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What Do You Do When You’re Missing a Baseline Primary Metric?

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This topic contains 4 replies, has 4 voices, and was last updated by  Singh 2 months ago.

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  • January 9, 2019 at 3:45 am #211411

    Singh
    Participant

    Hello forum,
    I would appreciate your thoughts and experiences in a situation where you want to do a DMAIC, but there is no existing baseline metric, based on which you can showcase improvements to the sponsor.
    I am thinking to establish new metric in line with the sponsor’s expectations, but this would take more time to do time-motion studies, Gemba Walks, and creating a comprehensive data collection map with a dedicate resource who would help to collect data. There is already a push back from the sponsor that no resource will be provided. So there is challenge of spending a long time in DMA phase itself to establish the baseline primary metric and then agree with the sponsor.
    Anyone who has experienced such a situation, kindly share your experiences please.
    Thanks
    Singh

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    January 9, 2019 at 5:27 am #211413

    Andrew Parr
    Participant

    If you’ve no baseline metrics how are you describing the problem you want to solve?

    I often start on Projects here from the point of view of people telling me “it’s broken” and we work from there to describe what is broken and then seek to prove that by measuring it ourselves. There’s not much you can’t measure if you get down to the specifics of what the problem is you want to solve.

    Just my opinion.

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    January 9, 2019 at 10:50 am #211425

    Chris Seider
    Participant

    I have two instincts. Depending on the scope of help you asked, if the sponsor says there would be no resources given–it would be an omen of future aid.

    Second instinct–you are maybe looking too low of a level for metric. How about output per hour rather than looking at time studies for the steps? Of course, it would seem the goal should be breakthrough for you to see a change in output while running.

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    January 9, 2019 at 11:52 am #211426

    Mike Carnell
    Participant

    Singh You might consider it from a different perspective. No data? How do you know you have a problem? How does your sponsor know there is a problem? is your sponsor saying no resources because they have not seen any indication there is a problem? Have you given them any indication of potential benefits? If you did what data was that based on? What did the products cost last year versus what should they have cost?

    Your plan to collect baseline data is to exotic and way to time consuming. It is actually ridiculous. I wouldn’t fund that myself.

    In an assessment we can run down a line with about 10 minutes at each operation collecting data by hand, with a stopwatch, run in a spreadsheet and be pretty accurate. You want better data do it 3 days in a row you will be pretty close to dead on.

    I think the bigger problem is that your management is not selecting projects. That is their job but it is pretty unlikely you will change that. I would start looking for a different job in a company where management understand what it takes to improve. They want to delegate to you and you can’t figure it out because you have nobody to delegate to. Somebody needs to start doing their job.

    Just my opinion.

    3
    January 14, 2019 at 5:21 am #211632

    Singh
    Participant

    Thanks all for your time to reply.
    Its an incident driven data collection effort (client on boarding process for a digital product). So my data collection plan is adjusted accordingly (somewhat similar to what Chris’s and Mark’s suggestions).
    Thank you!

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