LEAN Six Sigma Yellow Belt

What is 'muda'?

It means waste in Japanese

What is "DOWNTIME"?

Defects

Overproduction

Waiting

Non-Utilized Talent

Transportation

Inventory

Motion

Extra-Processing

Is receiving the wrong order a defect?

Yes, it is a defect of a process.

What is Overproduction?

Making more, earlier, or faster than the next process needs it.

What is Waiting?

The most prevalent waste. Involves eating for man machine, materials, information etc.

What is non-utilized talent?

Not utilizing people's experience, skills, knowledge, or creativity.

What is Touches?

This refers to Transportation waste. The unnecessary movement of materials around an organization. This leads to more opportunities for errors. This can include communication like emails.

What is Inventory waste?

includes any materials or supplies in excess of the appropriate quantity at the appropriate time. This leads to liabilities, greater risk of theft, loss, damage, or obsolescence.

What is the waste of motion?

The waste or people moving around. Workstation analysis works with optimizing the motion of an individual.

What is Excessive Processing?

Any effort that doesn't add value to the product or service from the customer's perspective. Examples include; Re-work loops or work-arounds, redundant process steps, extra fields requiring unused information, multiple signatures, unnecessary completion of templates, forms or documents.

What are the four things you can do to waste?

Eliminate the cause of waste, Simplify the process creating waste, Streamline any complicated process, and minimize waste being created.

What is DMAIC?

Define

Measure

Analyze

Improve

Control

DMAIC is used to find the root cause of problems. It is not necessary for obvious problems. Use when problem cause is not clear.

When should DMAIC be used?

When there is a problem and the root cause is unknown.

When the right solution to solve a problem is unknown because the root cause is unknown

When the stakes are high, and we need to be absolutely sure that the solution implemented solves the problem.

When a persistent problem exists, multiple solutions have been tried, but non have solved the problem. This is most likely because the root cause is unknown.

Define the scope of DMAIC in each phase.

Define- Define the problem, process and customers of the process. This allows us to see what effects the Customers will receive and gives us opportunity to create a high level road map for solving.

Measure- Develop a baseline measurement to characterize the problem or current state. Setup data collection so the situation can be better understood.

Analyze- Collect and analyze causal data to determine the root causes of defects. This allows root cause to be identified.

Improve- Develop/Implement solutions to remove/reduce sources of problem. Confirm improvement w/ data. Ensure increased value to customer.

Control- Maintain the gains by documenting and monitoring the improved process.

What is the Roadmap for each phase in DMAIC?

Define- Project Charter, Voice of the Customer, SIPOC

Measure- Select Measures, Data Collection Planning, Operational Definitions, Baseline Data

Analyze- Process Analysis, Brainstorm Root Causes, Pareto Charts, Develop Hypthesis

Improve- Create Flow, Mistake-Proofing: Poka-yoke, Visual Management & 55

Control- Process Control Plan, Monitoring & Response Plan, Documentation & Storyboard

What is the purpose of the Define phase?

To clarify the issue or opportunity being addressed.

To understand who will be involved in the project.

To define the scope of the process being improved.

To consider those impacted and level of effort needed to generate engagement.

To clarify what the customer of the process expects or requires.

What is a Project Charter?

A project charter is a contract between the organizations leadership and the project team created at the outset of the project. This is a living document that should be update and refined while the project continues. Review regularly with the project team and the primary decision maker or senior manager overseeing the project.

A well-written project charter has the following:

Clearly describes the problem and intended scope of the project

Confirms that the teams plan matches the expectations of senior management

Identifies team members and percent of time to be allocated to the project work

Establishes a timeline for the project

Serves as a communication vehicle to establish a common understanding of the project among all involved

What are the elements of the Project Charter?

Problem Statement

Business Case and Benefits

Goal Statement

Preliminary Plan/Timeline

Scope In/Out

Team Members

What is a Business Case and what questions should it answer? (Project Charter)

The reason why it's important to do the project. It should answer the following:

How is the project aligned with business initiatives and goals?

Why should this project be prioritized over other projects?

How will this project impact the customers? The stakeholders?

Why is it important to do now?

What are the consequences of not doing it now?

What are the expected financial benefits?

What is problem statement and what should it entail? (Project Charter)

A short description of the issue to be addressed. It should NOT contain a solution, root cause, or blame towards a department or individual.

It should answer the following:

What is the problem or issue?

What is the measure you're trying to impact?

(Verb) (What) (Improvement) (Completion Date)

Ex: This is an excellent Goal statement--

Decrease Defects from the current 35% to 15% by end of 1st quarter this year.

What is the Goal Statment? (Project Charter)

The measurement goal. Usually SMART goals are established.

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Relevant

Time-bound

What is the Scope in a Project Charter?

The magnitude of the project. How much the team is willing to take on, given time, money and resources. What are the variables that you can and cannot change? Ex: # of food items served, process steps, length of cook time can be in scope. While system upgrades and additional hiring is can be out of scope.

What is the Team members portion of the Project Charter?

The people who will participate in the project. Core team members are those that meet regularly. Resource team members are brought in as needed. Percent of time allocation should be listed for all core team members. It is best practice to identify what percent of weekly time each team member needs to commit to working on the project.

What is the Preliminary Plan in the Project Charter?

The timeline and actions to be taken by week/month. Each phase of DMAIC should have a deadline in this plan. A "Planned" column and an "Actual" column.

What is the Voice of the Customer? (VOC)

Your customers' needs and perceptions. Customers decide if a product, service or process is effective.

Process design should focus heavily on VOC and customer requirements.

What is an internal customer?

Someone that works within the company. Essentially anyone that will be using, or be effected by the use of a process.

Common Examples include HR and IT.

What are the steps in determining the VOC of a process or product?

Determine who your internal and external customers are.

Determine what the customer cares about.

Quantify the customers needs and wants.

-Dont ignore me when I need something==Check-in with customer in less than 5 minutes after food order is delivered...

Why is it important to know who your stakeholders are for a process or project?

Stakeholder buy-in can be critical to the success of projects. It is important to keep them well informed.

A project can easily fail without the stakeholders acceptance so develop a stake holder management plan early.

Stakeholders can be share holders, managers, owners, or external suppliers.

What is SIPOC?

A high level map of a project that allows a team to see their process in relation to all needed inputs, outputs and suppliers.

Suppliers

Input

Process

Output

Customer

What are the key questions to consider when building a high level map?

Purpose:

Why does this process exist?

What is the purpose of this process?

What is the outcome?

Customers:

Who uses the products of this process?

What are the customers of this process?

Outputs:

What products or services does this process produce?

What are the outputs of this process?

At what point does this process end?

Process Steps:

What happens to each input at each step?

What conversion activities take place?

Suppliers/inputs:

Where does the information or material you work on come from?

Who are your suppliers?

What do they supply?

Where do they affect the process flow?

What effect do they have on the process and on the outcome?

Define Output measure and process measures:

Output Measure is the combination of all process measures that effect the output.

Example

Output measure: Customer Satisfaction

Process measure for customer satisfaction: Staff promptness + ease of ordering + food quality + # of drink refreshes + price value

What is the checklist for your team for building a data collection plan?

What are we trying to measure?

Why do we need it?

Where in the process does the measure exist?

How would you define the measure?

Where is the data sources from?

If it's manua; data how will it be collected?

When will the data be collected?

How will you make sure the data is valid?

What are the four tools used in the Analyze Phase?

Process Analysis

Brainstorm Root Causes

Pareto Charts

Develop Hypothesis

What are the process opportunities in the Analyze Phase?

Rework Loops

-Work that must be redone over and over and over.

Redundancies

-When same steps are done more than once

--recounting

--multiple approvals

--asking for same information multiple times at different points in process.

Bottlenecks

Process design flaw that limits flow

Inspections and decisions

Inspections add time to a process

Inspections can be avoided by minimizing waste

Handoffs

More handoffs occur the more errors have a chance to occur. Simplifying a process reduces the number of handoffs.

What chart is best for looking at process handoffs?

Swim-lane map

The more lanes the more handoffs.

What two tools help find possible root causes?

The Five Whys

Fish Bone Diagram

What is the Five Whys and how does it work?

A tool used for finding the root cause. Easy to use and determines relationships. Best used when problems involve Human factors or interactions, and in day to day business life.

When you define a problem. Ask why? Then ask it again...Continue this question until you get to the ROOT of the problem.

What is the Fishbone Diagram and how does it work?

Visual tool used to logically organize possible causes for a specific problem. Problems are arranged according to their level of importance or detail resulting in a depiction of relationships and hierarchy.

The head of the fish is the Y that you are trying to affect in your project. This should be an undesirable effect. Each resulting relationship is a label such as process, raw material, place, people...etc

Then order root causes by time of occurrence in process or by importance.

What is the Pareto chart and what is it used for?

It uses the Pareto Principle (80/20 Rule) by analyzing the biggest sources of issues first. Bar chart cascading from left to right. Also uses a line chart to show where the data shown hits a percentage of total.

What are the tools used in the Improve Phase?

Create Flow

Mistake-Proofing: Poka-Yoke

Visual Management & 5S

Goals of the Improve Phase?

Streamline the Process

Make and Impact on the process opportunities

Reach the goal outlined in the Project Charter.

What is Creating Flow? What are the tools used to increase flow?

Removing areas in a process that slow the it down. Bottle Neck analysis.

Batch Size Reduction

- Batching can increase the cycle time for a customer.

Cross Training

-If more people have the skills to do more tasks the more opportunities present themselves for labor.

Parallel Processing

-Allowing multiple nodes in a process to occur simultaneously

Standard Work

-Creating standardized work in a process such as a checklist, or visual aids to make a part of a process easier to perform. This frees up intellectual capital.

What is Visual Management and the 5s tool? Also what are the 5 Phases?

Visual management is the ability to look at a situation and immediately understand what point of the process you are looking at. This can increase problem solving effectiveness.

5s is a tool to create a Visual Management workplace. 5 step process.

1. Sort

Only useful materials are available. Non-useful materials are removed.

Create a red tag area for red tag items. Red tag items are items people are unsure of for usefulness.

2. Set In Order

A place for everything, and everything in its place.

3. Shine

Everything is clean and in working order.

4. Standardize

Guidelines and practices to maintain the first three steps. Check sheets, daily logs, work instructions, rotate responsibilites.

-Who is responsible, what goes where, how often cleaning occurs, what to do if things are not as expected.

5. Sustain

Ensure 5s is a daily habit.

What to do after a 5s?

Document each state by taking a picture. This allows everyone to be able to see what it was like before 5s. And what it is like after 5s.

Before leaving the Improve Phase what should be done on a checklist?

Use team brainstorming to generate solutions that address the root cause

Run a pilot of the solutions if needed

Implement solutions to address root causes

Celebrate with the team and recognize them for their efforts

What are the tools used during the control phase?

Process Control Plan

- A system to monitor a process. Includes a visual map of measures identified in the process control Plan. A blue print for success in sustaining improvements.

--Map and Monitoring Plan

--Monitoring Plan; Clearly identifies where process measures will occur in a process and by whom.

Monitoring and Response Plan

-Monitoring Plan; A process to track whether or not the measurement and process stays in control

Response Plan; A contingency plan if process performance drops.

Documentation and Storyboard

What are the questions to ask when developing a Monitoring Plan during the Control Phase?

What are the key process measures for this process?

How and where will the process be monitored for performance?

How will we continue to monitory the Y measure?

Who will monitor and when?

What kind of communication needs to take place between whom?

Are there leading or lagging indicator measures that need to be monitored?

What are the questions to ask when developing a Response Plan during the Control Phase? What else should the Response Plan include?

What could go wrong?

How would we respond?

Who would be responsible?

Who do we contact about this action?

What point do we put the respond plan into action?

What is the trigger level that would warrant a response?

It should also include:

Damage control: Describe potential contingency plans for this failure.

Process Adjustment: What changes might you make to the process to prevent this?

Effectiveness Assessment: What benchmark(s) must the process achieve to be considered effective?

Continuous Improvement: What are some potential ideas for future process adjustments? What can be monitored to help detect this problem?

How does Documentation work in the Control Phase?

It serves as a communication tool to share the project with others. Storyboards tell the story of the project.

Prepare a high-level project overview

Include graphs, before and after metrics

Include DOMAIC tools and concepts that helped the most

Show good bad and ugly

Share storyboard with members of other departments to allow them to share in solutions.

List the checklist for a Storyboard:

Executive Summary

Problem Statement

Picture of the Team (can be added to cover)

SIPOC

Root Cause Proff - graphs or maps

Process Control Systems

Response Plan

What is the Checklist for the Control Phase?

Create a system and/or process to monitor the results

Complete Documentation of the processes and procedures

Create Response Plan in case there is a drop in performance

Hand over formal ownership to the process owner.