A Simple Approach to Improve a Business Process

The Five Steps for Improving Processes:
1. Define:
•What are your customers saying about your product or service? (Quality, Cost, Delivery)
•Complete a Project Charter:
–Project information: Pick a team leader, a team mentor, and a start and end date for the project
–Team Members: Pick five to six team members making sure the membership is cross functional
–Process Start/Stop: Where does the process (to be improved) start and stop?
–Process Importance: Why is this process important to your business?
–Process Improvement Opportunities: What needs to improve? This may come from your customer or from within your organization
–Process Goals: What are your goals for this process? What do you want to achieve in the project?
–Process Measurements: How will you know if you reached the goals? How will you track progress?
–Project time frame: List the key steps of your project with dates. Make sure the dates fit within the start and end dates for the project.

2. Measure:
•Understand the process as it exists today. You are painting a “before picture”
•Techniques:
–Time it
–Videotape it
–Talk to the people that work within it
•Create a SIPOC Diagram of the Process:
–S (Suppliers): Who supplies each input?
–I (Inputs): What are the key inputs for this process? These are the ingredients needed to make the process happen.
–P(Process): Write out the general steps of the process. Look at the process from a satellite view. This is the recipe for the output
–O (Output): What are the key outputs of the process? These are what the customer is paying for. For each output, list the key metric. Collect data for the metric to understand how the output has performed.
–C (Customer): List your customers. You have external customers (those that pay you for your product and/or service) and internal customers (internal departments that receive output from this process)
-Collect performance data for each area of the SIPOC diagram

3. Analyze:
•Once you have measured the process and understand how it is performing, analyze the process to understand the specific areas that need to be improved
•Techniques
–Watch the videotape and critique it
–Brainstorming
–Nominal Technique
–Fishbone diagram
•Write out a statement of the opportunity for improvement. What needs to be improved or fixed?

4. Improve
•Once you are clear on what needs to improve or be fixed, take actions to improve the process. Use the plan/do/check/act cycle to implement the improvement action(s).
•Each action should have a responsible person and a due date
•Once the actions are taken, paint a before and after picture of the process. What did it look like before the improvement and what does it look like after the improvements? Use data as much as possible.

5. Control
•Once you make the improvements, make sure the improvements work and that they stay in place.
•Techniques:
–Change standard operating procedures
–Audit the process (periodically check on it)
–Measure and track the key outputs to make sure their performance stays in control
–Go through a lessons learned process. What went right in this project? What went wrong?
-Implement statistical process control, if applicable

2009 Lowcountry Quality Conference

I am thrilled to be Chairperson for this year's Lowcountry Quality Conference. The annual event will take place May 1, 2009 at Trident Technical College in beautiful Charleston, South Carolina.

The theme for this year's conference is The Necessity of Quality Improvement in Today's Economic Environment. The format will be two keynote speakers and six breakout, training sessions. Breakfast and lunch will be served.

Here is an overview of the speakers and breakout sessions-

Keynote Address One: A Quality Approach to Delivering World Class Quality at The Sanctuary, Kiawah Island

Bill Lacey, Assistant Executive Manager, The Sanctuary at Kiawah Island Golf Resort

Mr. Lacey will discuss how quality principles and practices have created the world class resort hotel at the Sanctuary of Kiawah Island. This hotel achieved the coveted AAA Five Diamond Award two years after opening and Mobil Five Star Award after just three years.

Keynote Address Two: Trident Technical College: Our Quality Story-The How, The Why

Dr. Mary Thornley, President of Trident Technical College

Dr. Thornley will recount the reasons for embarking on Trident Technical College’s quality journey in 1992 and discuss how the path to continuous improvement continues to this day. Learn how an education organization applies quality tools and principles to meet the growing and ever changing needs of its customer base.

There will three breakout sessions in the morning and three in the afternoon. The sessions and presenters are as follows:

Workshop 1(AM): Measurement Systems Analysis
Stephen Deas CSSBB, President of Quality Minds Inc.
www.qualitymindsinc.com

Workshop 2(AM): Quality Management and Leadership
Bridget Dewees, Director of Institutional Quality, Trident Technical College

Workshop 3(AM): Six Sigma
David Stamps, Q-DAS Inc.

Workshop 4(PM): ISO 9001:2008
Cathy Fisher, Quality Improvement Strategies

Workshop 5(PM): Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma
David Stamps, Q-DAS Inc.

Workshop 6(PM): Supplier Management
Shawn Sullivan, Team Leader Supplier Quality Group, Robert Bosch Corporation

Registration: $99 before April 17, 2009, $125 after. Call Trident Technical College at 843-574-6152 or www.tridenttech.edu

Please tell friends and colleagues.

Minitab Instruction for Bar Charts

In the world of six sigma, Minitab is widely used software for analyzing simple and complex data sets. It takes times to learn the software but with experience, you come to realize that it is very user friendly.

In my course, Basic Minitab, offered through The Center for Process Improvement,(http://www.cpionlinecourses.com/) screen recording software is used to show how different graphs and quality tools are created in Minitab.

A sample video appears below. This video is just over one minute and illustrates how to create a Bar Chart in Minitab. There is no narration. You will see the cursor move through the different menu selections to eventually create a bar chart.

The Basic Minitab course teaches basic techniques and tools such as stacking and sorting data, creating patterned and random data, process capability studies, Gage R&R studies, graphical techniques, and control charts.
Please visit http://www.cpionlinecourses.com/course_catalog.htm

Dear President Obama...

One of my favorite tools for continuous improvement is the plan/do/check/act cycle. It is simple to use as are many improvement techniques. The key is being disciplined to use the cycle every time you seek improvement.


If you want to improve a business process, develop an initial plan of attack. The plan could be a experiment or trial with the process at different settings. You do not know if the plan will work but you want to put a best foot forward.


Faith without works is dead! After the plan is established, do it or carry it out initially on a small scale. If you change the process (in your trial), it is usually prudent not to run the changed process for an extended length of time.


At some point, you must stop and check the results of the do phase. Measure the results of the experiment or trial. (your measurement technique should have been decided in the plan phase). What did you learn from the data or information? What did you not learn?


Finally, take what you learned and decide on the next actions:
a. You may like the results but need more evidence to make permanent changes. Start a new cycle with a plan to collect more evidence.
b. The results may have been disastrous and you need to go back to plan and start over.
c. You may be thrilled with the results and decide to make the changes permanent. Go back to the first phase and develop a plan to implement the changes.


We could discuss and debate the recently signed stimulus bill all day and night. The fact is, it will happen for better or worse. I hope and pray that our leaders use the PDCA cycle to manage the roll out. Is it a good or bad plan? I've heard many arguments on both sides of the coin. My gut tells me that something had to happen. I'm not smart enough to know what the something is.


The stimulus package is a plan. It was debated and argued at length until enough approving votes were garnered to get the President's signature. We don't know if the plan will work. We need to have faith the plan is an act of putting best feet forward as I described above.

So now we begin to enter the do phase. Money will slowly but surely be dispensed to states and other recipients.

How will we stop and check the progress of the do phase? Are there any checks built into the system? If they exist, they should have been decided well before the bill was signed. To me, this is so important. The American public needs to know if the package is driving the desired effect. Sure we may start to see signs of improvement but our state and national leadership must speak of the package's progress in layman's terms.

Finally, after checking the progress, appropriate action must be taken:
a. If the plan is not working, Congress and the President must not hesitate to go back to the drawing board and develop a different plan.
b.If the plan is working as is, the leadership should begin discussing lessons learned and implement controls to prevent recurrence of this economic mess.
c. If the plan is working but needs tweaking or revision, all parties must come together to plan the necessary improvements.



Stephen Deas

Please visit our websites:

http://www.qualitymindsinc.com/

http://www.cpionlinecourses.com/