Page 296 - Lean six sigma demystified

274 Lean Six Sigma DemystifieD

ExErcisEs

1. Develop a flowchart of a key business process.
• For the participant’s group, department, or organization, identify one key busi-
ness process. Make sure they are focused before they start the exercise.
• In subgroups, develop a flowchart of the process.
• Identify the non-value-added rework loops and delays in the process.

2. Develop process indicators. For improvement efforts to be successful, they must
focus on the customer’s requirements and ways to measure them—defects,
delay, or cost. Earlier, in planning, we developed indicators based on customer
requirements. These are usually the quality indicators measured after delivery
of the product or service. Now we need to identify the hand-off and decision
points where process indicators can be measured to predict the performance of
the process.
• In small groups, have participants identify one quality indicator on the basis of
customer requirements.
• Using the process flowchart, have participants identify one or two places in
the process where a measurement indicator would reliably predict the results
(quality indicator). The number errors corrected during the process, for example,
will predict the quality of the final product (lots of errors probably mean a poor
product).

3. Graph the process indicators.
• In small groups, have participants select one indicator for good, fast, and
cheap. Using real or best-guess data, have participants plot the current per-
formance.
• Which direction is good? (Reduce defects, delay, and cost.)

4. Evaluate stability.
• Review one quality indicator reflecting a customer requirement.

• On the basis of real or intuitive data, is the process stable? Does it produce con-
sistent results? If not, what would need to be done to improve the consistency
of results?

5. Interpret a control chart. Run control charts on the XmR, XbarR, and XbarS data
in c:\qimacros\testdata. Analyze the charts for stability.