There are many processes in the office environment. Information flows from one department to another, from one computer to the next. This article example can help you to run DMAIC improvement in such hidden and not so obvious processes.
This article covers:
- Problem definition
- Measure phase
- Analyze phase
- Improve phase
- Controling new process
- Key takaways about six sigma DMAIC
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Problem definition
Sales department requires daily demand request document review from several departments. It is engineering, logistics and finances. It takes 7 to 8 working days to receive answers and all required signatures from them. This slows down communication to requestor, the potential customers. Customers might be choosing faster offer. Sponsor and stakeholders are expecting improvement within 2 months.
To understand current process situation and be unified about scope, team made SIPOC. Identified salespeople were asked via voice of business form, what are their real expectations. Expectations are to make final customer happy and deliver document withing 24 hours. One of the question was, what do customers really wants to know in demand request. Research pointed out that not all information provided in todays document are really required.
You can download DMAIC list on the link below:
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Measure phase
Current process mapping revealed, that all communication goes back and forth through salesman.
And via emails. Once people are requested to update their part, it takes several hours to actually start working on it. and another few days to deliver.
Engineering feedback is the slowest one. Sometimes there is cooperation required between engineering and design to get proper information. This prolongs feedback time.
Finance team member needs to communicate to accounting is some occasions too. Engineering as well as finances have described situation, when support from other departments are requested.
Engineering needs design support 50% of the time. It is in the case of special customer design change requirements. Design department created guideline, where most often changes are described. And what Engineers needs to do to be able to approve them. This helped to reduce design involvement to 15%.
How to develop SIPOC diagram? – read here
A3 report template
Great tool to report out your project progress:
- A3 form Excel template
- Restaurant example – filled A3 report (above used pictures)
To download entire A3 report template –click on the link below
Analyze phase
Finance department job in this process is to calculate price based on engineering information. Finance and accounting cooperation is required in 20% of the time. It is in the case of regular customer returning to company. Discount needs to be approved by both departments. Created instructions to discount calculation helped to remove accounting from this process.
Knowledge, that final customer does not need all information provided on document, helped team to eliminate logistics involvement in document creation. If there would be any info needed in the future, logistics will be called as subject matter experts. But team knows, that this will happen very rarely.
Be the one who tries new things. Together with commonsense, you will be successful in changes.
erik from sixsigmamania
What are the best continuous improvement tools? – read here
Improvement phase
Future state process development helped team to understand required tasks to reach future state. And it is elimination of email sending through sales and direct communication requirement between all involved parties.
To eliminate emails and waiting time, regular daily meeting was set up. It is online meeting, so no traveling is needed. Demand request document is filled on that meeting with available information. Document is shared on common folder, so anybody anytime can reach and update it.
Engineers call design immediately after the meeting, In the case of required information. So answer is promptly updated to the document.
Project selection – calculator
I recommend you testing project idea on project calculator, I have developed based on my training experiences. It will help you to determine, how demanding leading project will be for you.
Selection tool downolad
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Controling new process
During a time, Automatic message system was developed by programmers. New request is filled by sales. It sends automatic reminder to the person in the next process step. Escalating Alert message is sent to supervisors in the case, that information is not updated within 2 hours. Supervisor must take appropriate action.
In few months of cooperation, team reduced daily meetings to two meetings per week. These meetings are held due to special customer requirements review.
All instructions, guidelines and new process flow chart were uploaded to quality management system. Every new person involved must be trained to follow rules.
Team is able to react within 12 hours after received request in 80% of the time. In the case of non-standard request, it takes 24 hour to fill demand document.
Team fulfilled stakeholders expectations. It is time for celebration.
How to identify 8 wastes of lean? (+template) read here
Key takeaways about Six Sigma DMAIC:
- It is a robust process improvement method
- It is a team effort on not obvious problem reason resolution
- There are 5 phases – Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control
- Improvement targeted based on data analysis
- Reduces variation in processes, in other words , repeatability is improved
- First understand current problems and pains to enable improvement changes
Do not be afraid to learn Lean Six Sigma tools. Do not be scared of heavy statistics, or using a lot of mathematics. 95% of the time I do not use it, at all. I do not like statistics. I do not like collecting data. Yes, there is a measure and analyze phase. But it only sounds terrible. In our example, cooks were able to drive changes. And they used watches to measure, and logic, that told them where to improve.
Majority of the time is a commonsense usage, that drives changes.
erik from sixsigmamania
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Yours sincerely Erik.