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lean plus six-sigma not lean six-sigma

Free Process Capability Calculator

cap-imp

Knowing if a process will consistently meet specification is critical, here’s a tool that will help.

You have to manage a system. The system doesn’t manage itself.
W. Edwards Deming

A process is a unique combination of tools, materials, methods, and people engaged in producing a measurable output; for example a manufacturing line for machine parts. All processes have inherent statistical variability which can be evaluated by statistical methods…

The Process Capability is a measurable property of a process to the specification, expressed as a process capability index (e.g., Cpk or Cpm) or as a process performance index (e.g., Ppk or Ppm). The output of this measurement is usually illustrated by a histogram and calculations that predict how many parts will be produced out of specification.

Process capability is also defined as the capability of a process to meet its purpose as managed by an organization’s management and process definition structures ISO 15504.

Two parts of process capability are:

1) Measure the variability of a process, and

2) Compare that variability with a proposed specification or product tolerance.

You can use Minitab to complete process capability studies. For example, Keith Bower has produced some excellent overviews here and here. You can also check out his video below.

If you don’t have access to Minitab, then download my free Excel based calculator by clicking the download link below:

http://www.box.net/shared/hgbcv1c81n

You may also want to download a brief overview of process capability by clicking on the download link below:

http://www.box.net/shared/73ayxyfdsi

Read more here:

4-B Process Capability

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February 24, 2009 Posted by | feature, Six Sigma, software | , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

Making Sense of Lean Six Sigma via Twitter

Can you learn about lean six sigma via Twitter? Yes, but it’s not easy without the right tool.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS, or email, or through an application such as Tweetie, Twinkle, TwitterFox, Twitterrific, Feedalizr, and Facebook. Four gateway numbers are currently available for SMS: short codes for the United States, Canada, and India, and a United Kingdom-based number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email. Twitter had by one measure over 3 million accounts and, by another, well over 5 million visitors in September 2008, a fivefold increase in a month.

There seems to be trend for Lean Six Sigma bloggers to join Twitter:

Of course you can also follow me on Twitter – click on the link below:

Follow me on Twitter!

TwitterBar

I use TwitterBar to post to Twitter from Firefox’s address bar. A small unobtrusive grey icon sits to the right of your address bar; clicking on it will post your tweet, and you can hover your mouse over it to see how many characters you have left.

You can also post by typing “–post” at the end of your tweet. Clicking the grey icon when visiting a webpage will send a tweet with the URL of the webpage you are currently viewing.

TweetDeck

The only way I can make sense of the flood of information on Twitter is by using TweetDeck.

Image representing TweetDeck as depicted in Cr...
Image via CrunchBase

TweetDeck is an Adobe Air desktop application that is currently in public beta. It aims to evolve the existing functionality of Twitter by taking an abundance of information i.e twitter feeds, and breaking it down into more manageable bite sized pieces.

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How does it do that?

TweetDeck enables users to split their main feed (All Tweets) into topic or group specific columns allowing a broader overview of tweets. The default columns can contain All Tweets from your timeline, @replies directed to you and direct messages. The GROUP, SEARCH and REPLIES buttons then allow the user to make up additional columns populated from the live tweet information. Once created these additional columns will automatically update allowing the user to keep track of a twitter threads far easier.

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Additional Features

  • - Catch up with overnight global twitterings as TweetDeck stores all updates whilst running
  • - Continual status updates of TweetDeck and Twitter
  • - Resize TweetDeck as either an unobtrusive column, full screen or anything in between
  • - Especially useful running full screen on a separate monitor
  • - Filter tweets using the tweet text, username, source or timeframe
  • - Auto updates from the Twitter API

What do you think? Please leave your comments below:

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January 6, 2009 Posted by | feature, lean, Six Sigma | , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

BPM Battles Six Sigma

Mmm... spacy goodness

Ting! There goes the bell.

If you put Business Process Management (BPM) and six sigma in a boxing match, who would you place your money on? Well for a somewhat biased account (towards BPM), download a free pdf to read the full blow-by-blow report, but if you’re in a hurry (apparently):

BPM is about the management of process improvement and ensuring that it is made sustainable within the organisation. It is about the establishment of a business process architecture, process governance, organisational change management capability, sustainable process performance and increasing BPM maturity, to name but a few. Whereas, Six Sigma can be a useful intervention strategy for a business process improvement problem. Therefore, we would see Six Sigma as a potential useful adjunct to BPM.

Hmm, while I see BPM as being able to allow firms to fine tune their processes and possibly make a businesses’ internal processes function more productively I agree with this comment:

Typically it (BPM) refers to the identification of core business processes, assignment of process ownership and definition of measures (and perhaps benchmarks) that indicate the health of a particular process. These measures are often influential in selection of Six Sigma or Lean projects.

What do you think?

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December 5, 2008 Posted by | feature, Six Sigma | , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

QFD and Kansei Engineering: Can they be integrated?

In Japan, Kansei Engineering is often considered as an independent product development philosophy, which typically is carried out in concurrent engineering processes. However, since the methodology is little known in European industry, is it possible to pinpoint possible entry points for Kansei Engineering into a company’s product development processes?

In practice this means may mean a way of identifying product development methods such as QFD etc., which are suitable for transferring  Kansei Engineering results into conventional product development.

Integrating Kansei Engineering Data in QFD

Many companies use standardised methods for the translation of customer wants and needs into product and process properties. One of the most common methods is QFD.

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Kansei Engineering data can be used to identify customer needs and determine their importance, facilitating the setting of target values for technical data and perform benchmarking between different products and brands and quantify the relationships in the relationship matrix in a more exact way:

In the relationship matrix the customer’s needs are linked to the technical responses. The strength of the relationships is determined by more or less qualified guesses of experts distinguishing between strong, medium and weak relationships. Further refinement of the scale complicates the decision process and as a consequence increases the evaluation time.

However, in some cases more detailed information is desirable. Kansei Engineering can quantify those relationships by building mathematical models of the customer’s Kansei. Moreover, statistics allow examination of whether different customer group have different opinions which in turn and lead to the development of alternative product concepts.

IMG_0745

In QFD the customer needs are collected using focus group interviews, activity analysis etc. The data gathered is evaluated and interpreted by i.e. Voice of customer tables, etc. Those tools try to grasp even implicit needs and wants and link them to product parameters.

However, interpreting the customers’ statements is very difficult and requires much experience. Kansei Engineering is designed for valuating the unconscious wants and needs, and delivers statistical mathematical values for the connection between a need and its technical response. Regarding furniture the customer may describe her home as ‘elegant’.

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One way is to treat this statement with VOCT, and feed it into the ‘House of Quality’. An alternative way is to make a Kansei Engineering evaluation and get an exact translation into product properties with only minor influence from the researcher. In the following step within the QFD procedure, customer needs are ranked after their importance. QFD offers a number of different tools, based on (subjective) expert knowledge. Kansei Engineering offers the opportunity to collect the customer’s attitude about the particular importance of the different product properties.

Kansei Engineering can be used in the QFD process is the setting of the target values for the product properties. For every customer need, a number of product properties can be identified. Collecting additional information about what the ideal product should feel like, gives a clear indication about in which direction the Kansei Score of the certain Kansei Word has to be adjusted to suit the customers’ needs in a better way. Since it is known how and in which way the product properties are connected to the certain word, it becomes clear how the Kansei can e adjusted. As a result Kansei Engineering can help to set target values for the technical specifications.

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Success in international markets does not only require a customer-focused design, but also knowledge about the competition situation in the specific market segment. QFD provides a product comparison where different products within the same segment are compared regarding the degree of fulfilment of a specific customer need. By comparing the results of Kansei Engineering studies made for different competing products, a benchmarking profile can be developed and integrated into the ‘House of Quality’. Such a combination of the House of Quality‘ and Kansei Engineering allows a special profiling of the products expressed Kansei.

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November 24, 2008 Posted by | feature, Six Sigma, statistics | , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Lean Six Sigma and a Particularly Virulent Case of Chicken Pox

787 noseI’m amazed at how rapidly lean six sigma is spreading across non-traditional industry sectors, rather like a particularly virulent case of chicken pox. Firstly, in aviation: for example, the is the fastest-selling new airplane in aviation history and uses composites on the airframe to allow the huge structure to be built in just one piece. This means essentially there are six major end items coming together in final assembly — the forward, centre and aft fuselage sections, the wings, the horizontal stabilizer and the vertical fin.787 side

Since the 787 is assembled from these large assemblies rather than many smaller pieces, traditional monument assembly tools are not necessary. Portable tools, designed with ergonomics in mind, move the assemblies into place. No overhead cranes are used to move airplane structure. A composite airframe also means less waste in production and fewer hazardous materials used during the assembly process. Boeing aims to improve the production time from seven weeks to one airplane every three days.

Gulfstream V

Still on aviation, Mark over at Lean Blog has a great story relating to kaizen-type activities at Southwest Airlines.

This picture was reworked by the Bilderwerksta...

Image via Wikipedia

Next to pharmaceuticals, Meikah at sixsig.info reports that Sanofi Aventis are deploying six sigma and are so proud of it they have produced a case study to download. A summary of the key points are:

  • Training, facilitated by Motorola, of employees to be Six Sigma Black Belts.
  • Broadening of Six Sigma activities by incorporating Lean Six Sigma Tools.
  • Boost of the morale of employees when they saw Six Sigma as part of their job to continuously improve processes. Six Sigma has pervaded the whole organization as employees took ownership of the initiative and got rewarded by their efforts.

Finally, six sigma is also making gains in financial services however the focus here is on revenue enhancing projects and not just cost reduction initiatives, why? –

Labour and material are some of the largest cost contributors in manufacturing. Compare that to a lending institution or a bank: their largest expense is not labour or material, but cost of funds. So, the key is to focus on occurrence – once you get a customer in-house, how to make sure that you keep them and get the most value from the relationship.

Do you work in a market sectors where lean or six sigma is being deployed? Leave a comment below.

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November 19, 2008 Posted by | feature, lean, Six Sigma | , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Six Sigma metrics overview

[link]

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Six Sigma uses a number of specialized measures (metrics). The most fundamental is the Defects Per Million Opportunities (DOMO) measure. The aim of six sigma is to achieve less than 3.4 DPMO. A process that gives 3.4 DPMO has achieved ‘six sigma’.

The Rolled Throughput Yield (RTY) is a key tool in achieving this. The individual yields at each process step might look, at first site, quite good, but the First Pass Yield might be significantly lower. Even when the First Pass Yield at each process step looks satisfactory the overall or Rolled throughput Yield may be low.

Metrics

The sigma metric is an alternative to the traditional process capability and process performance measures used in Statistical Process Control.

  • Defects per Million Opportunities
  • Defects per Unit
  • DPMO
  • DPU
  • First Pass Yield
  • Rolled Throughput Yield
  • Sigma
  • Sigma Level
  • Yield
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November 13, 2008 Posted by | feature, Six Sigma | , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Dumb Leaders Destroy Six Sigma

Burn, Rome, Burn!

Here’s a question:

Wouldn’t it be interesting to have a Six Sigma exercise to measure a person’s innate aptitude and passion for a customer-facing role from pre-sales, to sales, through service, at all management levels?

Erm, not to me but possibly to some (but not all) dumb leaders. They may read in a book, understand what R-Squared is and then think they get the concept of variation. Whilst I’m all for a bit of guidance I’m a great believer in “education through action”. Learn the basics from a great sensi, roll-up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. “Tell me and I will forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I’ll understand” – that’s what its about!!

Some companies believe that existing lean six sigma initiatives are not good enough and others stress that six sigma reduces innovation and as innovation relies on variation (what Six Sigma is supposed to remove), so therefore organisations who adopt six sigma are doomed never to product innovative products or services. This is baloney of the highest order and I’m sick of hearing this. What all of this shows is that some companies clearly don’t get six sigma while some do.

Innovation in Corporate America

I stress again: six sigma is not about tools or even statistics its about adopting the right philosophy in the business. This is about training, understanding its fundamental principles and avoiding the most common types of failure.

In fact, lean six sigma, applied successfully, is being increasingly adopted outside of manufacturing. In healthcare for example:

You could say that, where a manufacturer seeks to produce quality products, a hospital seeks to produce healthy patients. If a patient falls victim to an infection while in the hospital, that is a defect that undermines the hospital’s mission and causes rework (having to cure the infection, in addition to the original illness). Therefore, reducing or eliminating infections is equivalent to eliminating waste in the form of defects and rework. And that is fundamentally lean.

What’s your understanding of lean and six sigma?

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November 11, 2008 Posted by | feature, Six Sigma | , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Six Sigma doesn't work?

There’s a rumour going around, and I’ve heard it from lots of people. Believe it or not, some people are claiming that Six Sigma doesn’t work, and Lean is the only approach you should take to effect continuous improvement.

This picture was reworked by the Bilderwerksta...

Image via Wikipedia

Any unsupported process improvement initiative is destined to fail, no matter what moniker is assigned to it. Over the past few years, I have seen Six Sigma approaches drift further and further away from what General Electric Co., Motorola and Allied Signal (now Honeywell) designed them to be. If you have studied your quality history, you will know that the Six Sigma approaches employed by these companies and other forerunners worked because they included design features that were not part of the quality circle movement of the 1980s. Real Six Sigma worked for two key reasons:

  1. increased support
  2. increased focus

Ironically, we have reached a point in time when many people are buying Six Sigma packages that closely mirror those approaches that caused most quality circle programs to fail. If you are not familiar with this approach, here it is:

  1. collect ideas from all of your people
  2. provide a few days of training
  3. form some teams to work on what appear to be the high-leverage projects

Quality circles failed because:

  • Top-Management: Top management involvement and management have been suggested as key factors related to the success of QC programs. Top management involvement is essential in setting up the policy and guidelines and helps to promote more funding, participation, guidance, and cooperation throughout the company. QCs‘ participative problem solving and upward communication can open boundaries between management and worker that have traditionally been closed. Thus, communication channels to top-management are very important.
  • Inadequate funding: Lack of financial support, or management’s unwillingness to invest a large amount of money to support the programs may also cause QCs to drop a project. The lack of recognition of circle accomplishments is also very critical.
  • Middle-Management (Supporting Staff): QCs with a high level of middle-management support have worked on more projects and have a higher amount of cost savings than those with a low level of support. Resistance by staff groups and middle management and prohibitive costs are threats to the programs’ survival.
  • QC Members: QC members’ motivation, commitment, cooperation, and effort in solving their problems may also influence the success or failure of the programs. Further, the lack of members’ problem-solving skills and training and the lack of knowledge of operations are threats to programs’ survival. Interestingly, About 37% of Toyotas assemblers participate in Toyota‘s global “Quality Circles” competition that pits worker against worker in a friendly competition to develop more efficient manufacturing methods. Twice a year, Toyota holds a competition to identify the best ideas. A Silver Circle award is presented for the best idea from one of every four quality circles. One of every four Silver Circles wins a Golden Circle award. The winners of the Golden Circle then face off against each other in the Global Quality Circle competition, often held in Japan.
  • Low volunteer rate and the stability o.f the QC membership: may also influence QCs’ problem-solving process. Thus, turnover in an organization is an important factor related to the success and failure of these programs.
  • The Nature of The Task: The nature of the project and the timing of the project seem important. First, the complexity and difficulty of the project may also have some impacts on the success of QCs. Sometimes, the project may be too complex and difficult for members to identify the solutions. As mentioned earlier, participants have limited power and are limited to the types of problems they are allowed to work on.
  • Data and Time: Finally, the availability of necessary data, information, and time to solve the problems is very critical. Besides on-time delivery, Japanese supervisors display a strong management commitment to quality, yet U.S. supervisors expressed far less concerns on quality but placed a heavy emphasis on meeting production schedules. Therefore, it is plausible that management personnel in the U.S. may have a higher priority on meeting production schedules than on spending time to collect data and information for QC activities. This concern again is closely related to management commitment.

Do you know many green belts an organization of 250 people should have?

What percent of their work time should be devoted to Six Sigma projects?

According to Mikel Harry’s book, Six Sigma, the answers are:

“one per 20 employees”

and

“it depends.”

Harry states that there is no formula for how a green belt’s time should be used, but the ‘one green belt per 20 employees’ ratio is explicitly stated. In General Electric, becoming a green belt is a requirement for all exempt employees, and in most cases, you need a black belt certification to get promoted. We are regressing toward our ineffective quality past, and yet we have the nerve to blame the tools when the users use them wrong. It’s like saying a cordless drill doesn’t work because we failed to charge the battery first. We must build project-focused and continuous process improvement expectations into every employee’s job.

Many companies think lean works through reduced headcount, but they have yet to realize that short-term gains will most likely come back to haunt them as customer service slides and process failures increase. The reduced waste (fewer people and lower labor costs) looks polished on this quarter’s financial report, but what happens if we are also trimming away those skills and relationships that provide value to our customers? We are essentially watering down a powerful approach to process improvement on a day-by-day basis.

What’s the case in your organization? Are you properly supporting your Six Sigma efforts with well-trained, focused and effectively supported leaders, or are you repeating the mistakes that many of us made 20 years ago?

With each day that goes by, we are losing ground. If we don’t stop this erosion, where will we end up?

What do you think? Leave your comments below:

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October 7, 2008 Posted by | feature, Six Sigma | , , , , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

Levels of Six Sigma strategy deployment: part 2

A vectorized image of project dimensions.Image via Wikipedia

In my previous post I suggested that almost every organization can be broken down into three basic levels. The highest level is the business level — the umbrella level that encompasses everything related to the company. The next level is the operations level, while the lowest level is the process level.

In this post I’ll be focusing on the operations level:

Operations Level: The Breakthrough Strategy helps expose “operational issues” for what they are: a collection of higher-level problems that become confounded. The Strategy helps break apart the “issue” into its components, allowing you to define problems, formulate plans and take positive actions. The Project Champion’s role in this effort is as follows:

  • Recognize operational issues that link to key business systems. Often, the tactical solution to an operational issue is masked by the underlying support system. For example, imagine a company’s quality information system (QIS) which provides statistical data on product defects. The problem is that the defects are not identified until after the fact. Thus, while specific problems can be fixed, defects continue to appear sporadically over time. The company will not be able to improve its quality until it has identified the systemic problem: a QIS that delivers a posteriori data. Once it recognizes that the issue is system-dependent, it can find a solution (for example, an in process quality measurement system).
  • Define Six Sigma projects to resolve operational issues. Choose projects carefully. Six Sigma projects are usually identified and selected based on whether the project will save costs, is connected to operational issues with larger critical-to-quality (CTQ) issues, is connected to the operation of a business support system, and can proceed in a time-efficient manner.
  • Measure performance of Six Sigma projects. Quantitatively gauge how well projects progress, in both an absolute and a relative sense, collecting and analyzing data at the appropriate business levels.
  • Analyze project performance in relation to operational goals. Compare the performance of a number of Black Belt projects with the operational goals of your business, and investigate the relationship between cycle time and quality.
  • Improve the Six Sigma project management system. Say, for example, that a business is tracking the savings generated by a project. At this point, it might start comparing projected and actual project costs. Or it might want to track other variables, such as net savings or project completion time.
    Control inputs to the project management system. Institute regular audits of the project management system, ensuring standards are established and consistently met.
  • Standardize best-in-class management system practices. Once you have uncovered a best-in-class management practice, make it a standard and transfer that standard to all relevant sectors in the business.
  • Integrate standardized Six Sigma practices into policies and procedures. Institutionalize your Six Sigma practice into the fabric of day-to-day operations, interweaving the practice into operating policies and procedures and reinforcing them through rewards and recognition.

In the final post of this series I’ll be looking at the remaining level in the organisation and how Six Sigma can be applied there.

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September 11, 2008 Posted by | feature, Six Sigma | , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

Six sigma leadership

Six Sigma Sign

Image by qa.manager via Flickr

Two six sigma quotes I highlighted to myself recently. The first was from The Six Sigma Leader: How Top Executives Will Prevail in the 21st Century:

“Studies have repeatedly shown that the high failure rate of many promising leaders is largely due to an over-reliance on a limited set of capabilities. Many times leaders are promoted because of a strong record of achievement, only to derail later because of their inability to adapt. For example, an individual may be good at demanding high performance from his or her followers, or have strong technical ability. However, those strengths are not sufficient when, for example, big-picture thinking or relationship building are also essential to success. To prepare yourself and others for growing challenges, you need the clarity of thought and flexibility to understand your own weaknesses and develop new talents.”

The second was from The Six Sigma Handbook, Revised and Expanded: A Complete Guide for Greenbelts, Blackbelts and Managers at All Levels:

“It would be a mistake to think that Six Sigma is about quality in the traditional sense. Quality, defined traditionally as conformance to internal requirements, has little to do with Six Sigma. Six Sigma is about helping the organization make more money by improving customer value and efficiency. Six Sigma focuses on customer requirements, defect prevention, cycle time reduction, and cost savings. Thus, the benefits from Six Sigma go straight to the bottom line. Unlike mindless cost-cutting programs which also reduce value and quality, Six Sigma identifies and eliminates costs which provide no value to customers, waste cost.”

Clearly then six sigma requires leaders who understand that it is not a traditional quality program, but more importantly these leaders must understand themselves. A great six sigma leader is concerned with achieving results through people, the goodwill and support of others (influence), while a weak six sigma leader is not.

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September 1, 2008 Posted by | feature, Six Sigma | , , , , , , | 2 Comments

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