Improvement We Care For: DFCM, QI Program at U of T

It is known that most - if not all - Quality Improvement and Process Excellence experts have one goal in mind: to make processes, services, and products sustainably better. Whether various Continuous Improvement (CI) initiatives address waste in manufacturing or flow efficiency in services, we all aim at eliminating errors, deficiencies, redundancies, and variation in any given setting. When it comes to making lives better however, there are no more important initiatives than the ones that address the health and quality of living of human beings.

That is exactly what the Department of Family & Community Medicine’s (DFCM) Quality Improvement Program at the University of Toronto has been doing. Since 2010, this group of highly trained health care professionals specialized quality improvement (QI) training opportunities to DFCM including mandatory QI training for residents, QI training opportunities for faculty, an online library of quality-driven projects, and a newsletter that celebrates QI successes of the approach.

Adapted from the Institute of Medicine, the DFCM Quality Improvement Program has embraced the six quality dimensions in its quality efforts:




1. Safety: no one should be harmed by health care.

2. Timeliness: the right care, at the right time, in the right setting, by the right health care provider.

3. Equitability: services to all without discrimination.

4. Effectiveness: servicing based on the best evidence available.

5. Efficiency: avoiding wasteful services, or services where benefits to the patient is unlikely.

6. Patient-centered: ensuring that patient values, needs, and preferences guide clinical decisions.

These dimensions are excellence-oriented processes and they provide DFCM faculty and staff with resources and an approach that help guarantee the correct execution of QI initiatives. For example, teams at the DFCM develop and submit QI Plans each spring to support their organization's QI goals.


It’s well known that it is extremely important to properly address the planning phase in DMAIC projects. DFCM's emphasis on planning helps to ensure the correct approach to quality improvement projects is taken. A quick look at the DFCM’s QI Program website link will also showcase the various resources and knowledge that have been collected and put to use in the health care setting. For example, explore the program's primary care QI newsletter for current events and success stories.


For more on DFCM Quality Improvement news please visit their home page at:

http://www.dfcm.utoronto.ca/programs/quality.htm

eZsigma Group is proud to be a partner of the DFCM's efforts towards Quality Improvement. We congratulate these health care professionals for putting process excellence in the hands of those who look after the most valuable asset of all: the human life.

Edited by Patricia O'Brien and Allison Mullin.

The 5 Deadly Sources of Waste in Services

Counting defective parts may be an easy way to measure waste in the manufacturing industry. But when it comes to services, the continuous improvement practitioner often encounters two challenges. Firstly, it is hard to define waste in certain processes. For example, what is waste in the eyes of an anxious fan waiting for the show to begin? What is waste in the eyes of a patient waiting to see a doctor? Secondly, once waste has been identified, what is the metric that truly portraits such a waste? Let's consider the following 5 deadly sources of waste commonly found in the services industry but not often dealt with properly. Are these sources of waste leading your organization to customer dissatisfaction, product returns, and loss of brand reputation?

1. Waiting: on the phone, in line, for the product to arrive, for the supervisor to approve, for the flight to board. In today's fast pace environment, waiting not only causes financial loss to both customers and organizations but also creates anxiety, frustration, and stress upon your stakeholders.

2. Searching: for the right file, for that piece of information, for the parking lot, for the expired contract. Searching, in most cases, can be a product of lack of training and/or lack of workplace organization. Searching files and spending hours on the phone with the customer may be the result of a poorly managed and disorganized work environment (hint: 5S program).

3. Bad Customer Service: have you ever considered the number of customers that you may have lost due to the fact that your front line employees are just grumpy? Has your organization reimbursed customers because your office personnel did not communicate effectively with the employee assigned for the job?

4. Redundancy: reworking the same Excel spreadsheet over and over again, contacting the customer multiple times to discuss the same problem and offer the same solution, collecting 7 approvals for a low budgeted item. We all cost extra money (to the organization and ourselves) when the work has to be done twice (or three, four times).

5. Meetings: How many are really necessary? How many truly produces an outcome that is value-added to the organization? How much money is your organization spending on GoToMeetings, Webex, and muffins? Lean organizations should start to let go of the rituals set 25 years ago.

These sources of waste can add up quickly to your processes and may be hindering employee morale, service quality, and brand reputation. Whilst it's easier to identify and measure tangible wastes, it is important that Lean organizations be aware of potential sources of hidden wastes. 

eZsigma Group is Canada's leader in Lean Six Sigma. We offer a vast array of services that will help your organization to achieve a new level of excellence. Please contact us for further information about our programs.

The RASCI Matrix and DMAIC

A well developed Six Sigma program has always called for a properly defined project charter. The project charter itself is a great tool that addresses many different aspects of an improvement initiative such as the executive sponsor(s), related metrics, milestones, team members, and so on. But many project charters lack what tend to be an important piece of the puzzle: the rightful assignment of roles and responsibilities of each person involved with the project. Similarly, a well developed Six Sigma planning stage asks for a detailed DMAIC breakdown (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control), which nicely sets the tone for the entire project approach.

The RASCI matrix (Responsible, Accountable, Supportive, Consulted, Informed) serves the continuous improvement practitioner as a cross-reference tool that links the roles and responsibilities of involved personnel with the DMAIC steps. One can even utilize a previously developed WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) to list the specific activities in each stage of the DMAIC approach.

The figure below depicts an example of a RASCI matrix.

Once the project's and project manager's names are entered at the top of the matrix, the CI practitioner lists all individual activities (that again, may come from a WBS previously developed) within each of the DMAIC stages. To the right of the matrix, each person's name as well as his/her role in the project are entered (note: this is not necessarily the person's position or title, but his/her role within the project). 

For each activity listed under the DMAIC stages, the facilitator should enter the words Responsible, Accountable, Supportive, Consulted, or Informed, according to each of the roles taken.

The tool itself, of course, is just a tool if not used properly or if not followed up on. The Six Sigma practitioner should always refer back to the RASCI matrix when in doubt about each team member's accountability. The team itself should always consult the RASCI matrix to speed up the decision making process, and along the same lines the team should always be aware of those who need to be consulted and/or informed of critical tasks.

eZsigma Group has extensive expertise in DMAIC deployment and we would welcome our readers to discuss what fits best in your organization's journey with process excellence. Call today to set up a meeting with our team of professionals.

Supplier Performance Management

In process excellence, specifically in a Lean approach, we often speak about closing the loop between the customer's order (which in a pull system triggers production) and the management of supplies that are to serve that specific process. Indeed, it is the customer (or the Voice of the Customer - VOC) that sets the parade in motion, and it is the customer whom of course, pays for value-added activities that he/she is willing to pay - that is the notion of value in a Lean environment as we all know.

But what about the upstream side of things? Is it important that suppliers be well managed in any given process? And what is actually considered "value" from a supplier's perspective? How do we go about measuring supplier performance? This post discusses a few mechanisms that will help the continuous improvement (CI) professional when dealing with supplier's performance management.

Usual assessment tools include, but are not limited to:

Questionnaires: two types are commonly used. The first one is specifically related to the supplier's quality management system. Does the supplier operate under a Lean environment? Does the supplier offer a raw material (be it a tangible product or a piece of information) that truly is highly valuable to your specific flow? What about delivery? Is it under a Just in Time (JIT) process? If not, can it be? The second survey is directed to your organization's overall level of satisfaction with the supplier. Does the supplier work seamlessly with your department? What about issues? Does the supplier offer timely and knowledgeable solutions to the day-to-day problems that may affect your Value Stream Map?

Product Data: your organization may want to ask the supplier to provide specific data about the product per se, statistics on defects (and more importantly, why they occur), root cause analysis, significant changes in the process and so on. Think again about your VSM and how changes in the supplier's processes can affect your own processes.

Delivery Performance: suppliers' information on early or late delivery. Especially in a JIT environment, delivery times can greatly affect the flow of your process. Think about Dell and Toyota. These organizations rely heavily on a smooth delivery practice from hundreds of suppliers scattered across various locations.

Corrective Actions: does your supplier, in most cases, act proactively towards issues or are they always treating the fever and not the cause of the fever? How can you track the resolution of issues, and moreover, how can you help the supplier with the resolution of issues that ultimately affect your processes? Does the supplier use data-based methodologies to tackle internal issues?

Product Price and Total Cost: does the supplier use quality management concepts and/or design evaluation tools to always seek a lower cost of production? How is the progress of such practices tracked? How is it reported back to your organization? Cost of Quality is a concept that can help suppliers (and all of us really) to consistently aim for improvements in quality without compromising price.

Supplier performance management should be done once your own processes have been a) controlled, and b) improved. However, one can argue that working on both ends is also wise, if at all doable. Supplier performance management is a topic that has been ignored by many industries, and unfortunately the mentality of "less cost at all costs" is still present. As the aforementioned suggests, supplier performance management is  a long term commitment, and it can help both the supplier and the organization to achieve higher levels of efficiency in any given process.

We are a process excellence firm which strives to look at all aspects of the analysis we conduct. Supplier performance management is just another expertise that we can offer to your organization in its pursuit of a successful continuous improvement approach.  

Lean Construction: What's To Come?

Lean Construction: Only One Variable in the Capital Project Value Formula

By Charles Spina

Director, Corporate Client Relationships

eZsigma Group 

There are few sectors where Lean and its cousin, Six Sigma, can have a more conspicuous beneficial impact than construction. The end-to-end value streams are phenomenally extended, yet the decomposed streams have historically been de-coupled from each other. What are we saying here? Let’s first look at what we are not saying. We are not saying that  project smarts are not being applied, that smart people are not behind the projects, that some of these projects are actually delivered on-time and on budget and on spec. What we are saying is that value stream integration, true collaborative planning and re-planning, and a little Lean skill can dramatically improve the processes intended to be housed in the buildings being constructed, shorten timelines, improve safety and increase profit margins.

It is sometimes claimed that when it comes to best practice, Canada lags other countries. If we look at construction, even the least objective of us must admit that with all of the sector’s monumental accomplishments, when it comes to process efficiency, the claim has merit.

Yet are we being myopic if we limit our view of process improvement opportunities only to the construction phase of capital projects or to the constructors themselves? We think so, because we believe that the quest for optimization must encompass the constituent processes managed and otherwise owned by the other players in the capital projects value chain: owners, funders, architects, functional programmers and sub-contractors.

It Comes Down to Time and Customer Value

We are not about to insult our readers with oversimplifications; even modest capital projects are complex, but if we were to isolate a single measurable to be managed in such projects, it would be the elapsed time measured from design concept to the first customer service occurrence. A customer service occurrence could be triggered by an emergency room visit, or in the case of a courthouse, a first trial proceeding, so non-value added time is not only money, it is social cost and it is opportunity cost.

If Lean is about understanding the voice of the customer and about translating it into experiences that can be monetized, constructors certainly have their contribution to make to the customer experience by completing earlier, and in a DBFM context, designing from inception for flow and motion. Indeed, in a future entry in this series we will give the constructor’s role its due emphasis. In this entry, however, with the time measure as our backdrop, we are going look at the role of public and private sector project owners.

Public Sector Project Owners

Government-sponsored projects, such as those for municipal buildings and hospitals having service fulfillment mandates, necessarily have long lead times, owing to the requisite community and stakeholder consultations, partnership formation (particularly in this era of DBFM) and funding and regulatory approvals. Lean practitioners who are familiar with the sector view this pre-construction cycle as a value stream in its own right, and one that is in need of much attention. To be sure, it is composed of a certain amount of distributed value-added activity - after all, the job eventually gets done- but it is performed over a waste-laden timeline.

Private Sector Project Owners

The private sector project owner is interested in minimizing his or her cash-to-cash gap; that is, the time from the commencement of capital outflows to the time cash from revenue generating activities starts to materialize. If a hospital first opens its doors six months after scheduled completion, it’s certainly a human impact problem, but above all, it’s a political problem. When the turbines of a power plant start spinning six months late, however, it’s a financial problem: for lenders for sure, but also for the investors holding units in the infrastructure fund that took a $100 million bet on the project.

An Ounce of Lean Knowledge Sheds Pounds of Waste

Owners need not take more than a day to orient themselves to Lean principles and methods for them to be empowered to identify projects’ winning pre-conditions and how those conditions can be embedded in RFPs and contracts. According to one distinguished Lean practitioner, just by operating in Canada, owners already have a cultural advantage.    

“In general… levels of collaboration seem to be higher. Canadian contractors often work with the same suppliers and the same subs over multiple projects. That makes ideas like lean construction easier to bring in. There’s a baseline of trust in the beginning.”

(Dick Bayer, Executive Director, Lean Construction Institute)

Canada has world class architecture, construction materials and constructors. Yet, if we isolate the construction value stream in the capital projects life cycle, we need not look farther than the typical contract to see that risk, lateness and uncertainty are embedded in them and priced accordingly. The impetus to re-invent process can come from two sources: owners who demand best value for money and constructors - in their quest for competitive advantage.

The extent to which Lean construction methods are being adopted, at least south of the border, can be gleaned from Dassault Systèmes' seminal 2013 survey. The continuous improvement mindset and the deployment of its corresponding methods and tools requires leadership. Canadian constructors can either lead its deployment and thus influence the entire project life cycle, from concept development, to design, to modeling, to contracting, resource engagement, construction and commissioning, or be led by others. Given the choice, we know where we would stake our ground….and our brands.

eZsigma Group is pioneering the usage of Lean Six Sigma in the construction industry. Contact us for more details about how we can help your organization perform better.

Strategy Deployment: The Top Down Approach and What's Wrong With It

Not long ago, the movement for a better understanding of strategies and how managers deploy them was a hot topic, to say the least. While great efforts were put into the exercise of creating strategies in which the entire organization would understand and benefit from, not all persons involved in such exercises were clear as to what exactly these strategies, to begin with, really meant to deliver.

Early adopters of the Balanced Scorecard created by Harvard professors Norton and Kaplan were sure to see an organization that undoubtedly would create more synergies among processes, more engagement from their employees, and of course, more profits as the result of a better aligned organization. Whilst academics and practitioners around the globe focused their efforts on polishing the methods to deploy strategies, little has been done to study the inclusion of various stakeholders in the development of such strategies. 

As many methods will teach the practitioner, strategy must be developed at the top, by senior leadership and by those who indeed know “what the best for the organization is”. It is at the top of the organization that major decisions are made, that resources are allocated, and strategies are created. But how does one organization go from creating strategies without the involvement of those who will in fact execute it? Are we to assume that the communication that flows through the various layers of organizations will not get corrupted? Can we attest that the vision and objectives defined by the C-suite (positions that start with the letter C such as CEO, CFO, COO, and so on) can be clearly understood by mid level managers and operators? And how does one go about measuring such understanding? Let us look at figure 1 for a moment. It shows the traditional way of creating and deploying strategies. In its most simplistic form, strategy is created by the top leadership and then simply “deployed” through the various layers of the organization. In this example, I have only considered four layers: senior leadership, mid level managers, supervisors, and finally operators.

Figure 1 – The traditional strategy development and deployment process

                

Traditionally, and as abovementioned, strategy has been one of the tasks that senior leadership performs in organizations. Leaders develop strategies based on the organization’s mission, vision, and values, or mandate – not necessarily a new practice. In developing strategies, these strategists consider a vast array of factors that influence and provide input to the organization’s path to achieving success. These factors can be of an external nature such as the economy, market (segment) conditions, available labour, legislation, and the environment to name a few. Other internal factors may be the organization’s own available human resources, its financial situation, its product (or service) line, its production capabilities, its margins, and its desire to penetrate into a new market. In short, to shape the strategy, leaders look into different areas of concern in order to create a robust direction for the organization. But leaders are, in most cases, away from operations. They receive input about it from their direct reports and through managerial meetings that not always portrait the real feeling from those who are in fact executing the strategy.

A modified strategy formulation process, developed in contrast to the traditional way depicted in figure 1 is shown in figure 2. In this model, the development of the organization’s strategy does not strictly flow only one-way from top to bottom. The process actually starts with operational input and for as long as the strategy per se is being developed, operations are in constant touch with top leadership and mid-level managers.

Figure 2 – The development of the strategy through operational input

In absolutely no way, shape or form does this suggested model ignore the fact that top leadership always has far more information available at a macro level (economics, global trends, and so on). Instead, this model suggests that the operational department (be it a manufacturing or a service provider), the entity responsible for executing the strategy, knows what occurs at the micro level of the organization’s core better than top leadership. The inclusion of operations in the development of organizational strategies simply demonstrates that macro and micro levels can be aligned in a way that the entire strategy, or strategies, can provide employees with a more meaningful work life - they get to understand what they do at the end of the day. The joint effort proposed herein not only provides the organization as a whole with a much richer input for the strategy development process but also directly affects how employees perceive the strategic effort and how employees understand and work towards the organization’s main mandate. The core of this message is the alignment between what senior leadership intends to deploy as strategies and what employees at floor level perceive as being deployed as strategies.

In short, the first step in accomplishing such alignment between top leadership and operational level is to ensure that both parties - as well as the other levels of management (as depicted in figures 1 and 2) – are in sync when it comes to developing what the organization’s future is bound to be.

eZsigma Group has recently launched its Strategic Management program in which we look at the organization's strategic mandate to find the best fit for continuous improvement initiatives such as our Lean and Six Sigma programs. Contact us directly for more information on how we can help your organization be a better one.

Office Kaizen, Part 4/4 (Asset Wastes)

In this last post of our Office Kaizen series, we address asset wastes, which represent the less than optimal utilization of material and property of an organization. When assets are not utilized in their most efficient manner (buildings, vehicles, parts, and products to name a few) these resources are wasted, leading to the creation of non-value added components to the process occurs. Lareau (2003) describes four types of asset wastes:

Inventory Waste: a very common issue in any push system, idling material waiting to be used creates waste in the process. The same goes for final product inventory waiting to be shipped to the customer. One of the main concepts behind the Toyota Production System (TPS)  - which made Lean Manufacturing very popular in North America, is the optimization of a pull system in which materials are moved through the value stream only when necessary. This in turn, helps the process in not building unnecessary inventory. As clearly implied in the preceding sentences, a pull system, along with metrics that trigger the steps within a value chain, is the best path to an Office Kaizen inventory management approach.

Work-in-Process Waste: often referred to as WIP, work-in-process waste is the type of waste that is generated by resources spent on mid-processes that cannot yet be fully used in the next activity of the value stream. If WIP involves the waiting of steps in the process itself, and if it is an necessary evil in the process, then the human resources that are also waiting in line should be utilized somewhere else. Metrics can be put in place to indicate (upfront) the possible idling of activities by WIP. Workers could then plan ahead and be better utilized in another step of the chain. From a materials perspective, as in Inventory Waste, a pull system can also help in less WIP if the process itself has room for improvement (and usually they all do!).

Fixed Asset Waste: the warehouse, the equipment, and the buildings that are not being maximally used represent this type of waste. In many industries, the normal approach to expansion is to lease or buy more, but in an Office Kaizen environment the first thing we should be concerned about is layout, organization (5S), and ergonomics. Only after the company has explored such alternatives more space should be considered. Remember that fixed assets also suffer depreciation - although not a out-of-pocket expense, it reduces the value of the asset and the customer does not pay for it necessarily.

Moving Things Waste: this type of waste includes "all transport of materials and information, except that used to deliver products and services directly to customers." (Lareau, 2003, p. 37). In an Office Kaizen environment, the team would look into the value stream maps of the most critical processes with the aim of reducing unnecessary transport within these processes. Creation of work cells and change in layout may help with the extra steps that add no value to the final customer.

We conclude this series of 4 posts on Office Kaizen by reinforcing the idea of waste reduction in any organizational setting. Waste is present in any process and there is always room for improvement. With the right tools and the right approach, you can make your organization a better one - an organization that is lean in its operational processes and rich in continuous improvement efforts that ultimately benefit the organization, its employees, its customers and basically all other stockholders related to your product or service. We are here to help in case you need a helping hand!

Reference: Lareau, W. (2003). Transforming Office Operations Into A Strategic Competitive Advantage. Milwaukee, USA: ASQ Quality Press.

Office Kaizen, Part 3/4 (Information Wastes)

In our third discussion on Office Kaizen, we address a type of waste that is extremely important to eliminate, or at least minimize, in any organizational setting. Information Waste is the waste that occurs due to the less than optimum information content in a value stream. There are five types of information wastes, as follows:

Translation Waste: requires effort to correct, change, reassess, and rework data, reports, formats, standards, and process steps. It occurs often in organizations of any size and it consumes managers' time. It can also lead the organization to costly errors and mistakes. In an Office Kaizen setting, the most likely solution to translation waste is to ensure that leadership focuses on factual data that are supported by metrics and simplified in their nature. Less is more here. Standardization (and sticking to it) may also help with the level of translation applied to processes.

Missing Information Waste: this type of waste requires extended efforts to compensate for the lack of information in procedures and processes. Office Kaizen teaches us that a hard look at the value stream to identify key metrics and information flow must be performed in order for the organization to cover all pieces of the puzzle. Visual boards should also be reviewed with respect to flow and cadence of information in the system.

Hand-Off Waste: this type of waste requires the extra effort (effort that the customer does not pay for) to compensate the loss (or improper adjustment) of information due to the hand-off being inadequate. Consider for example, when the next department in the value stream "adjusts" numbers from previous steps without a reason. An Office Kaizen organization would tackle this waste by assigning daily metrics and detailed procedures that are to be strictly followed during the hand-off of information. It may sound like bureaucracy at first, but it will guarantee a better and more accurate value stream in the long term.

Irrelevancy Waste: relates to the energy spent to deal with unnecessary information, or the efforts needed to correct issues that irrelevant information may have caused to the organization's processes. Leadership plays an important role here in supporting the avoidance of unnecessary presentations, revisions, additions, and changes to documentation that are not related to the process (value added). Once again, a good look at the value stream and its steps may be needed in order for the organization to clean up the non-value added pieces of information in the flow.

eZsigma Group offers a highly qualified group of experienced professionals who can help your organization achieve higher levels of productivity, efficiency and employee morale. Contact us to learn more about our programs.

Office Kaizen, Part 2/4 (Process Wastes)

This post addresses the second set of wastes in our series of 4 Office Kaizen discussions. There are 12 wastes when it comes to process, and they are briefly discussed below. Lareau (2003) calls our attention to avoid mixing some of the following wastes with some of the people wastes discussed in the first post of this series.

Control Waste: this waste refers to unnecessary and extreme supervision of work. It sometimes creates irrelevant tension in the work environment which, in turn, lowers employee morale. Work groups (or cells) are the ideal setting in an Office Kaizen environment. As well, clear metrics, strategic alignment, and personal development plans should help the organization to rapidly identify issues in the process.

Variability Waste: resources that are utilized due to outcomes that deviate from the expected or normal outcomes. These resources are typically involved with activities related to re-working solutions, recalling products, and amending services that did not deliver the expected outcome in the first place.

Tampering Waste: the effort required to adjust a process which has been arbitrarily changed without foresight, and the efforts to deal with the consequences of those changes. In an Office Kaizen environment, no arbitrary changes without foundation on metrics, impact on outcomes, and employee's morale would take place.

Strategic Waste: relates to value lost due to the efforts that are concentrated on short-term goals and/or immediate internal customer needs only, i.e. it does not impact the company's long term objectives. Normally, an Office Kaizen approach would be to look into the entire value chain and identify perils about the short-term gains versus the long term losses.

Reliability Waste: efforts related to the correction of unpredictable outcomes that are the fruit of unknown causes. The most likely approach to this situation in an Office Kaizen environment would be to have procedures, visual and/or job aids, and standards that inform the operator of the procedures associated with the unpredictable outcomes (call it the B plan).

Standardization Waste: efforts wasted to correct the variance among operators of the same task. In other words, one operator performs better than the other. The ideal solution here is that the best practice be followed by others, and that the best performer trains (or helps) the others to achieve the standard expected.

Sub-optimization Waste: may also be called "the tug of war of processes or departments". This type of waste happens when competing processes a) duplicate the work needed for the entire value chain or b) "compromise each other and degrade the final outcome" (Lareau, 2003, p. 29).

Scheduling Waste: energy spent on compensating activities due to their poor scheduling. A well functioning Office Kaizen would schedule activities respecting their flow, timing, gaps, overlaps, and breathing in between them.

Work-around Waste: the famous informal, out-of-control, and DIY (Do It Yourself) type of procedure that overweighs the formal procedures the organization has in place. Normally the outcome of such procedures are penalties and more control, but in an Office Kaizen mentality, the group involved would look for best practices, share them, and make them the official way of doing things, while at the same time always looking for improvement opportunities.

Uneven Flow Waste: resources allocated to correct the uneven flow of material or information "sitting" somewhere in the process (similar to inventory waste). Just as in a manufacturing setting, the work group in an Office Kaizen would evaluate the value chain and focus on bottlenecks that may be piling up unnecessary materials or information.

Checking Waste: efforts put into the constant inspection of activities due to the poorly designed value stream. Checking, double-checking, and triple-checking are non-paying activities in the eyes (and pockets) of the customer. As in any continuous improvement (CI) approach, the design of the process should aim for an error-free outcome, as once put by Phillip Crosby.

Error Waste: the efforts spent on re-doing, fixing, and amending what has not been done properly in the first place. Although a certain degree of error is expected in all processes, the CI professional in an Office Kaizen environment should always set up the process with enough error-proofing (poka yoke) techniques and methods to secure the correct outcome as much as possible.

The next post will address Information Waste. eZsigma Group offers onsite analysis of processes and their constraints. For a more in-depth discussion on what your organization needs to become a better one, please contact us directly at rperdigao@ezsigmagroup.com.

Reference: Lareau, W. (2003). Transforming Office Operations Into A Strategic Competitive Advantage. Milwaukee, USA: ASQ Quality Press.

Office Kaizen, Part 1/4 (People Wastes)

Process excellence professionals are often, and rightfully so, concerned about eliminating waste at their manufacturing facilities (tangible processes). Whilst this is indeed considered an easier-to-measure approach, other enabling functions of the organization such as the procurement, HR, and accounting departments, to name a few, also carry an incredible amount of waste in their daily activities. It is important to mention that the core functions of a business (sometimes referred to as industrial or productive) are without a doubt the most likely areas that need efficiency and effectiveness working at their peaks. But let us not be naive enough to completely ignore the fact that enabling (or back office) processes are just as important. This series of four posts based on the popular book Office Kaizen, Transforming Office Operations Into A Strategic Competitive Advantage (Lareau, 2003) addresses some of the most common wastes that any organizational setting may find in their enabling processes.

Part I, People Wastes

Goal Alignment Waste: this is about the typical "let's do it ourselves" mentality. When new rules are set in place, departments try to work them out (or figure them out) as individual silos. Procedures are set for different areas of the organization but a meaningful alignment of objectives is neglected. In fact, goal alignment waste can be amplified if the processes involved in such change (of a rule, a goal, a procedure etc.) are not working as a value stream. In a typical Office Kaizen approach, "the executive steering committee (ESC) charters a cross-functional change team to work out a solution that is cost-effective across the entire value stream over the long term." (Lareau, 2003, p. 22).

Assignment Waste: grab your pen and paper, fire up your PowerPoint - it is time to produce irrelevant and unnecessary reports! In this type of waste, someone "believes" that a 45-page long report on process improvement is a must to convince the boss of something, in case the boss wants to see it. The outcomes are twofold: 1) no one will ever read the report, or 2) someone will read the report and the likelihood of a bad decision made on fluff becomes very high. Lareau (2003) suggests that a Lean Daily Management System (LDMS) be implemented in each work group, and that  ESC-chartered teams produces brief reports on small improvements that are taking place in the organization.

Waiting Waste: the waste of resources lost due to the waiting of information, meetings, phone calls, signatures, tech support, and so on. Called by Lareau as "accepted waste". In a Office Kaizen environment, work groups (sometimes called cells) will 1) monitor how efficient their processes really are and what type of wastes are being experienced and 2) conduct value stream mapping to tackle the most identified wastes the group may be facing. At a later stage, the teams can also expand their analysis into cross-functional wastes (wastes carried from and to other functions of the organization).

Motion Waste: in its most simplistic form, imagine a sales rep having to walk to the very end of the hall to access a fax machine. Or the warehouse manager who needs to spend hours and walk miles around the warehouse to ask simple questions about shipping orders. Non-value added time spent in any process is a waste. Let's remind ourselves that waste in Lean (and Office Kaizen) means activities that the customer will not pay for. The approach to tackle this form of waste in a Office Kaizen environment is as follows: 1) through the use of a spaghetti diagram the team identifies what represents non-value added motion within the organization, and 2) Kaizen Blitzes can quickly and effectively identify metrics that represent how much of walking around means waste.

Processing Waste: "work smarter not harder" - a typical headline in various process improvement initiatives. Processing waste is simply that. It represents any task that could be done in a more effective and smarter way. Lack of training is a huge contributor to this form of waste. A sales person might spend twice the time to prepare a proposal if the information and the knowledge required to do so has not been passed onto him/her. The approach through a Office Kaizen mentality would be to use the employee's skills backed-up by procedures to accomplish the task in its most efficient way.

The next post will address Process Wastes. At eZsigma Group, we take pride in helping customers of all sizes and industries to perform better, increase employee morale, and run their organizations smoother through the application of proven methods and tools of quality management. Contact us for more information.

Reference: Lareau, W. (2003). Transforming Office Operations Into A Strategic Competitive Advantage. Milwaukee, USA: ASQ Quality Press.

Six Sigma Leadership Modes

If you have ever participated in a Six Sigma program implementation you would know that leadership plays a very critical role. There is indeed a big difference between a quick Kaizen or 5S event that is applied to a specific area of the organization and an enterprise, company-wide approach to changing the culture and mentality of employees towards continuous improvement. Leaders have been and will always be an incredible source of motivation, commitment, accountability, and sponsorship in any process excellence initiative. This post is a brief review of a section of the book "The Six Sigma Black Belt Handbook " (reference below). The authors emphasize the four main modes  that leadership goes through in a six sigma management system, as follows:

The Align Mode

As the heading above implies, the align mode aims at an alignment between continuous improvement initiatives and the organization's strategic mandate. More often than not, departments and employees themselves tend to focus on "solving their own problems" rather than looking at the improvement opportunity as a systemic approach. On one hand, leadership in this mode is responsible for refreshing the organization's mission, vision, and values - as well as the main strategic objectives that drive the company towards excellency. On the other hand, operational and enabling functions focus on the Voice of the Customer (VOC) as a way of making the link between what has to be done at the operational / front end processes and the organization's strategies. Lastly, there are two vital points to be considered in this mode: the balance of strategic objectives (such as explored through the BSC - Balanced Scorecard methodology) and the link of strategic metrics to personal individual plans - ensuring that employees of all levels are truly committed to continuous improvement initiatives that drive strategic objectives.

The Mobilize Mode

Change management is a huge part of implementing process excellence in any organizational setting. This mode is about empowering, helping, coaching, and mentoring champions, green belts, and black belts in the work that they do. These individuals are agents of change and as such, they must receive the rightful support they need to accomplish the great task of changing the organizational environment to a continuous improvement mindset. The most known leader, who truly engaged himself into developing other leaders in this field is Jack Welch, former CEO of GE. Through his own personal development and involvement, he not only empowered but also inspired nearly everyone in the organization to always work towards process excellence.

The Accelerate Mode

In a PDCA (plan, do, check, act) context, this mode is about getting the work done. Leadership focuses on actions that will deliver the expected results. Keep in mind that training and support (once again) may be needed on a ongoing basis. Recognition of results is just as important, normally done through the publication of results to the entire organization (e-mail campaigns, bulletin boards, and visual management).

The Govern Mode

Similar to the Align Mode discussed above, leadership ensures that there is a link between strategy and process excellence efforts, and in doing so, governs the entire initiative by a) communicating the impact of the efforts on the organization as a whole, b) regularly leading progress meetings while at the same time providing teams with support and necessary tools, c) monitoring operations through dashboards, and d) publicizing the campaign's efforts and results.

The importance of committed leaders to Six Sigma and smaller-size process improvement initiatives cannot be overstated. At eZsigma Group, we always work closely with organization's leaders to make the entire process a smooth one. Contact us if you'd like to discuss your company's needs for leadership training as we have specific programs tailored to leaders and champions.

Reference: The Six Sigma Black Belt Handbook. (2005, McCarty et al.). McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.

Force Field Analysis in 3 Steps

Making a decision about a major undertaking such as the implementation of a Six Sigma program is not an insignificant task. As we all know, the on-boarding of a process excellence initiative may affect the lives of many employees not to mention the possible change in various processes within the organization. The Force Field Analysis was developed in the 40's by Kurt Lewin (a social psychologist). It is a practical and useful tool that you can use to help your organization in the decision-making process of any major change brought by new initiatives. This simple and yet powerful quality tool can provide the practitioner with a visual assessment of the forces that are against or in favour of the initiative being implemented. It also gives the quality professional a pictorial representation of the factors that need to be minimized (restraining forces) and the ones that can be used as leverage (driving forces).

How to Build a Force Field Analysis Diagram in 3 Steps

Step 1. Start by stating in the middle of a flip chart or a sheet of paper what it is that the organization (or department) is about to embark on. This can be a simple Kaizen rapid improvement event or a year-long Lean Six Sigma on-boarding program.

Step 2. On the left side of the central statement, list all factors that may contribute to roadblocks, issues, or even failure in the initiative. The Force Field Analysis diagram should be built through a brainstorming session which it means that, all ideas and insights are welcomed at this point. For a Six Sigma implementation approach, restraining forces could be employees' resistance, cost of remodeling a new process, and lack of inside expertise to name a few.

Step 3. On the right side of the central topic being studied, list all factors that may contribute to the success of the initiative. These include, but are not limited, to savings in time and cost, higher customer retention rate, improved product quality, fewer recall events, and industry recognition in process excellence. As in item 2 above, all ideas related to the success of the central initiative are welcomed at this point.

Some authors suggest the inclusion of a weighing system applied to these forces. For example, are there restraining forces that affect the program being implemented more than others? A simple scale from 1 to 5 (weak to strong) can be used. Once the diagram has been completed, the organization should start working on the minimization (or elimination) of the various restraining forces and on the strengthening of the driving forces. The Force Field Analysis will ultimately provide the user with even a decision on whether or not to go ahead with the program/change/initiative. On one hand, you may find that there are just too many restraining forces to tackle. On the other hand, you may find that the program being considered can be implemented with a great deal of driving forces that will make the entire process a lot easier than expected. One way or the other, the tool can be used to help you in making a better decision.

eZsigma Group is Canada's leader in process excellence. Through the deployment of Lean, Six Sigma, and Strategic Management consulting and education, we have helped hundreds of businesses to improve their processes and be a better organization. Contact us should you have any questions on how we can help your organization to be a better one.  

3 Steps to Reinforce Strategy Deployment

Strategy development and deployment can be a daunting process for those who are trying to truly make the connection between the organization's strategic intention and its  operational perception. What I mean is, the strategic efforts (or intention) at the top are not always perceived fully (or even partly) at the bottom. How can an organization reinforce the link between the two ends? For example, how can a sales representative really get what goes on at the top of the organization when it comes to its long term direction? While the below suggested steps are not everything the practitioner would need to address the disconnect between strategic intention and operational perception, they may help in getting there.

1. Clearly state the organization's critical objectives. "To be the best in the industry" or "to deliver the best customer service" sounds nice but what is it that you are trying to measure here? What are the metrics behind these statements? Does "being the best" mean more market share? How much more? Does "best customer service" mean less recall events? How much less? We human beings respond better and quicker to things we understand clearly. Put a name and a metric to those critical objectives or goals you have in mind and make sure that everyone gets the memo about them.

2. Deploy objectives or goals as mathematically as possible! Consider the following: you work in department C that reports to department B that reports to department A that reports to the COO of the organization. By the time that each department has created its own way of measuring a given strategic goal you have to support, most likely and sadly, you have already lost the meaning of it. On the other hand, if your department's metric is calculated in the exact same way as the the others do all the away to the top, you will always know that, for example, the cost of maintenance in your department affects the cost of maintenance in departments B and A directly - mathematically. You can minimize confusion tremendously by using a mathematical link between the company's main goals and your contribution to them.

3. Make the metrics a personal agenda. Ideally, as explored in item 2 above, you will deploy your organization's goals mathematically throughout the company, as much as possible. Now use those metrics for personal bonuses and rewards. Develop John Smith's individual personal plan (IPP) based on those metrics, or with great weight on those metrics. John will understand very well that his personal accomplishments have a direct impact at the organization's strategic plan.

As stated at the opening paragraph of this post, these 3 steps are not all there is to strategy development and deployment (consider for example leadership involvement, change management, ongoing market conditions, HR policies, etc) but they do provide the practitioner with a solid start. eZSigma Group has recently launched its strategic management practice. If you are looking for more information on how you can make your organization an aligned one - strategically speaking - contact us and book an appointment. We would be pleased to help you out!

Six Lean Core Concepts

Lean is often described as the philosophy that aids the organization in reducing the lead time between a customer's order and its shipment (be it a product or a service). It has been applied to various organizational settings over the past years (including services) and it has successfully created more value-added flows of information, activities, and networks that ultimately led organizations to become "leaner" (as the name implies). The journey of LEAN starts by the understanding of its core concepts. Some things to keep in mind as you start your journey towards operational excellence through Lean:

1. Low tech / low cost. Lean is about creativity before capital. It utilizes people's experiences, insights, skills and brainpower to tackle small and/or complex issues. The order here is to avoid the organization's funds and use teamwork and Lean principles to minimize waste and optimize processes.

2. Lean works today! A "perfect" solution in 6 months is not necessarily better than a good solution today. A Kaizen Rapid Improvement Event (aka RIE) is an excellent way of starting your resolution towards eliminating non-value added activities in your process flow.

3. Inventory hurts. It is not necessarily an asset (from a Lean viewpoint). The "pull" system (knowingly utilized successfully by Toyota) avoids the build up of inventory that costs money while sitting in the warehouse.

4. The PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle is the lead carrier of a well implemented Lean approach. PDCA will help your organization to constantly look at new improvement opportunities as there will never be a "perfectly perfect" process.

5. Based on item 4 above, once started, Lean is a continuous effort. Be it through a Kaizen Rapid Improvement Event or by tackling major issues in your entire functional processes, the effort must go on, and on and on. Spinning the PDCA cycle is the best way to guarantee continuous success in eliminating waste and improving your operational activities.

6. Always remember: there is often more non-value added activities to any given process than value-added activities. The customer is not willing to pay for non-value added activities and someone has to pay for it. You can incur that cost (and lower your competitive advantage) or you can eliminate it by creating an environment of constant improvement towards every single aspect of your organization's operations.

EZSigma Group is the leading consulting firm in Lean, Six Sigma, and Process Improvement in Canada. Contact us to discuss how we can help your organization to become world class in process excellence.

7 Steps to Process Improvement

It is well known that organizations of any setting undoubtedly deal with undesirable results and/or issues of various kinds on a daily basis. These include defective parts, low productivity, waste (such as the 8 wastes discussed in another posting within this blog),  and rework to name a few. As process improvement practitioners, we are also well aware that treating the symptom (and not the root cause of the problem) and using band aid solutions only work in the short term, in the best case scenario. Asking senior management for capital to procure a new machine or revamp a current process may not be the first option available either. So how can we go about tackling issues at our workplaces, while using facts and data as the basis of our study? One way is through the use of a low tech/low cost approach in which simple quality tools can be utilized to help solving the problems we face. We hereby offer a 7-step method to process improvement that requires basic and easy-to-learn quality tools that anyone at your organization can understand and utilize.

Step 1: Problem Identification. The first step to properly fix an issue is to identify what the issue really is. Be aware of assumptions, gut feelings, and non-factual data that may not point to the core issue at hand. Brainstorming activities and observation are simple tools that help the facilitator of a PIT (Process Improvement Team) in identifying the real problem to be worked on. In this step, we should also identify the goal(s) we are trying to achieve: higher throughput, less safety incidents, reduced maintenance costs, and so on. These performance indicators will then become our point-of-reference for evaluating the success of the improvement initiative later on (before and after evaluation).

Step 2: Data Collection. Once the problem has been properly identified (and written down as a formal statement), we can use basic quality tools to collect the data needed to investigate the issue. Some of the widely used tools include, but are not limited to, check sheets, run charts, survey, flow charts, cause and effect diagrams, VOC (voice of the customer), and process mapping.

Step 3: Data Analysis. The analysis of data (normally raw data) should aim at translating the critical points to be addressed - in a form that is easily understandable. For example, from a check sheet or a tally count, we can create Pareto charts and histograms to better understand the priorities to be addressed in a certain problem (Pareto chart) and how the data have been distributed over a certain period of time (histograms). Other tools to be used in this step include control charts and scatter diagrams.

Check point: Before moving on to Step 4, we should always stop to reflect on what we have done thus far: are the data collection and analysis satisfactory in addressing the issue? Have we explored all tools we have available to collect and analyze the data being studied? Do we have more time? Do we need more time? This is a critical point! Make sure that you have enough data to make decisions and create your action plans.

Step 4: Action Planning. Make it simple - through a 5W2H document (What, When, Who, Why, Where, How, and How Much) that can be easily created in an Excel or Word document, specify who is assigned to each task, when it is supposed to be completed, and so on. This can help your organization to hold people accountable and to monitor the statuses of the various actions being performed. The addition of the metric defined in Step 1, along with the 5W2H form, will help the team to calculate the pace of the targeted result.

Step 5: Execution. This is where the actions defined in Step 4 get implemented. Depending on the timeline of the entire 5W2H(s), these actions should be reported on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. The facilitator of the the improvement team should be in charge of keeping these documents updated.

Step 6: Follow up. What have we learned from the improvement initiative? Have we reached our goal(s)? What are the main outcomes? What are the best practices identified? What have been our roadblocks and how have we addressed them? Have we truly addressed the root cause of the problem and has the problem been effectively eliminated? Which actions have not been completed on time and why? The follow up step offers so much to learn from! We should always look at this step as the best benchmarking tool we have available for other similar issues we will tackle in the future.

Check point: Has the team effectively solved the problem? If so, move on to the final step, if not, go back to Step 4 and revisit your action plan. 

Step 7: Standardization. After we have completed a thorough analysis of the issue at hand, it is now time to lock in the best practices and achieved results. There are many different ways of doing this. From implementing control charts to monitor the process in a real time manner to developing procedures that will guarantee the rightful execution of tasks in the future, the process improvement practitioner should always seek for standardization that will ensure that this problem will not occur again due to the same root cause(s).

EZSigma Group can help your organization with process improvement initiatives in many different ways. Our organization offers courses (open enrolment and onsite) such as the 7 Quality Tools, Lean, and Six Sigma, as well as onsite consulting services to educate and mentor your staff in making your company a better one. Please contact us if you need to learn more about these programs.