Lean Six Sigma Bursts

I was recently asked about the difference between PDCA and PDSA. I had heard some new information from another podcast, and dug into one of the references to learn more about it. In this episode, I read through a paper from Ronald Moen that provides a good historical perspective. Note: I mispronounced Charlie Protzman's name in the audio. Apologies!

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A recent Value Stream Mapping event was held virtually, and we received some positive feedback from the event attendees. I wanted to share some of the comments to show how process improvement helps much more than just faster processes with less quality issues. It helps engage employees in the future direction of the organization, builds teamwork across departments, and creates a safe space for discussing problems and challenges. Please contact me if you'd like help with facilitating your own lean events, so I can better understand how to assist you in this important tool of process improvement.

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Does your organization use a structured problem solving process, like DMAIC, 8D, or PDSA? If no, why not? I share my views on what challenges are created when you don't have structure to your problem solving approach.

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Are you trying to decide how to select the best projects to work on, but have many stakeholders and customer needs to consider, and too many project ideas? Check out the Project Prioritization Matrix to help you objectively evaluate these projects and select the ones that meet the most important criteria. I pulled the audio from the training video for you to listen to in this podcast. There is also a link to the video if you had trouble following along, and I provide a link to the template you can download. 

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I received a question today that I thought would be helpful to everyone: “Imagine you are getting ready to kick-off the value stream workshop and you start to receive emails from a bunch of different people in the organization asking to attend. What would be your response?”

I answered the question in an article on my website, but I wanted to read my response for this podcast.

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When making improvements to a process, cost savings and avoidance is a common outcome that is estimated and reported. A common error is to combine the data together into one overall number, but they should be separated into three distinct buckets of money: Income Statement, Cash Flow and Growth. 

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One of the most impactful quality initiatives I was involved with was the creation and deployment of the Cost of Nonconformance (CoNC) report. It was a method to assign a dollar amount to quality problems in order to bring attention to management in the language they most often respond to, money! It could also be applied more broadly beyond just quality issues to any type of waste to increase visibility for your Lean or Six Sigma initiative. Check out our Cost of Poor Quality course at https://www.biz-pi.com/product/cost-of-poor-quality-copq-course/

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In process improvement, there is a strong focus of data. But in order to analyze data for an improvement project, you need to know what type of data you have or need, so you can perform the correct analysis. I share the different types of data you may encounter for your project.

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I saw a recent question in a forum, asking about the origin of the sample size of 30 data points. I decided to read you the response I gave, and make it a new blog post on my website. 

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I share an article I wrote back in Dec 2013 about reducing or eliminating test or inspection steps using Six Sigma analysis methods of capability and stability, along with risk mitigation tools like FMEA and error proofing.

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