Shorter Projects, Greater Returns
"The Six Sigma community needs to be realistic: six to nine months is a lifetime. The customers need the answers quicker.” So said Network Rail’s Jeff Ayland Head of Six Sigma Deployment at Network Rail, in his presentation Delivering Long-Term Sustainable Improvement. In doing so, he articulated the problem faced by many of the Six Sigma professionals present: how do we get quicker results without compromising the processes?
It became clear as the conference progressed that this is an issue that many organisations and individuals have not only considered, but faced and applied their own solutions to. Network Rail, for instance, have introduced ‘5 Day DMAIC’ in response to their perceived need for quicker results with certain problems. Mr Ayland told the conference that they get everyone involved with a particular problem, give them unlimited access to everything they need to work a robust solution in a short timescale, and then: “Define on Monday, Measure on Tuesday, Analyse on Wednesday, Improve on Thursday and Control and Transfer on Friday."
Other organisations outlined similar reduced time-scale programmes. “Workout” is a GE-originated concept that has been refined by BP, as outlined by Adrian Dunn of BP and Matthew Gracie of Rath & Strong in their presentation How To Use Workout to Expand Your LSS Programme. Workout is a facilitated, structured approach to team based problem-solving with a 90 day action plan. Workout can be a standalone three day event; however within organisations such as BP and GE, it is managed within the DMAIC lifecycle.
Another established method for problem solving in a reduced time-scale are Kaizen Events. It should be noted that a ‘Kaizen Event’ is different from ‘Kaizen’, which is a Japanese business philosophy concerning continuous improvement of working practices and efficiency leading to an improvement in productivity or performance. A Kaizen Event – sometimes called a ‘Kaizen Blitz’ - is a Western business improvement tool which deals with the dedicated solving of a specific small-scale problem within a short time-scale, usually 5 days.
Howard Miller of e2v explained in his lively presentation, Big Bang or Small Steps: Process Mapping, how Kaizen Events had been used to streamline practices at the beginning of their Lean deployment. This was useful to them in many ways, not least because the quick results eased management buy-in.
Although they can be extremely useful and productive in their own right, it was generally agreed that these reduced time-scale, quick-result projects are more tools to be used as part of a wider business improvement initiative. Talking about Network Rail’s ‘5-Day DMAIC’, Jeff Ayland said that it is by no means suitable for everything: it is important to have a rigorous methodology chooser to ensure the right tool for the right opportunity.
In addition to the real results these shorter projects can bring, the speed with which results are shown can assist a deployment programme in terms of culture change and leadership buy-in (themes that are discussed in greater detail elsewhere in this report). Mr Ayland claimed that it "…can deliver extraordinary results in a short period of time. Get the senior people to come along on the Friday and it makes a real impression on them."
The danger, perhaps, is that customers and management might be seduced by the quick-win nature of these mini-projects into believing that they are a replacement for a full-scale Six Sigma or Lean project. Their propagation could potentially lead to a gradual erosion of the rigorous nature of DMAIC, and a failure to collect data in the right way, resulting in the overall failure of the organisation’s long-term business improvement programme. It is clear therefore that the issue of shortening the time-scale of projects – and the subsequent ramifications – will gain increasing relevance in the years to come.
