Sumanta Das

When we have huge set of discrete data for process and most data are non-zero[or tense to zero] we can use it as continuous data in statistical tool. Check for bell curve and then got for what ever you needed.

I think they should select a small and simple process to show the difference to top management. It will give them a good idea. A small and simple process will be easy too... to implement. That will help the enthusiast to keep the charm and to present it to top level.

Here is my list.... C-SAT (Customer Satisfaction Index) - Satisfaction attained by the use of product/service.=> as we provide our rating just after our ride CES (Customer Effort Score) - Customer effort assessment in getting work done/ issues resolved. => If issues does not resolved people will find alternet. NPS (Net Promoter Score) - Loyalty and referral check. => for long term & referral works too! CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) - CAC is all the costs spent on acquiring more customers (marketing expenses) divided by the number of customers acquired in the period the money was spent. => promo code and all Churn (Customer Churn Rate) - Customer loss assessment.

Cp Cpk Pp Ppk Definition Process Capability rocess Capability Index Process Performance Process Performance Index Indicates / Implies / Features A simple number indicates process capabilities. Gives the best case scenario whether the process is capable of fitting into the specs are not. Should be greater than > 2.0 How close we are to the taget, or how close a process is running compare to given specification The higher the index, the lower the chance to get outside of the specs what a process is capable of doing in future – assuming the rest control state is static. Gives the best case scenario whether the process is capable of fitting into the specs are not. Should be greater than > 1.5 A simple number indicates process performance when process control can not be determined, Pp is used. It uses procerss sigma for calculation. Whether the process will meet customer requirements Used for Short term Long term Calculation Cpl = (Mean – LSL)/3*S Cpu= (USL – Mean)/3*S Cpk= Min (Cpl,Cpu) Pp = (USL – LSL)/6*S PpI = (Mean – LSL)/3*S PpU = (USL - Mean)/3*S Ppk= Min (Ppl,Ppu)

DPMO PPM Stands for: Defects Per Million Opportunities Parts Per Million Result: Sigma level Quality Level Target: 3.4 for a world class six sigma process/service 0[zero] for a product/service Implies: Lower the DPMO, greater sigma level=> better quality, less defect Lower the PPM => better the quality Calculation: DPMO = (no of defects/sample size x defect opportunities) x 10^6 PPM = (no of defects/sample size) x 10^6 One unit/part can have multiple defects One part can have one defective Total defect in a sample size CAN NOT be MORE than (sample size x defect opportunities) Total defects CAN NOT be MORE than total quantity/sample size Example: Defects = 10 Sample size = 500 Defect opportunities/part = 5 DPMO = (10 / (500 x 5)) x 10^6 DPMO = 4000 For the same data, if defect opportunities per part is 25, then DPMO = (10 / (500 x 25)) x 10^6 DPMO = 800 Defectives(n) = 15 Sample Size = 500 Ppm = (15 / 500) x 10^6 Ppm = 30,000 If n =10 in 500 sample size then, Ppm = (10 / 500) x 10^6 => Ppm = 20,000 if n= 30, sample size =1000, then Ppm = (30 / 1000) x 10^6 = 30,000 DMPO checks overall quality of a process/service[in a given sample size] PPM generally used in production to check quality level. I am not concluding which one is best both have their own uses, but as DPMO checks overall quality, sometime companies can prefer it more.

As for performance of classroom training provider mostly all things are short term - so my list will be 1. CSAT 2. CES 3. NPS 4. Churn 5. CAC

As per my opinion, list for call centre will be:- C-SAT (Customer Satisfaction Index) - As it is short term and can have satisfaction index just after resolving the issue. CES (Customer Effort Score) - as it is also short term and can have satisfaction level just after work done/ issues resolved. NPS (Net Promoter Score) - As it is long term and also can have rate of satisfaction there only Churn (Customer Churn Rate) - this comes in 4th position CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) - this is limited case, hence fifth

My order will be 1. NPS 2. Churn 3. C-SAT 4. CES 5. CAC 1 .NPS. Pros:- a. simple, b. customer centric, c. action oriented d. responsive, e. provides accurate customer scenario, f. loyalty [as it is long term] Cons:- a Customer might give fake suggestion, b. have to find out actionable issues c. promoter may not implement 2. Churn:- Pros:-its directly proportionate with unhappy customer. They are either getting better option or fade up with current experience. Cons:- its hard to find out the real reason or sometime to meet customer expectations. 3. C-SAT:- Pros:- a. its short term so we gets specific data on certain scenario. b. as it is generally on specific issue it is also became easier for customer to interact with. Cons:- a. As it is generally with specific issue - it varies customer to customer and it is very much subjective., b. people are generally harsh, as they are affected with some issues. c. its generally yes or no type answer we get. d. even if the customer is happy that does nto mean customer will come back again. 4.CES:- Pros:- almost same as CSAT Cons:- a. Industry specific, b. required effort is very high to find out a specific thing, c. limited to service 5.CAC:- Proc:- a. new customers - fresh ideas and feedback, Cons:- a. new customer so generally not deep researched data which may not be real,

Inventory is a simple word - and we all knows about this more or less. Now as per Lean phylosophy a inventory can be a wastage. Almost all industry is having some inventory of something. Now have few names of industry having inventory which can be a wastage - A. Manufacture B. Service Business C. Retailers & Distributors etc Now, when we are thinking of wastage most of us actually thinking about finished good as inventory, NO, there are many types of inventory which can lead us to a wastage. Now, I will let you know about types of Inventory - 1. Raw Materials Inventory 2. Work-in-progress Inventory 3. Finished Goods Inventory 4. MRO Goods Inventory 5. Transit Inventory 6. Buffer Inventory 7. Ancipetory Inventory 8. Decoupling Inventory 9. Cycle Inventory 10. Theoritical Inventory Well, now you think about manufaturer industry its not only finished goods it has all the ten above said inventory which takes area, man power/resources to maintain, damages due to natural calamity or due to decay or even a mice can damage a product in any level/types. If there is no Over Production[7 wastages - WORMPIT] we dont need a bigger inventory for finished product and if can make it safer that a finished product does not get hampered - we can save a big chunk of our loss, simply because if a damage happens in between there was less resources used for the part-product implies less uses of money. That is one of the biggest reason now a days we often sees - FLASH SALE, they knows the consumer base via registration, than normal sale in shop - here they are saving inventory! From production house to direct customer! Even a less production also increases Raw Material inventory, again can face loss via damages or calamity or via several ways. Lets take another example - say Mr Gupta is working on a BPO[Service Business], so what could be inventory? Well NO OF RESOURCES/TALETNS they have to handle calls, now if calls are far less than total capabilities leads to business LOSS. So add more client to your business so that you can utilize full of your resources. Now Say, I am middle man who buys a product, say Nokia mobiles, from parent company and distributes among other retailers, here also I need to maintain a stock from above point 3 to 7. And again the same story goes.... Hope it gives you all a good idea....

Simple method, acknowledgment, quick response, well-written response, no quibbles. Well the article is excellent and I am 100% agreed with that. The complaint handling always should be smooth and justified for the customer. In general people don't complaints[except a few example we received from two web retailers - that customer used to order product and then used to return with garbages/empty box]. For any business CUSTOMER is GOD and business should take care of Gods... As described in the above article it should be - A. Simple - now a days when we call any help number most of the time we gets IVR, which actually irritates us a bit and then a lots of press this and that then probably we got a executive who really can or try to UNDERSTAND our issues and takes or promises to make it right or rejects or sometimes whatever number you press ultimately you will have round-and-round IVR game and you will reach no where except a message - "Thank You For Contacting Us" or "Sorry, You have reached maximum number of trials". So whatever it is ultimately the way should be simple so that customer at least can raise their issue - approving or rejecting is a comes after that. B. Acknowledgment - there should have a proper acknowledgement so that it can recognised the issue - a customer facing. A ticket id might be generated, by which it can be tracked in future. And customer also gets a sense of - "Well, my issue will be addressed" C. Quick Response - Its time the modify the last line - "...customer also gets a sense of - "Well, my issue will be addressed" to - customer also gets a sense of - "Well, my issue will be addressed SOON". Say a mobile got brust and the customer gets a feedback from the company after 5 month - just imagine the horror story!!! So a quick response is must and for that only, in most cases a immediate automated reply comes with a ticket id. The more you delay the more your reputation is on stake. A quick response/solution makes customer happy too- they feel valuable to the provider - which increases band value. D. Well-written Response - this is very crucial - few things must be there - a maximum time limit to address your issue or to get back to you with basic things. There should have apologies/technical details/issue details etc. A well written/described email can make a customer believe that his/her issue is getting taken care of - which means a lots. F. No quibbles - Whatever the response is - it should be given straight to customer because no has time play round-and-round game. Now, I will share two stories - rather personal experience - 1. I was using SIM[Bengal circle] of a particular provider and I and was using the same at Mumbai as I didn't wanted to change my number[was using the same number for more than 8yrs] as it was given in so many places/friends and by the time the provider started upgrading from 2g to 3g and for that customers had to recharge with a minimum value, but they never informed me and my SIM got blocked when I contacted customer care from other they said it can't happened that they failed to inform me! Well, I took this up to social media some round-and-round game started but unfortunately nothing happened, recently the company got sold to another company. 2. It was 2008, I was using a postpaid plan of a certain provider, and that time internet usage was very rare over phone. One day my senior asked me to check a email and response I did that maximum for 20 minutes - remember that was era of 2g. It was ~Rs 99 plan that time but they send a bill of ~Rs 3500. I asked the details - they said Representative: "sir you have downloaded things from internet" i said - if you can say I have downloaded things from internet tell me the sites I visited and how much data I have consumed site wise, I will pay every bucks but I need full details. One thing to confirm - I just emailed that day - nothing else! They never came up with data but didn't forgot to threaten me via third party[money recovery team] in different manner but they fade up after a month and I never paid the bill. So above two examples the lack of every six points[A to F] which makes me a angry customer for them but end of the day - they lost business, I lost those two numbers, their loss is non-fixable but not mine. So if you can't satisfy or justify to customer, customer will simply move on to the other competitors.

There are hundreds of example of Poka Yoke in our daily life which are helping us like- 1. Seat belt of car - before people are used to avoid using seat belts but now a days there are continuous light/sound warning to remind using seat belts. 2. Safety locks/child locks of car 3. Collision detection and automated braking system in automatic high end driverless car. 4. Door opened signal while car is running. 4. Neutral light on bike to prevent starting engine while the bike still in gear. 5. Computer cables are designed in such a way now a days so that even a layman can configure/install it - these are specific to its port and can not be inserted on another port. 6. In plane defrosting ice, autopilot option, oil jettisoning are the example to keep passengers safe. 7. Electric equipments are load proofed and fuse/ circuit breaker are there if overloaded. 8. washing machine spinner/microwave will not start until door is closed. 9. Pressure cooker are having safety valve to avoid brust. 10. Mobiles are now a days waterproofed/spill proof to avoid damages. Examples are almost endless, but today I will talk about mistake proofing in plane and how it failed - we all know about MH370 of Malaysia. Despite of having hundreds of mistake proofing in a single plane only, still its[fate/location/wreckage] missing till date. Now what mistake proofing are there to trace a plane? Well we have 1. Engine data 2. black box 3. ATC 4. Radars & 5. installed GPS in plane, etc 1. Engine data: It was a Boeing plane so engine data goes to Boeing[Manufacturer/Insurer] automatically to check if there is any issue with the engine, how much time its "on" status etc. So from these data we can check how far the plane travelled in certain altitude and from that we can point out certain area to check. But it didn't helped us here. 2. black box: Its a box which continuously records crew conversations/events in plane while flying. It has frequency emitter which emits frequency after crash landing so that we can trace that box and can find out the conversations/events till the last moment and we can analyze that. It has a certain battery life too! And again we failed to locate it. 3. ATC: Air Traffic Controller helps us to route and handling the traffic at certain area with altitude, distance from another plane, speed etc like Traffic Police in road. But It also failed here to give a location as the communication was disrupted. 4. RADAR: Its also help us by tracing any flying object within it's range but a object flying very low can avoid a radar unless special type of radars are installed and covering that place and here we don't have any proper data from any country to locate the plane. 5. Installed GPS: a GPS system is installed in almost every plane and it was there in MH370 too but it was manual and it was NOT "ON", hence we have no data. So, from above all example we failed to reach our goal[save lives/locate it] but we could have avoid it if we have GPS system which is automatic NOT manual, which can NOT be shut down like black box, and like engine data it should come to corresponding ATC or can be stored somewhere in a certain place for certain region for specific time period. And also few other monitors which will generate data and will store in the same place if something wrong happens, say defrosting failed or a engine failed, So in that case a new record will create with defrosting failure/Engine failure with GPS location and the corresponding event. So even if we didn't find out the black box we have exact location till it crash landed somewhere with exact reason. Even it could throw some alarm to corresponding ATC to take action. We could have save hundred lives for MH370 case by rescuing them. Even there could have some vacuum in the black box so that it does not sink in sea/water it should float - that also might have helpful for us. In last few years we have several such cases... including army plane/helicopters and we failed to locate in some cases or located after several days which decreases the chance every minute to save a life. Hope Govt/Plane manufacturer will take such action soon to save lives.

I will say about the handoff time between first computer's[consisted with mainly some vacuum tubes] compare to now-a-day's computer's. Handoff time came to near about ZERO[few milli/micro seconds] between various units[Input/Control/ALU/Main Memory/Secondary Memory/Output etc]

Little's law came from Prof John Little. It is actually started for check average customers, equation is => L= A X W, L => number of customer A => effective average rate[long term, departure rate is identical] W => time spent by customers Importance: it is a very simple tool by which data can be measured in granular level which allows deep insight of the business. As it measures the capacity of a system(Not retail outlets) the equation gets changed to :- Work In Progress = Throughput X Lead time =>WiP = T X L [For Kanban] For cycle time, we have to understand cycle time as well as WIP and through put properly as cycle time works per unit. So for 'x' throughput if we have 'y' cycle time and 'z' work in progress then the equation will come as : WiP(z) = T(x) X L(y) It is important all level of employees/management - Investors: can identify when and what could help the business or when a business is getting profit or the potential risk associated with the business. Entrepreneur: They can identify the issues which is blocking the growth as we can derive data even for example on "per second" level, say how many "search" google's search engine handles per second. Or can check a dynamic range of time if they needed. Employees: they can identify what and why or how a business soared for a certain time, which stimulated it etc.

Lets say A & B are two representative who are selling credit cards. Their manager asked them to call minimum 100 people to promote & sell their companies card. A/sell B/Sell Day 1 100/5 100/50 Day 2 80/40 100/5 So, in day 1, both A & B are effective[because both reached daily target of 100 calls] but B was more efficient. on the other hand, on day 2, B was effective but not efficient, and A was not effective[as failed to reach target of 100 calls] but efficient than A. In case of a product manager, P1 & P2 both completed their project within given timeline so both are effective but P2 used extra cost to achieve it, so P1 is much more efficient than P2. Hope it clears the idea So, effectiveness depends upon reaching the target but efficient depends upon effectiveness & output.

"One Piece Flow" comes from Toyota. its helps any manufacturing industry to improve 1. Safety 2. Build Quality 3. Flexibility 4. Scalability 5. Excess inventory 6. Productivity 7. Material replenishment 8. Floor space 9. Employee moral & 10. makes kaizen take root. as it goes step by step its reduces waste. If any error/defect found it can be addressed there only before going for further steps, in this way it helps to identify the root of problems too. in our software industry it helps us 1. when we take requirements - by user stories & sizing them into proper modules and prioritizing. 2. when to build applications module by module so developers gets busy at their own module. Step by step, follows one piece flow. and 3. when we place any order to any restaurant or for marketing