Overview


Overview[1]

[1] Before reading this chapter it is important to read and understand Chapter 1, "Introduction," particularly the section, "How to Use This Book."

For some processes, it is not obvious where the project should focus. There might be many potential projects across the process and the Team is charged with identifying them prior to selecting one and carrying it to conclusion. This identification approach is known as Discovery and follows a slightly abridged version of the roadmap used in Define and Measure in a regular project.

The output of the Discovery Phase is a clearer (albeit high level) understanding of the process, along with a series of identified projects or opportunities for the process.

Tool Approach

The following sequence of tools is applied during Discovery:

To initiate the project, the Belt, Champion, and Process Owner meet to construct the preliminary Charter. They determine the initial scope and the Team members who should be used. The initial scope typically is the whole process under scrutiny. At this stage, the likely metrics and potential benefits are probably unknown.


After the initial Project Charter is complete, the Project Team is mobilized, and shortly thereafter, the first Team meeting can take place.

To help define the whole process, a SIPOC is useful, especially in understanding the scope and purpose of the process. The SIPOC is an important tool in Discovery to address, "What really is the question to be answered?"

The central "Process" column of the SIPOC can be extracted and rotated 90o to become a High-Level Value Stream Map (VSM). This map is a useful linear representation of the process that can help in slicing up the process into manageable pieces to which to apply projects.


After the SIPOC is complete for the whole process, the next step is to determine the Customer Requirements (again for the whole process). This is done in a similar fashion to the regular Define approach by using a number of tools to identify the major customer needs and metrics to determine performance versus those needs.


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To help frame what questions to ask the Customers regarding the process, it is useful to spend time as a Team brainstorming the issues around it. This can be done in the form of traditional Brainstorming, but it is preferable to use the tool known as Murphy's Analysis. Note that the output of these tools is absolutely not the Voice of the Customer (VOC), but rather, these are the Team's internal insights to help guide the structure of the VOC questioning in the subsequent steps.

Based on the some of the learning from the internal brainstorming, it should be reasonably straightforward to put together an Interview Discussion Guide and Customer Matrix and then interview Customers. Richness of Customer data is based on diversity of Customers, not on quantity, and thus, 1220 interviews should be enough to frame even the most complex process. Interviewing can take one to two weeks to complete, so plan the Team's time accordingly.

See "Customer Interviewing" in Chapter 7, "Tools," for more detail.

Some processes have a vast multitude of Customers from whom the Team would like some input to ensure that nothing key is missed, but really don't want to spend time interviewing in depth. To gain these Customer inputs, use a survey that is mailed, handed directly to them, or, primarily for internal Customers, posted on the wall where they can write directly on it.

The survey usually will take one week to get the data back.

Surveys are notoriously error prone, so do not rely on this as your main source of Customer inputuse the interviews instead.

For more detail see "Customer Surveys" in Chapter 7.

The VOC is distilled down into useful information by applying an Affinity Diagram.

After the Affinity Diagram is complete, a simple extraction yields the Customer Requirements Tree. This Tree represents a simple hierarchical structure of needs from the highest abstract level down to individual facts and measures. To successfully create the Tree, it is often best to track the noted metrics back to the set of more essential metrics behind the scenes. A useful tool here is the 5 Whys.

Construct a rigorous VSM including all the detailed steps for the Primary Entity as it progresses through the process. At this point, don't map the sub-steps of any VA step. The VSM forms the structure around which the process is sliced to form discrete pieces of process upon which projects are based.

Examination of the VSM should help the Team identify several key milestones along the process that are useful points at which to take performance readings. The performance metrics (such as accuracy ratings) are the Ys along the process that are important to the Customer. Determine the Ys taking the output of the Customer Requirements Tree and firming up Operational Definitions of the key metrics. For more details see "KPOVs and Data" in Chapter 7. For each metric, a baseline measure is made.

These and other points are the timing points, sometimes known as Time Stamps, used in the Multi-Cycle Analysis conducted subsequently.

Apply a Multi-Cycle Analysis to the VSM to flesh out where the time is spent, along with an indication of variation in times. Usually, it is the variability in step times that causes the problems.

The Team examines the data collected from the previous tools to populate the VSM with data on the timings and the Ys. At this point, the Team, Belt, Champion, and Process Owner meet to identify projects within the VSM and prioritize them.

Projects should target sections of the process for which:

  • The Ys are significantly far from entitlement[2] (perfection for the Y).

  • Undue time is spent.

For each Project identified, a draft Project Charter should be created and then the Projects should be prioritized.

Prioritization can be done with a Cause & Effects Matrix[3] or just by selecting the areas of greatest pain.


[2] See "Project Charter" in Chapter 7.

[3] Use of the Cause and Effects Matrix for project selection is described in detail Stephen A. Zinkgraf's book, Six SigmaThe First 90 Days, (Prentice Hall PTR, ISBN: 0131687409).

At this point the Team is retasked to tackle the highest priority project and the roadmap follows the regular DMAIC roadmap as outlined in Chapter 2, "DefineTools Roadmap Applied to the Beginning of All Projects." Obviously a large amount of the early Define and some of the Measure work have been covered, so the Team should make light work of these two Phases.




Lean Sigma(c) A Practitionaer's Guide
Lean Sigma: A Practitioners Guide
ISBN: 0132390787
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 138

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