Defining Six Sigma Projects.
The success of a company depends on the strategic planning of the projects. Projects are the works assigned by a company, to meet the needs of the clients. For the successful implementation of the project, there should be a complete planning, adequate links between strategy and actions, and effective communication. Lacking of all these main factors, results in the poor performance of the production work and the customer’s dissatisfaction about the product. Six sigma accomplishes one project at a time. The stories of companies who have saved billions of dollars, have proved the effectiveness of the properly selecting and defining business issues. When the business issues are properly selected and defined, these issues can be assigned to Green Belts and Black Belts for solving it effectively. Six sigma projects are the perfect selection that a company or an organization can take to reach its strategic goals.
Six sigma projects uses the help of project charters, for evaluating and formalizing the issues which will allow you to prioritize for implementation. It is the first step developed by the six sigma methodology, through the define steps of DMAIC. The charter can make or brake a successful project. It can bring out the success through specifying necessary resources and boundaries. The braking up of the project is done through reducing team focus, effectiveness and motivation. some of the major area where there is the need of project charter are as follows:
Project Title:
The importance of naming the project with a properly descriptive title is that it will help the other people to view and select your projects quickly with the help of keywords and phrases.
Black Belt and Green Belts:
These are the personalities, to whom the process improvement project is given. This identification is that important for the identifying the project leader by the management. It also helps to know who is leading the efforts and the others can find out the leader for gathering further details about the work at a later date.
Mentor or Master Black Belt:
It is important to identify a project leader, who ensures a helping hand to everyone in need. A successful project should have a helping hand always ready. Mentor or master black belt is a resource for the project leaders to learn and understand if any project question or issues arises.
Project Start Date:
It not possible for a project to maintain momentum, because the field is mainly for documentation purposes. So the project leaders formally start the working of the project of the date fixed.
Anticipated Project End Date:
The business guidelines are set on the basis how long projects should take to complete the work. The duration of the project helps in providing the leader and the team to get the adequate time to complete the project, business conditions, work load, holiday schedules. It is the mentor, master black belt or quality leader who is anticipating the project end date.
Six sigma does the project selection ideas according to its function. The project selections according to the functional areas are:
Finance/ Accounting six sigma project ideas
Human Resources six sigma project ideas
Sales six sigma project ideas
Shipping or Receiving six sigma project ideas
Information Technology
Product or Service Design six sigma project ideas
Call Center six sigma project ideas
Under each functions, the implementation of six sigma project is used to solve different types of issues. for example:
Under the function product or service design, the six sigma project ideas are” reducing time required to design a product or service, reduce errors in design, reduce production time, reduce testing time”.
Many a times it is seen that companies advertise as Six Sigma Certified. People read the word Six Sigma but never know what it means. Six Sigma refers to the ability of producing highly capable processes that can provide maximum level of quality with minimum defect levels. It is mainly used to gain Quality control, Zero Defect & Total Quality Management.
Change is considered very important to survive in the competitive world. Every organization has to change its methodologies according to the prevailing market demand. Most of the time people realize that a change in its working methods is necessary but have no idea what to do or how to proceed.
Six Sigma Consultants & Consultancies are a proven support system to implement changes in an organization & also prepare them in facing the challenging world. They are not only seen at National level but are also engaged in providing International services.
Six sigma seminars are instructional process, conducted for the candidates to know and discover how to apply systematically the statistical methods of six sigma for the organizational growth and for customer satisfaction. Instructions are given to the candidates about the importance and usage of data, information, analysis, and communication for a successful problem solving.
The seminar section of statistical process control aims at developing the skills in the participants, how to design and implement sufficient feedback methods that directs quality improvement in products or services. It gives importance to process management also. This is because, in order to bring out the customer satisfaction and remain competitive it is essential to have a stable and predictable process. Using statistical process control, it helps the participants to provide the mans for the scientific control of product and the service quality.
Six sigma metrics are the different types of measurements used in six sigma methodology, in order to measure the success of the company’s product quality. It doesn’t means, the simple collection and calculation of the data and defects are enough for the attainment of the success. In order to get the right measurement through the use of six sigma metrics, a successful business should apply these metrics in the right context in a innovative ways so as to solve the customer’s critics to the quality of the products. Therefore there are certain steps and six sigma metrics, in six sigma methodology to be applied for the defect-free products. six sigma calculator is the tool used for the measurement of the quality of the product in six sigma metrics. some of the areas in which the calculation is done are:
Sigma Level Calculator:
Lean six sigma is a methodology of business improvement, which is the combination of lean manufacturing and six sigma tools. The aim of lean six sigma is the production of products which yields the “better quality faster”.
Value stream mapping is used with manufacturing, logistics, supply chain, service related industries, software development and product development. The associated analysis methods of value stream mapping are as follows:
In an organization, at the time of production of a product six sigma methodology is implemented in order to avoid defects and wastes and make sure that the product meets the customer satisfaction. At the time of six sigma quality improvement, a lot of money is at the risk point and if unproductive changes are taken or made, it leads to lot of loss to the company in both the finance and productive aspects. In order to avoid such a loss, it is that important in a business to test the efficacy of the changes made. This test can be done with the help of hypothesis tools and testing.
The main aim of the implementation of six sigma in to a project team is to define the correct testing parameter. The faults in defining the objectives and the testing parameters, results in difficulty to ensure the success of the proposed changes. Even a small fault in the proposed change can result severely in the business process where it is being implemented. So it is better to use the hypothesis testing for attaining the accurate results of the testing.
Apart form the above advantages there are limitation for the using of hypothesis testing, in testing the effectiveness of a proposed changes. This is because, there are even many more factors that can affect a business process. Some of these factors are employee dissatisfaction, changes in the technology etc which cannot be tested with the help of hypothesis testing. There fore it is the duty of the analyst to make sufficient arrangements for all these types of testing and these test results can be used to compare with the hypothesis results to find out a proposed change, which confirms to suggested hypothesis.
Knowing more about the importance and the elements of six sigma is the six sigma basics. The basics of six sigma help us to understand “the science behind the theory of improvement”. It deals systematically with steps of instructions and certifications. For an organization to understand the potential of six sigma implementation, it is a must for the team members to have a minimum solid understanding about the understanding of the six sigma methodology. The methodology of six sigma contains its objectives, potential benefits, roles and common tools.
According to six sigma every piece of work done is considered as a processes. There are certain steps to be followed to find out a defined process. Since the process is the result of series of actions, changes and functions, there should be a well planning on the process to be conducted. A well defined planning of the process is a must, and the six sigma basics carefully deals with the topic.
The process according to six sigma is the total number of sequences, series and the arrangements of events, steps or measurements done repeatedly for the production of quality products or services. Changing a process is the first step in a six sigma improvement program in order to reduce the costs and improve quality. There are different types of graphical representation for a process or procedure to show its flow type style of all actions and conclusion taking place in a process. There are process maps, flow charts, and SIPOC diagrams used for the graphical representation of the process.
The elements contained in a graphs are the starting point to the process and its sub-processes, an ending points to the process and its sub-processes, inputs, outputs and other types of direction and decisions which leads to another potential direction.
With in an organization, the objective is the long-term improvement of its processes in order to enhance the performance of the organization and the products, gain the interest of the customers, employees and shareholders, and thus sustain in the world of global marker competitive. Still just improving a process is not a complete business option, but a complete process re-design is required.
It is better to replace DMADV, than the other way. There are two occasions in which DMADV can be used to replace DMAIC. One occasion is at the time there is no existing product, out of which the organization is aiming to create from the scratch. At the time when the implementation of DMAIC has not produced the expected result, though best efforts are done to make the improvements, DMADV methods can be used. It is proved that there are situations where planned DMAIC is been replaced by the use of DMADV method. The method is used at the time when the “improvement” process is not able to deliver the organization the expectations.
Six Sigma is an data driven approach used by many organizations that strives to achieve quality & perfection. It is a methodology used to eliminate defects & to determine the performance of the process. A defect is anything that is outside or against customer requirements. To achieve this, a process should not produce defects more than 3.4 per million opportunities.