While organizations are struggling to build the six sigma and lean culture within their organizations and they are constantly under pressure from their customers to improve upon the metrics they are accountable.
As a matter of fact, organizations have had to sign a yearly productivity improvement target of ~10% or their like in the master task order (MTO) or statement of work (SOW) or MSA, etc. Hence it becomes imperative for leaders to develop theme buckets for improvement within their organization.
While working on the selection of a Six Sigma project one must consider the following things:
- Process: Select a process that improves something
- Is it do-able? Don't try to solve world poverty because this problem is too broad and too complex. As a rule of thumb, a project should be expected to conclude successfully within 4 to 6 months.
Measurable Impact:
- In Rs./Dollars
- In Defect/ Cycle time reduction
- In ROI (Return on Investment)
- In Customer satisfaction etc.
Potential for Improvement
- A significant gap between customer requirements & process performance
- How great is the support for the initiative?
- How much resistance is there to change?
- Sense of urgency
Resource support within the organization:
Leadership support is critical for success team coaches have the skills and capabilities to support multiple teams and are dedicated
Project interactions:
Multiple teams affective process changes planned for the process (e.g. technology)
Additionally, organizations today have created their own project prioritization matrix for project selection. One may want to use the time impact, cost impact, or control impact matrix to compare the various project options to prioritize among the many available options. Alternatively one may draw a project prioritization grid based on organizational CTQs and then do a mathematical measurement to take a decision.
Commonly used terminologies in Six Sigma Project Selection:
Customer (Identify your customer):
The external customers is someone who consumes the product/ services of our employer and pays for this. External customers have a choice, and if they don't like your product or services can take their business elsewhere.
The Internal Customers can be anyone in the organization. An internal customer can be your co-worker, distributor, or another department employee who depends upon us to provide products or services which in turn are utilized to create a deliverable for the external customer.
Voice of Customer (VOC)
The voice of the customer is a stated or unstated requirement of the customer. These are generally the needs of the customer expressed in their own language. VOC gives us insight into our customers' needs and their perceptions and preference about the product/services. VOC is translated into a meaningful way that helps an organization understand the needs of their customer so that the organization can strive to meet those needs.
Critical to Quality (CTQ)
CTQs are the key measurable characteristics of a product or process whose performance standards or specification limits must be met in order to satisfy the customer. They align improvement or design efforts with customer requirements. CTQs represent the product or service characteristics that are defined by the customer (Internal or External). A CTQ usually must be interpreted from a qualitative customer statement to an actionable, quantitative business.
Customer CTQ:
Customer CTQs are customer needs and expectations which can be explained as:
- Customer Responsiveness/ Communication
- Marketplace competitiveness - Product/ Price/ Value
- On-Time, Accurate, and Complete Customer Deliverables
- Product/ Service technical performance
Project CTQs:
- To determine project CTQs, the customer and their wants must be determined. Critical Quality Characteristics are determined by the customer.
- Project CTQs are integrated with the business strategy through the product/ process drill-down tree
All the above-mentioned the followings are the basics of the project selections and we need to understand these things before project selection in Six Sima for a successful project.
