The first and foremost thing you need to do is get a good first project selected and completed. If you have completed the training that you described you understand the DMAIC principles and are ready to try to apply them to your first project. The process of project selection should be done in concert with the deployment of Six Sigma at your organization and it should be completed in such a way that it aligns with the strategy of the organization.
There are some excellent texts on project selection. One that I recommend is reading is “The Six Simga Revoltuion: How General Electric and Others Turned Process into Profits” by George Eckes, ISBN is 0-471-38822-X.
I will share with you a series of questions that we use in project selection:
1. Is this process (or defect) a recurring event?
2. Is the proposed project scoped narrowly enough that it can be completed within a maximum of six months?
3. Are metric available that adequately gauge the proposed process’ performance or can they be developed and deployed quickly?
4. Does your organization have control over the process as scoped?
We also seek to have each project impact customer satisfaction and return a minimum in dollars from either revenue enhancement or cost reduction.
I hope that this information helps. If I can be of any further service, please don’t hesitate to e-mail me.
Jim Johnson
[email protected]
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