Six Sigma and Working at Home

One thing I’d recommend is to apply 5S to your home office workspace, your work diskspace, and cloud storage.  It’s lean, not six sigma.  You probably know the drill.  Many people, especially those new to working from home, don’t do it.  They may think it’s all about utilizing the technology.  An organized workspace where you have ready, easy to find,  access to what you use most and that isn’t cluttered by stuff you rarely or never use makes a big difference.

As you know, some of our tools utilize teamwork.  When we first started doing this in the nineties, meeting or sharing online rather than in a room, it was quite challenging.  Today it’s a lot easier but still a challenge since not everyone is good at it and people working from home often lack tech support when things don’t work.

Beyond that, listen to @Mike-Carnell.   It’s about the data and the analysis.  Get trusted data.  If you or team members can’t collect it on-site such things as gage readings should be available on-line, rather than recorded and transcribed where transcription errors are possible.

Heh, heh @Mike-Carnell  I had the same issue applying 5S in my home office, basement workshop, and kitchen.  It comes down to being brutally honest with sorting.  Stuff you frequently use or reference?  Okay, store that as easy to find and access as possible, and as near as possible to where you use it.  No brainer.  Then there’s stuff you sometimes need.  Nearby and easy to find but don’t mix it with category 1.  Then there’s the stuff you rarely, if ever, need but have a good reason to keep — store it somewhere out of the way.  And then everything else, that you should chuck.  Differentiating between the latter two is where I have the biggest problem but it’s a minor one as long as it’s stored out of the way.

Saravanan,

We have worked completely virtually with two Value Steam Management Teams to redesign two production lines. They are on a mission to: “Reduce the Cost of Safely manufacturing Quality products On Time”. This is the process we followed to transform their Traditional “Current State” into a Lean Manufacturing “Future State”:

Virtual Introduction to Lean Principals, Strategies and Techniques for management and front-line associates. (about 30 people)
Chartered two cross-functional Value Stream Management Teams. (about 10 people each)
Virtual, 8 Steps of Value Stream Management Training and Virtual Current State Mapping exercise and Virtual Current State AutoCAD Layout.
Virtual, Future State Mapping exercise and Virtual Future State AutoCAD Layout.
Virtual “To-Scale” Simulation with the VSM Team and Maintenance.
Virtual 6-S Workplace Organization Training and Workshop. The Team with help from maintenance rearranged the processes according to the Future State Layout.
Standardized Work and Visual Techniques are being put in place to “Sustain the Gains”. (A place for everything & everything in its place)
The new transformed process flows will be ready to go live when their customer starts up in the next few weeks.