Page 168 - Six Sigma Demystified

Chapter 7 i m p r o v e S tag e 149

recognition as an industry leader. It also will be impossible to reach breakthrough
levels of improvement necessary for Six Sigma quality. Rather, similar or even
dissimilar industries may be evaluated to learn techniques new to your organiza-
tion. For example, a good model for improving an assembly operation can be a
fast- food restaurant specializing in the rapid assembly of hamburgers.

PRoject examPle: Redefining Process Flow

The key points realized thus far that guide the team in defining a new process
include

1. The two primary project objectives are
a. Reduce order processing time required by sales staff.
b. Reduce errors in order entry that affected marketing campaigns.
2. Sales processing time is influenced by the number of line items
and number of interruptions.
a. The line items are an indirect measure of the complexity of the
sale (each line item represents additional products or services
purchased). Reducing the line item count per order by grouping
products into single line items would not reduce the complexity
of the sale but would increase the complexity of the order and the
resulting likelihood of order errors (such as picking the wrong
grouped item). The team did not consider there to be any oppor-
tunities relative to this factor.
b. Minimizing interruptions is possible but may increase customer
wait time because sales staff are taken offline to process orders.

Total cycle time consists of processing time plus wait time. Wait time does not
affect sales department costs directly; however, it does affect customers directly
and affects sales costs indirectly because order status inquiries from customers
increase with increased wait time.
The errors are primarily errors of omission rather than incorrect data entry. The
occurrence rate is consistent across products and relatively small (94 percent of
opportunities for a defect resulted in no defect). The only possible reason for the
omissions is “i forgot,” which has many possible subcauses, including distraction
and interruptions.
The vast majority of sales staff data entry is business- value- added (BVa; type 2
waste) and would be considered non- value- added (NVa) for Web orders as long
as the data are available to sales and support personnel.