Lean Six Sigma Deployment is not a rocket science
In today’s post let us understand The stages of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) deployment that follow the plan, do, check, act cycle.
It includes identifying an opportunity, designing a solution, implementing it, and then moving into a continuous improvement cycle. To do that successfully, we have to equip people with the right skills and knowledge about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. Sharing the objectives will help others to participate and support us in taking action.
We need to recognize the important customer and how they define value using the voice of the customer data collection tools. From there, we can identify existing opportunities. We can observe or measure the current situation and identify the biggest sources of waste and variation that we can immediately address in order to increase value for the organization and for our customers. Designing a solution very often is dependent on some level of process or value stream mapping. There are four stages in a Lean Six Sigma deployment.
Stage 1: Identify the opportunity.
Stage 2: Design solution.
Stage 3: Implement the solution.
Stage 4: Ensure continuous improvement.
The steps for stage 1 training employees on LSS concepts, recognizing value (defined by the customer), and identify existing opportunities.
In stage 2 of Lean Six Sigma deployment, we design the solution.
Let’s consider an example where we’re mapping out the flow of direct mail.
It begins with the compiling of names and data.
We then verify whom we want to send our offer to based on their credit.
We merge that data and we transfer it to our vendors who actually produce the flyer document.
Finally, we will send the document to the vendor who will actually print the flyers and mail them to our customers.
In this situation, the task is to develop a new mail piece in 52 days.
The master schedule has five activities, each having a varying duration.
The first task is to compile names, which takes 3 to 6 days.
The next task is to verify credit and addresses, which takes 16 days.
The third task is data merge, which takes 31 days.
The next task is to transfer to vendors which takes 1 day. The final task is to print and mail vendors, which takes 10 days.
The total lead time is 61.64 days.
One of the important things about designing a solution is to zero in on where we get the biggest bang for the buck and where we’re likely to find our biggest improvement opportunities.
So, if we evaluate the limited data with 61 days in this value stream, reducing time sounds important.
And we calculate that just two of these five steps make up 47 of those 61 days.
That would be a clue that maybe we want to focus there first. So how do we identify which improvements to address first?
Well, there are some pieces to that.
We want to assess the impact.
We need to understand what the low-hanging fruit is that would affect people the most.
We might want to prioritize those things where we can involve people in the solution. People would have to support that and maintain it in the future.
We also like that to be highly visible.
We need to generate quick wins early in the implementation of Lean and Six Sigma.
We have to be very cognizant of these issues as we move through the process.
In the third stage of Lean Six Sigma deployment, we decide which improvements to address first. We then prioritize low-hanging fruit, which are improvements that involve workers and processes that have highly visible waste.
To ensure continuous improvement, it is important to create employee buy-in and ownership. There are many things we need to do including deploying high-performing teams methodologies, involving people in the process, training them to be cooperative, and communicating to gain their support. We need to listen to and honor people in the process. We need to commit to eliminating defects and waste in our process. And the focus is zero, zero defects, and zero waste. We also need to ensure that those processes and improvements are sustained over time.
There are a number of tools that can help with this, such as error proofing or poka-yoke, standard operating procedures, balanced scorecard, and other things like statistical process control. But we’re never done. We need to remember that Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma together are a continuous improvement methodology.
In the fourth stage of Lean Six Sigma deployment, we ensure continuous improvement requires employee buy-in and ownership.
They need to continue to find new ways to eliminate waste, ensure that improvements are sustained, generate new ideas, and act on ideas.
We also need to remember that ideas are great, but until we act on them until we take action, ideas have no real value to the organization.
So from a Six Sigma perspective, there are many Lean tools that we want to apply.
If you wish to understand lean six sigma basics, enroll for the #productivymonk course on #udemy.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
