Introducing Kai Sigma

Organisations in the Public and Private Sector, Manufacturing, and Service industries all seem to have plenty of scope for improvement. It ought to be relatively straightforward to achieve improvement and to hold the gain, but is it happening?

There seem to be a lot of issues and questions to consider. For those already underway, these might include the following:

• Your Improvement Programme is not giving you all the benefits you hoped for
• There’s frustration and you don’t seem to be able to do things easily; everything seems to take a long time
• There’s confusion with no-one really sure what’s going on
• People feel hassled. There are always fires to put out and these distract people away from what they should be doing, something that leads to …
• Overload, where there is always too much to do, and not enough time to focus on what you should be doing

For organisations looking to introduce an improvement programme, there will be a different set of issues and questions, including:

• Do they go for Lean, Six Sigma, or Lean Six Sigma?
• Can they afford the time and cost involved in putting the infrastructure together?
• What about all the training needed, especially for a heavy duty Sigma implementation?
• Even if they can afford the investment, will the returns come through quickly enough?
• Will the Leaders and Managers really live and breathe the changes that are likely to be needed?

For a variety of reasons, it seems that many Improvement Programmes and initiatives never quite deliver their potential. Some never really get started, and some can never be sure whether to introduce Lean or Six Sigma.

The primary causes for this failure centre around Leadership, understanding and commitment, the role and behaviour of Managers, and the potential complexity of the tools and techniques needed in the improvement process.

But what if things were different? Well, let’s imagine something different, and make it happen!
We’ll start with Managers and their teams having a clear understanding of their processes and their roles:

• Managers are working on their processes with the people in the processes, to find ways of continuously improving those processes
• People feel able and are able to challenge and improve their processes and the way they work

Let’s keep imagining, and see improvement activity undertaken systematically, using the framework of DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, and Control), commonly used in Lean Six Sigma programmes. This helps avoid the dual temptations of jumping to conclusions and solutions without understanding something that so often leads to chaos.
But, importantly:

• The improvement is being undertaken pragmatically
• What’s more, pre-project training time for team members is minimised
• The approach is well facilitated by people who are able to identify how best to tackle the problem, using the right method and the right tools
• The results come through quickly

We’ve called this approach Kai Sigma. It provides both a systematic and pragmatic way for people and organisations to improve performance. Its key concepts and principles are supported by a carefully selected set of practical and relevant tools and techniques enabling people to solve the problems they are tackling.
At its heart is the need to ensure that people at all levels of an organisation both feel able, and are able, to challenge and improve their processes and the way they work. Naturally, this has significant implications for the culture of the organisation, and for the role of the Manager.
Kai Sigma brings together the powerful concepts of Kaizen to involve people in continuously seeking to improve performance within the framework of DMAIC. That improvement comes from focusing on how the work gets done and how well it gets done.

Kai Sigma is a facilitated workshop approach to improvement, typically run as a series of half or one day workshops over a period of five or six weeks, though it can be run as a straight five day event. The workshops follow the framework of DMAIC, and there is particular importance in the Define and Control phases.

It is not intended as a ‘training delivery’ product, though training and coaching requirements might be identified as a result. Nor is it intended as a replacement for a full Lean Six Sigma Programme.

Where organisations are unsure of the improvement route to take, Kai Sigma provides a way forward, enabling them to secure benefits quickly while they assess:

• The effectiveness of the approach
• Their own readiness for an improvement programme
• Realistically, what are they able to implement?
• Once they have a better idea, they can then determine their next steps
• The next steps will vary, of course, but could include:
  • A decision to take on the approach themselves, training and coaching their facilitators, as required

  • A decision to introduce a full scale programme

For those organisations that have not seen ideal results, from their programme so far, the next steps might include:

• Coaching clinics for their Green and Black Belts, enabling them to lead Kai Sigma improvement projects
• Awareness training for Managers and Team Leaders, enabling them to support local improvement opportunities and enhance the deployment of a continuous improvement culture
• A review of the Deployment plan to energise and optimise their programme

The approach needs to be expertly facilitated by people who are able to identify how best to tackle the problem, using the right method and the right tools. They need to know how to scope the problems being addressed; and they need to know when more advanced tools and techniques are needed.

In terms of the commonly used tools needed, they are likely to include:

• CTQS – or ‘something similar’
• SIPOC
• Process Stapling
• A Process or Value Stream Map
• The Theory of Constraints
• The Seven Wastes
• Five Ss
• Visual Management
• Data collection
• Data displays - Control Charts and Pareto
• Fishbone and Interrelationship Diagram
• FMEA and Error Proofing
• Control Plan

As you can see, these are a mix of Lean and Six Sigma tools and techniques, but if appropriate, the facilitator does not need to use the language of Lean Six Sigma – the aim is to involve the people in the process to make improvements to their process through the series of half-day or full-day workshops following the DMAIC phases.

It starts with a clear definition of a problem and a relatively narrow scope. We need to understand what’s happening now. How does the work get done? How well does it get done? Process Stapling is a very effective technique that also serves to highlight Non-Value-Add and waste. It may highlight potential solutions immediately. We use this approach extensively, accompanied by what we call a ‘walking flipchart’. Basic data is gathered using this ‘walking flipchart’ to capture the opportunities, identifying waste, Non-Value-Add steps, the need for 5Ss, or Visual Management, for example.

Sometimes, the first steps will be agreeing a standard process, where there is none. This will give you real gains very easily and enable some stability and predictability in the process. The reality is that you can’t really begin to improve a process until it is standardised. Once you have done that, you have a genuine chance to stabilise the process and prompt further improvements.

If defects occur, your first question should be, ‘has the standard process been followed?’ If it has, then the process needs to be improved. Either way, once you truly understand the process, you can improve it.

In the evolving culture of continuous improvement, you need to keep improving it, encouraging ideas from the people in the process, and using Kai Sigma, where appropriate. As your performance increases over time, and improvement gains become harder to achieve, it is likely that more formal DMAIC improvement projects will be needed, using more sophisticated tools and techniques.

So, how does the Kai Sigma approach compare to a more traditional DMAIC project? In the main, the improvement team members will be the people in the process. This will involve them for up to 5 or 6 days full time, either over 5 or 6 weeks, or, in some cases, a one-week hit.

This compares to perhaps 4 months part-time in a traditional DMAIC project, though the actual team hours may be similar. There is likely to be more use of team knowledge rather than detailed analysis with a bias for action (perhaps 70-80% confident as opposed to 95% in a typical Six Sigma project). You might also find that the solution may be known by the team, but historically they have not been listened to. Either way, implementation of the solution is actioned quickly, doing as much as possible during the event.

As with a traditional DMAIC project, the control phase is vital to ensure the improvement gain is maintained. This is something that can be overlooked in typical Lean improvement activities.

In summary, we believe that Kai Sigma provides the way forward, whether you are just starting down an improvement path, or whether you have started already, but have lost direction, perhaps.

It’s important to stress that our approach is to maximise the potential from Lean Thinking and Six Sigma by integrating the two approaches. One plus one really does add up to more than two. Lean Six Sigma produces a natural and powerful synergy, but to achieve this in the long term, you may need Kai Sigma to first show you the way.

So, why have we called the approach Kai Sigma? We wanted a description that conveyed the sense of continuous improvement, a simple approach, but with a flavour of the rigour that Six Sigma brings. Kai Sigma is for Organisations that want to Keep Achieving Improvement, where the approach needs to be Simple to Implement in order to secure real Gains, though for real success, it needs to be Managed Appropriately.