Page 363 - Design for Six Sigma for Service (Six SIGMA Operational Methods)

Design and Improvement of Service Processes—Process Management 323

• Percentage of time stations are blocked
• Percentage of time stations are starved
Decision variables
• The number and types of machines in the work cells
• The production batch size of a particular part type
• Type of material handling
• The sequence of products
• Number of stations
• Placement and size of buffers

In the service industry, there are many processes that are similar to the man-
ufacturing process. In the restaurant business, the process of producing
meals in the kitchen is very similar to the manufacturing process. All office
processes, such as processing paperwork, insurance claims, and mortgage
applications, involve a sequence of steps on incoming materials (paperwork),
adding value to them (finishing a part of necessary procedures) in each
step, until the product is finished (paperwork done). Therefore, many well-
established manufacturing process management methods can be easily
adapted to these service processes.

Common goals in manufacturing processes are to improve throughput,
improve flexibility, increase quality, and reduce cost. Other issues such as
safety may also be important. These goals and the tradeoffs that they require
can be best attained by process management of the production processes.

Manufacturing Performance Metrics
Quality
Practically all manufacturing operations consider quality to be important.
The importance of quality stems from customers’demands for the best value
that their money can buy. Quality, quite simply, can be assessed as the
degree to which customer requirements incorporated into the design for a
product have been met. Any manufacturing organization that does not pay
close attention to quality will slowly lose market share and disappear into
oblivion.

Production Lead Time
In addition to quality, another performance metric that influences the level
of customer satisfaction is the production lead time. Lead time is the time
it takes one piece of raw input to move all the way through the manu-
facturing process, from start to finish. In general, the shorter the lead time,
the better.