Archive for the ‘lean-six-sigma’ Category

How to Eliminate the Seven Kinds of Waste Using Lean Six Sigma

Thursday, March 7th, 2013
Scotty

Scotty

There are seven major types of non-value-added work:

  1. Overproduction (producing more than is required)
  2. Transport (often necessary, but still a waste)
  3. Inventory  (requires storage and transportation)
  4. Sub-processes (inspections, approvals, and other SOPs)
  5. Waiting (idle time for meetings, schedule changes, lost tools, and more)
  6. Correction (repairs, rejects, defects)
  7. Motion (unnecessary motions are wasteful)

Though as an organization you may find some of these – transportation and inventory, for instance – are necessary, they don’t add value to the customer’s experience. When trying to increase value for your customers with Lean Six Sigma, value equals only what the customer is willing to pay for the right product or service at the right time in the right place.

Therefore, improving the customer experience depends on your ability to define what the customer really needs and eliminate non-value added steps to provide it.

Define What the Customer Needs

Lean Six Sigma can help you identify what the customer needs and utilize the information to improve the customer experience. Knowing their needs enables you to discover what they value and how satisfied they are with your ability to deliver that value.

Capturing what your customers need, want, and value requires you to:

  • Collect user-generated content. Surveys, social media, focus groups, and other forms of feedback-gathering tools allow you to gather data.
  • Organize the data retrieved. Affinity diagrams, structure tree, and relationship charts enable you to classify customer preferences.
  • Analyze customer preferences. DMAIC and DFSS ensure that the processes you focus on are the ones important to your customer.

In addition, LSS techniques such as Voice of the Customer provide tools that can help capture customer needs.

Eliminate Non-Value Added Steps

Defining customer needs is only the first step in the equation. Customer-facing processes gain a lot by removing non-value added activities. For an action to be value-added:

  • the customer must care about the step
  • the step must change the product or service or be essential to another step
  • the step must be right the first time

While the ultimate goal is to remove steps that don’t meet these criteria, you may need to retain some non-value added steps for compliance or financial reasons.

As so clearly stated in the bulletin, “Improving Customer Satisfaction with Lean Six Sigma” significantly increasing customer satisfaction will lead to increased sales and market share. With Lean Six Sigma, you gain the ability to identify and provide what your customers need, want, and value. For more information on Lean Six Sigma or LSS training programs, review our website or contact us directly.

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Use 5-Whys to Eliminate Non-Value-Added Steps in Your Lean Six Sigma Process

Thursday, February 28th, 2013

 

Scotty

Scotty

Lean Six Sigma is all about doing the right things in the most efficient way in order to provide value to customers. Yet, organizations routinely include non-value-added steps – work that isn’t important to the customer – that increase expenses.

Since customers only want to pay for value, it makes no sense to incorporate non-value-added activities into the mix. But how do you find and eliminate these steps without upsetting the entire process. The best way is to ask, “Why?”

Why Ask, “Why?”

A simple, yet effective method of getting to the root of an issue is the “5 Whys” method. Developed by Toyota Production Systems and used frequently in Lean Six Sigma, it requires you to look at a problem and repeatedly ask why.

Repeatedly asking the question “why” allows you to strip away assumptions and helps you find the cause of a problem. It points out the importance of viewing each process through different eyes, not accepting things as they’ve always been done, and looking for those steps that truly are not necessary.

Practice Asking “Why?”

While many feel that five repetitions of asking why is generally sufficient to get to a root cause, it may require more questions, it may only point out a symptom, and it may never lead you to the root cause. However, when combined with other Lean Six Sigma tools, it can be very useful.

Here’s a simplified example of how it works. This client was shipped bad products.

  • Why?
  • They were built to a specification different from what the customer and sales agreed to.
  • Why?
  • There was an error in the communication.
  • Why?
  • Sales called it in instead of completing a spec form.
  • Why?
  • The form requires the sales director’s approval, which slows the process down.

Ultimately, the company decided that the sales director merely needed to be kept in the loop and did not need to review and sign each spec.

If you find problems in your work processes, it may be due to non-value added work steps. We can help by providing your team assistance with Lean Six Sigma and LSS training programs. For more information, review our website or contact us directly.

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Combining Lean Six Sigma with Simulation Software

Friday, February 8th, 2013
scott-yates

Scotty

Systems rarely perform exactly as predicted.

This is the opening line from a Predicting Process Variability blog. It is also, according to the blog, “the driving force behind most improvement projects.”

Because variability is inherent in all processes, regardless if you work in manufacturing or at a bank, there will always be some amount of waste. However, without waste, you could eliminate overtime, lost sales, errors, long lead times, and so many other factors that lead to increased costs.

In the perfect Lean Six Sigma environment, variability and defects would be eliminated. While there are no perfect work environments, a process simulation tool can aid you by visually showing how work moves through a process, thereby allowing you to validate the data collected.

A good simulation application takes into account process variation, uncertainties, and interdependencies, and allows you to:

  • test alternative solutions quickly and easily with little risk
  • remove subjectivity from the equation and emotion from the decision making
  • sell others on the best solutions
  • reuse models, thereby increasing continuous improvement
  • consider the impact on customers

Simulation is useful when:

It is too expensive or risky to do live tests. Simulation offers an inexpensive, risk-free way to test changes.

Large or complex systems are under consideration. Better to get an objective analysis than make a SWAG (Scientific Wild-Ass Guess).

Predicting process variability is important. Simulation can point out how various components interact and affect overall system performance.  

You have incomplete data. The right detailed model can help identify important missing data. 

You need to communicate ideas. It allows participants to communicate better because they have a better understanding of the system.

Combining Lean Six Sigma with simulation software helps you to understand the impact of recommended process changes and enables you to make resource adjustments, perform experiments, and analyze and modify processes to determine the best practices for your business.

Lean Six Sigma is what we do. To learn more about Lean Six Sigma and the training programs we have available, contact us for more information.

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Lean Six Sigma: Improving the Environment

Thursday, January 31st, 2013
scott-yates

Scotty

Our growing focus on improving our environment has placed pressure on many organizations to re-evaluate their business practices. As a result, many manufacturers are on the hot seat when it comes to implementing production methods that will lessen their environmental impact.

That’s the beauty of Lean Six Sigma. By aligning it with sustainability principles, manufacturers (and subsequently all of us) benefit by removing variation from production processes and reducing defects, which in turn leads to decreased scrap, raw materials and energy usage, and waste.

Additionally, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), used correctly Lean Six Sigma can “help focus attention on reducing conditions that can result in accidents, spills, and equipment malfunctions” as well as “focus on product durability and reliability” to increase the lifespan of products.

Between 2002 and 2007, climate change regulations rose 300%. Along with this increase there was a 17% rise in the number of green buyers. This number has likely further increased over the last five years.

However, convincing business owners there is a link between Lean Six Sigma and the health of the environment may not be easy. Therefore, learning to “speak the language of business” is critical. 

The EPA suggests taking actions such as:

  • Explain to environmental health personnel how LSS will reduce costs, decrease production lead times, increase value to customers,  and retain business and jobs
  • Convince LSS managers about the value of addressing projects from an environmental view
  • Share examples that illustrate the value of LSS and environmental programs as well as specific results from prior projects
  • Develop partnerships with environmental service providers
  • Observe processes firsthand by walking the shop floor and asking questions
  • Use visual controls, standard work, 6S (5S + Safety), and other Lean Six Sigma tools to increase awareness and use of appropriate procedures and practices for protecting worker health, safety, and the environment

There is no single “right” way to blend Lean Six Sigma with environmental issues. However, with the right LSS training we can provide you with the skills you need to understand the process and take the first steps toward integration. Contact us today to find out more about our training program.

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Lean Six Sigma Can Help You Achieve ‘Aha’ Moments

Thursday, January 17th, 2013
Scott Yates

Scotty

An ‘aha’ moment is a moment of clarity, when all the pieces of a puzzle come together and seamlessly converge to form that perfect realization of what needs to happen next.

Terri Stentz, director of global sourcing for Cardinal Health, offers a great example in a recent post for Industry Week.

A customer was ordering items one at a time, multiple times per day, Stentz explains. An examination of this purchasing process revealed the customer usually ordered seven pieces per day; however, the items were being pulled from cartons that held 10 items. Why not just purchase an entire box at a time, rather than buy them individually? 

It was only a few years ago that Cardinal Health embraced Lean Six Sigma, the initiative that helped guide Stentz.

What began as an effort to reduce errors, waste, and lost revenue by driving “collaboration in the health care supply chain,” wound up pointing out that they needed to do more work to eliminate inefficiencies. Ultimately, Cardinal Health discovered what many Lean Six Sigma proponents realize: it’s about building relationships and trust with key supply chain partners and working with them to determine what the customer really needs.

Some might suggest that coming to this realization was an equally important ‘aha’ moment, given that there was a time when quality for most companies was focused more on policing the work, rather than addressing the customer’s needs.

Today, a quality professional’s role is about integrating processes seamlessly into all business operations that involve customers. To do this, many firms are using Lean Six Sigma to enable them to determine the best approach for satisfying the customer, leading them to many more ‘aha’ moments.

Let us help you experience the feeling that occurs when all the puzzle pieces fall into place. For more information on Lean Six Sigma, what it can bring to your business, the joy of the ‘aha’ moment, and our training programs, contact us.

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Can Innovation and Lean Six Sigma Coincide?

Thursday, December 27th, 2012

Companies often introduce Lean Six Sigma because it is an effective way to cut costs and improve profitability. A very powerful tool indeed.

However, what if your company goals include innovation? Can a process-focused methodology such as Lean Six Sigma promote creativity and drive innovation?

Yes, it can.

In the 2010 post, “Leadership and Lean Six Sigma Opens Door to Innovation,” Steve Crom writes:

Lean Six Sigma improves the quality of management, working processes and applies resources in a targeted way that can dramatically increase the productive and creative potential across a business population. 

As Crom suggests, Lean Six Sigma is an opportunity to solve business problems by developing new working processes. To do this, companies need to:

  • Encourage employees to consider new approaches
  • Find ways to improve new ideas rather than throw them away
  • Establish “stretch goals” that require functions to work together
  • Prioritize resources and develop talent to work in cross-functional teams

Jay Arthur, author of Lean Six Sigma Demystified, states it well in his post, “Is Lean Six Sigma Killing Innovation”:

Simplify, streamline and optimize existing business operations using Lean Six Sigma to boost productivity and profitability. As Lean Six Sigma clears away the clutter, look for ways to redesign or re-engineer the business. 

Lean Six Sigma isn’t an innovation killer. It’s another tool in the business toolkit. It’s about creating the right business environment; one that embraces innovation under a continuous improvement umbrella.

For more ideas and further information about Lean Six Sigma or to learn how our LSS training program can enhance the innovation in your organization, contact us.

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Integrating Lean Six Sigma into Company Culture

Thursday, December 20th, 2012

Partnership and team workTo achieve perfection is to combine the best of Lean – eliminating waste to reduce costs – and Six Sigma – removing business process flaws to create perfection – to become Lean Six Sigma.

However, Lean Six Sigma (LSS) is more than just a combination of these two philosophies. LSS is a practical business tool and significant business philosophy.

While training employees in LSS is essential, even more important is gaining management support to integrate it into the company culture. However, that means dealing with the fear of change that many employees are likely to exhibit.

In the Harvard Business Review post, “Helping Employees Cope with Change,” writer Lauren Keller Johnson notes:

Organizational change initiatives trigger anxiety across the corporate hierarchy in even the best of times. But in an era where a storied firm like Lehman Brothers can go bankrupt almost overnight and the Dow’s fluctuations can make one dizzy, they can elicit fear, even panic.

Keller Johnson further writes how “people crave constancy and routine inside their organizations.” So to help team members deal with change, she refers to first understanding the five phases of change.

  • Stagnation. Those who see signs of trouble and recognize it can’t go on, push for change.
  • Preparation. A decision is announced and emotions run the gambit from fear to relief.
  • Implementation. When leaders announce new assignments, reporting responsibilities, and processes, employees react with confusion, resentment, apathy, and more.
  • Determination. The road is bumpy. People make mistakes. Naysayers emerge.
  • Fruition. Your hard work shows tangible results. Good emotions – confidence, optimism, and energy – return.

However, knowing and understanding the process of change is only half the battle. The other half is dealing with each of these phases. Keller Johnson offers leaders these suggestions:

  • Interpret events for employees. Explain the meaning and impact to them.
  • Acknowledge emotions. Let them know it is normal and expected.
  • Stay connected. Don’t retreat – communicate.

Lean Six Sigma helps drive change in organizations. It motivates workers to look at processes in a new and better way. Though change is rarely easy when it comes to employees, it is vital to a long-lasting Lean Six Sigma implementation.

For further information on Lean Six Sigma, what it can bring to your organization, and the training program we have available, contact us.

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Answering the 5 Big Questions About Lean Six Sigma

Thursday, November 15th, 2012

Until you have committed to the Lean Six Sigma process it can be hard to understand exactly how life changing it can be for companies and businesses. When considering if Six Lean Sigma is right for an organization we often get asked the five big questions. Today we are here with answers.

Who? Thomas Pyzdek is an acknowledged leader of Lean Six Sigma. We often joke that he wrote the book on the industry, because that is just what he did! He was been working for over forty years to create long-term success for organizations around the world. Today he continues to create, write and publish the the industry standard on business efficiency.

What? An innovative and time-tested program to increase productivity, quality and increased profits. Lean Six Sigma concentrates on eliminating waste, not cutting corners. Production should be faster, cheaper and better, and Lean Six Sigma concentrates on every aspect for improvement.

Where? Anywhere you are! Our trainings are available online, and training materials are available in our online store. But we would never want to leave you feeling alone, and we are proud to offer online coached training alongside our many other resources.

Why? Lean Six Sigma is focused on ridding your organization of the Seven Types of Waste. By identifying and addressing the exact areas in need of improvement, Lean Six Sigma is able to tackle the big issues head on.

When? Why not now? Trainings are enrolling now. There has never been a better time to start on the path that will lead you to the Black Belt in your future.

Contact us for more information. Or find us on the social web, on Twitter and on Facebook.

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Lean Six Sigma in Hospitals Help Patients Receive Faster Care

Tuesday, November 13th, 2012

In the October 2012 Hospital Impact blog, “Lean Six Sigma and the patient experience,” writer Anthony Cirillo noted that recent reports showed that Lean and Six Sigma efforts reduce costs and improve efficiency. Some reports even praised the models for enhancing employee satisfaction and collaborative problem solving.

The question Cirillo raised, however, is whether Lean Six Sigma improves the patient experience.

Auto Industry Lean Manufacturing Principles Help Stroke Patients

New research in the American Heart Association’s journal Stroke indicates using auto industry lean manufacturing principles reduced the time between patient arrival and treatment by an average of 21 minutes.

Specifically, the journal reported:

Using lean techniques, the hospital’s stroke team identified unnecessary or inefficient steps such as inefficient patient transportation, tasks performed one at a time rather than simultaneously, and time-consuming traditional lab-based tests. Protocols were formulated to eliminate wasteful steps, keeping only crucial steps that added “value” to patient care, in keeping with auto-manufacturers’ lean methods which eliminates inefficiencies in automobile production. 

Jin-Moo Lee, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of the study, notes that national guidelines suggest that door-to-needles times should be less than 60 minutes. As a result of using Lean Six Sigma, 78% of stroke patients received treatment within one hour of arrival. Currently only about 30% of patients in the United States are treated within one hour.

Patient Experience Still Important in Lean Six Sigma

Though there are those who might question whether Lean Six Sigma is more effective than other process-improvement techniques, according to Cirillo the efforts actually fail because of the “complex and political nature of healthcare,” which fails to align the people around the techniques.

According to the August 2012 FierceHealthcare article, “Lean leadership in healthcare: What does it take?”

…in addition to cutting costs, Lean initiatives improve patient safety and reimbursement rates, and create new standards around transparency…

Additionally, in an independent study of 13 Lean projects, staff at all levels reported higher employee satisfaction. They cited better front-line staff involvement in problem solving and employee collaboration.

To find out how Lean Six Sigma can help your organization, contact us for more information.

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A Bulk Sampling Question

Tuesday, September 18th, 2012

Question from a Black Belt student:

The calculator sheet is very useful. But for my situation here in my plant, we produce bulk product (1200 MT of Refined Canola Oil). Suppose we need to test for “linoleic value” at the finished product, which is fluctuating between 1.75 and 2.39 values (margin of 0.64), sigma estimate is 0.26 and average of 2.06. So if we put this data in the sample size calculator we’d get a sample size of 1 (N unknown) or 0 (N known) at 0.05 Alpha risk. What is 1? 1 Metric Ton or 1 sample? And if it is one sample as I think it is, how large should be the sample? 4 Oz container or 1 Liter? Also if it is 1 MT that’s huge and expensive sample. Also I am confused about the zero number I got for the know N. How come that I do not meed sampling at all?

For your info, this is one of the main reasons I decided to pursue six sigma is to be able to identify sample size when I needed to. That has been a question in my mind since long time specially about bulk product and I feel good now that I am in touch with you so you can help me out on this.

My response:
Jack,

The sample size tools presented in the training are for what is known as “discrete sampling.” That is, for sampling discrete units such as people, automobiles, or other such distinct “widgets” that are separate entities. They can’t be used to calculate sample sizes for processes such as yours, which are referred to as bulk processes. That’s why your results make no sense.

Bulk process sampling is a unique application of statistical sampling. There are two primary bulk sampling questions: the science of testing and homogeneity. The science question asks what sample size is needed to obtain scientifically valid results. This is not a question of statistics per se, but one of science. It needs to be answered by subject matter experts. The question of homogeneity is also scientific, but it has statistical implications and statistics can help answer it. If the solution is perfectly homogeneous with respect to the property being measured, then all samples will produce the same result (except for measurement error, which is discussed at a later point in the training.) However, if the material is heterogeneous then you must construct a representative sample to properly characterize the lot of material. Here’s a good article on this topic. In this case the proper sample size will be whatever sample size is needed to characterize the lot. You may also find this article to be useful.

Another important topic is the sampling interval (as distinct from the size of a single sample.) If your canola oil is produced continuously rather than in discrete batches, you will want to look into this. However, from your description it sounds as if the canola oil is produced in discrete batches and I assume you’ll want to sample each batch using the procedure described above.

You mention that one of the main reasons you are pursuing a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt is to be able to identify sample size for bulk processes. I should point out that this is a specialized application of quality engineering rather than Six Sigma. While the Black Belt learns many of the tools of quality engineering, it doesn’t cover all of the QE body of knowledge. (The Black Belt also learns a number of soft skills that the QE doesn’t learn.) In fact, even traditional quality engineering training doesn’t cover the specialized topic of bulk process sampling, although it does go deeper into sampling than Black Belt training. What I’m saying is the you may want to supplement your Black Belt training with additional studies specific to your industry.

Tom Pyzdek

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