Page 275 - The Handbook for Quality Management a Complete Guide to Operational Excellence

262 C o n t i n u o u s I m p r o v e m e n t e f f e c t i v e C h a n g e M a n a g e m e n t 263

Knowing the project’s throughput priority will help you make better
project selection decisions. Of course, the throughput priority is just one
input into the project selection process; other factors may lead to a differ-
ent decision, for example, impact on other projects, a regulatory require-
ment, a better payoff in the long term, etc.

DMAIC/DMADV Methodology
A somewhat standard five-stage methodology has been developed for
j
improvement pro ects: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control
(DMAIC). DMAIC is an extension of Shewhart’s PDCA (Plan Do Check Act)
and Deming’s PDSA (Plan Do Study Act) cycles for improvement. Once you
reach the final step, you may repeat the process for an additional cycle of
improvement.
Motorola used the MAIC (Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) acro-
nym. GE and Allied Signal used DMAIC, which has become more the
standard. Some consultants brand the methodology by adding even more
steps. Harry and Schroeder (2000) added recognize to the front, and stan-
dardize and integrate to the end, referring to the product as their break-
through strategy. Juran first developed the concept of breakthrough years
earlier to describe methods for achieving orders of magnitude improve-
ments in quality. A review of Harry and Schroeder’s definitions of these
additional terms shows similarity to others’ descriptions of DMAIC.
A casual review of Six Sigma practitioners found the DMAIC to be the
most commonly used for improvement projects. When applied to prod-
uct, service, or process design, the acronym DMADV is often used, where
the Design stage is substituted for Improve, and Verify is substituted for
Control. As seen in the following chapters, there is much commonality
between DMAIC and DMADV, and this text will often refer to DMAIC for
brevity, even when the comments apply to both methods.
The importance of DMAIC is in its struc tured approach, which ensures
that projects are clearly defined and implemented, and that results are
standardized into the daily operations.
The DMAIC methodology should be applied from leadership levels of
the organization down to the process level. The methodology is the same,
with variation on the scope or application. The upper levels of the organi-
zation apply these methods to larger business problems, such as market
penetration, while the process-level projects improve a given aspect of a
particular process, such as reducing cycle time for order processing.
Business-level projects are championed at the top level of the organi-
zation. They concentrate on vital aspects of the business success, such as
market share, via bility, profitability, employee retention, etc. They may
involve purchasing or selling of business units, or ways to attract or main-
tain customer base. Because of the scope of the project, the time scale is
measured in years, rather than months. Some business-level projects may

12_Pyzdek_Ch12_p241-264.indd 262 11/9/12 5:13 PM