terms of percentage?
My green belt project at Nokia saved $2.2 million dollars. I also used the tools to reduce inventory by millions of dollars while with Nokia. I also have done lots of work with suppliers where I saw defects reduced which enabled the supplier to win and we also won since we shared the savings. That, in my opinion, is the true spirit of continuous improvement.
Filed under: Interview, Lean Six Sigma, Ron Pereira
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5th Law of Lean Sigma: The Law of Complexity and Cost
Posted by: meikah | 3 April 2007 | 11:14 pm
When I featured the five laws of Lean, Reden, a colleague, requested that I do one more post on the fifth law, which is the law of complexity and cost. This made me do some more research on the subject to back my own understanding. During my research, I came across the five laws of Lean Sigma again and this time with the other four laws being defined. Thus, I posted Laws of Lean Six Sigma defined.
I must say, among the five laws, it’s the fifth that is quite interesting, especially during this time of keeping things simple, efficient, and of high quality.
The law of complexity and cost works on the premise that when you develop something complex, naturally there are more processes involved, which may or may not be really necessary for the desired output. Because there are more processes—or what is termed WIP, work in process—it will naturally involve more cost.
In the given definition of the fifth law, a complex processes are said to be more costly than those that are of low quality and speed. But you may ask, shouldn’t all processes be done with quality in mind? Yes, of course. Besides, you cannot help processes to becoming complex over time. It is a natural occurrence as you try to continuously improve processes. That is why it is important that we are able to manage the complexity of our processes to reduce costs, and yet ensure high quality processes. There lies the value of the law of complexity and cost: managing complexity and its cost and work towards lean.
The following links will illustrate more the laws of complexity and cost, and how to manage them.
An article on TechRepublic gives us some insights on managing the cost of complexity by striking a balance and controlling complexity to a certain leve that is still functional to the company.
Over at Electronic Design, an article shows how less complexity and cost push feature-driven autotechnology.
Then Coding Horror: programming and human factors shows the effect of the cost of software complexity.
*Photo from Stock.Xchng
Filed under: Lean Six Sigma, Processes, Technology
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Laws of Lean Six Sigma Defined
Posted by: meikah | 2 April 2007 | 11:48 pm
A couple of posts back, I mentioned the five laws of Lean (Sigma), but only the fifth law was described. So, today, I’m reposting the five laws, with their definitions. I got the material from IT ToolBox Leadership Archives.
- The Law of the Market – Customer needs define quality.
- The Law of Flexibility – The speed of a process depends on how easily people can switch among tasks
- The Law of Focus – 20% of the Work delivers 80% of the value
- The Law of Velocity – The speed of a process in inversely related to the amount of Work IN Process (Little’s Law)
- The Law of Complexity and Cost – Complexity generally adds more cost and WIP (work in process) than either low quality or low speed.
Source: ittoolbox.com
