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In This Issue
What is the Process?
This week a theme developed in the posts on the iSixSigma Blogosphere: Processes.
Robin Barnwell and Sue Kozlowski team up to share insight into defining a process, while Gary Cox shows us a bimodal process in the Cox-Box. Enjoy.
-Michael Marx
http://blogs.isixsigma.com/
Radio Host to Emcee iSixSigma Live! Summit & Awards
Steven Wilson, host of Quality Conversations on BlogTalkRadio, is the emcee for the 2nd Annual iSixSigma Live! Summit & Awards - Practices That Make Profits.
His program, Quality Conversations, serves as a platform for communicating the best and brightest strategies, methods and tools for all those interested in improving quality and business process excellence within their companies.
His years of practical experience and knowledge acquired from dozens of interviews will guide our discussions throughout the iSixSigma Live! Summit & Awards, Feb. 1-4 in Miami.
Register by Oct. 14 and save $200! |
http://live.isixsigma.com/miami2010
Featured Blog Entry: Alice in Processland 24 September 2009 by Sue Kozlowski
A quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), 1865:
"The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. 'Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?' he asked. 'Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, 'and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'"
I am sure I'm not the only one who as asked, "Where does this process begin?" only to find a dozen or so different answers, depending on who is asked. Just how far back doyou go into the decision-making that may trigger a process, and the factors that influence the decision, and the issues that led to the factors being important, etc. etc. etc.?
And, where does the process stop? For a product, is it when the customer receives the goods? When they use the item for the first time? When they finish using the item? Or, for a service, when they receive the service, or when they utilize the benefits of the service if that's at a later time?
This may seem simple, but, in practice I've seen a lot of conversations get into a circular mode about just what step should be considered the start or trigger for the process. I'm just wondering if anyone has any words of wisdom, from their experience with process mapping and process analysis - and would you like to share?
http://blogs.isixsigma.com/archive/alice_in_processland.html
Recent Blog Entries
"Business Scenarios" by Robin Barnwell
[28 September]
How do you describe a process to a team? There are lots of tools in the toolkit including value stream mapping, functional swim lanes, context diagrams and SIPOC to name a few. But I find they can be 'a little cold' for a non-technical or cross-functional team and I want to 'bring it to life'.
Take a simple example from the area I work in, general insurance. To describe the customer claims process in any depth takes time. So when you have a cross-functional team covering front, middle and back office it can mean (even with the tightest time keeping and agenda) that the people at the end of the process don't get a look in as most of the day has been spent at the beginning/middle of the process, where all the customer interaction happens. So you end-up leaving people out.
As the title suggests my recommendation is Business Scenarios. Rather than cover the generic customer claims process, cover it in a series of business scenarios like
* The policy holder's vehicle collided with a lamppost, no one else was involved, it happened at 11:45pm
* The policy holder's vehicle was hit by a 3rd party vehicle from behind, both vehicles were drivable, no one appears injured at the scene, 3rd party was insured and traceable
* The policy holder's vehicle collided was a 3rd party vehicle on a narrow street, liability is unclear, 3rd party injured and vehicle undriveable...
http://blogs.isixsigma.com/archive/business_scenarios.html
"A Place for Six Sigma in the Future" by Kosta Chingas
[26 September]
I have been thinking about various topics regarding Six Sigma recently, and I keep coming back to a question that is hard to answer...if we "do Six Sigma" right, is there even a place for Six Sigma as we know it ten or twenty years down the road?
Consider this.....ten years from now, do you really want to have Black Belts doing project work? Or...do you want Six Sigma tools to be the status quo of how the business is operated by everyone? To me the latter is the end game, but does the "classical" approach to Six Sigma (Black Belts doing projects) fit the end game??...I'm not so sure.
How do we structure Six Sigma in general to better fit the end game of real culture change, instead of creating a bunch of "super problem solvers"?
Recent Blog Comments
Is There a Place for Six Sigma as We Know It in the Future
From my perspective, your end goal would seem to be the best forward-looking approach. If my company is any indication however, it would be a vast cultural shift to entrench 6S processes and make them commonplace. As for us, our executives are keen to have the super problem solvers only. They are fine with cultural change, as long it is not they who have to change. Just my two pennies worth.
http://blogs.isixsigma.com/archive/is_there_a_place_for_six_sigma_as_we_know_it_in_the_future.html#2724
Thinking the Unthinkable
We play 'how many uses for....' on family car and train journeys. We usually get 30 -50 before the ideas become too surreal and we pick another item. Must answer quickly, going round each person in turn. 'Is that really useful?' and 'can the item be used in multiples or only singly?' are two questions that have become very heated occasionally - but much more fun than I spy, and hopefully we're bringing up lively, free thinkers!
http://blogs.isixsigma.com/archive/thinking_the_unthinkable.html#2722
30-50 is good, did you give a Brick a go? When Liam Hudson devised the test back in the 50's he used university students to test it out. For some students the ideas becoming increasingly crude and violent which I think lead on to other theories.
http://blogs.isixsigma.com/archive/thinking_the_unthinkable.html#2723
Guest Blog: Data Heads
What are they thinking? by Evan Miller
This week at the Quality Expo I ran into an old friend who described a business transaction that left me shaking my head.
He told me about a company that went to their customer and negotiated a 10% price increase for the product they supplied. The customer agreed to it because the supplier was using the increase to fund new high-speed vision inspection equipment. The new equipment would enable the supplier to 100% inspect the product they're supplying and guarantee that the customer would receive only good parts.
On the surface it's hard to argue against that. Evidently the customer had been very frustrated with this supplier because they had had to put up with a lot of defects. They seemed eager to shift the effort to inspect and sort good from bad to the supplier, and were even willing to share in the cost. They must have felt 10% was a pretty good deal. (Given all the estimates out there that total cost of poor quality is 30 - 40% of sales, I can see how they could reach that conclusion.)
So why am I shaking my head?
If your definition of good quality is 'no bad parts' then this is a perfect solution.
But 'no bad parts' is only one definition of quality. And it is the wrong one...
http://www.hertzler.com/blog/dataheads/index.php/2009/09/what-are-they-thinking/
The Cox-Box Cartoon
http://blogs.isixsigma.com/archive/bimodal_distribution.html
For more of the Cox-Box, visit the archives or the new Cox-Box Store:
Cox-Box Store
http://www.cafepress.com/isixsigma/4815387
Cox-Box Archives
http://blogs.isixsigma.com/garypcox
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