Venugopal R

PaceMaker Process and its need: In a production process flow, due to the variations in the individual process cycle times, the overall flow could vary and often result in unwanted inventories piling up. While Takt time indicates the pace of individual processes to meet the customer demand, variations amongst processes could be difficult to manage if scheduling is done at multiple places in the value stream. The objective of a pacemaker process is to overcome this issue, which will provide a “pull” signal for the upstream processes to produce. Importance of PaceMaker Process: The pacemaker process becomes the only scheduling point and there should be no other pull systems downstream of the pacemaker process. This ensures that there will be free flow to customer after the Pacemaker process. It dictates the production rhythm for the rest of the system, with such a pace being based on supermarket pull systems further upstream from this point, as well as First In First Out (FIFO) systems further downstream. Considerations in choosing a Pacemaker process: Has to be a process that is reliable and should not have high down time for maintenance or other reasons, because it will have serious impact on the rest of the value stream. It should be towards the end of the production flow, i.e. closer association with customer. It should not be a process than requires very high set up time. Any branching of the production processes need to be upstream of the Pacemaker process

Hypothesis testing is an important statistical tool that helps us to take an objective decision about a population parameter based on a reasonably small sample. Popular decisions made are whether: The mean value of the population can be considered equal, more or less than a reference value. The means of two populations may be considered equal or not. The variance of a population is equal to a reference value The variance between two populations may be considered equal The test of hypothesis (TOH) will be useful during the Analyze phase of DMAIC cycle. Once we have short listed a set of potential cause factors (x factors) based on a funneling method, say, a subjective rating method, TOH helps us to to narrow down to factors that have a significant influence on the outcome, in an objective manner. The TOH methods offer a good range of choices on the type of tool to be selected for a given data type, whether it is variable, discrete, standard deviation known or unknown, parametric, non-parametric, paired test etc. TOH is also the fundamental principle upon which other advanced statistical tools such as ANOVA (Analysis of Variance), DOE (Design of Experiments) are evolved. Thus a knowledge and understanding of TOH is very essential to enhance one's competence to use several other tools as part of the Six Sigma cycle. Apart from the Analyze phase, during the Improve phase, once we identify multiple solutions, TOH or TOH based tools may be found useful for determining the relative effectiveness of the solutions as well. The versatility of TOH to adapt to different types of data and its ability to help derive conclusions by using very limited samples, with the known confidence levels, makes it an indispensable tool in the pursuit for excellence. It may also be noted that the complexities associated in handling the statistical calculations have been greatly simplified and made very user friendly by modern software applications.

Poka Yoke refers to mistake proofing and its aim is to "prevent" mistakes, by implementing thoughtful precautions upstream in the process. The ideal state is to have a design in the process in such a way that the mistake cannot be caused at all. One popular example is to have a bridge built across the railway track when a road has to cross the track. It is often referred to as Level-3 Poka Yoke, that prevents or eliminates the possibility a defect (collision) occurrence. This type of Poka Yoke is possible only by pre-planned design of the process and investments, and will be highly effective. Another example would be a car seat belt that automatically fastens upon the driver, when the ignition is turned on. It may not be possible to get a preventive Poka Yoke implemented in all situations immediately. There we resort to a Poka Yoke at a control level, often refers to as Level-2 Poka Yoke. In the rail-track example, where the bridge is not an immediate possibility, we can have a gate that will stop the road traffic. The gates may be designed to close whenever the signal is green for an approaching train to cross. While this level of Poka Yoke is possible with lower cost, effort and time, it will have some risks and inconveniences. There is a possibility of malfunctioning of the gate closing sensors, or a motorist crashing onto the gate. In this example, it also causes inconvenience to the road users, who will have to wait until the train crosses. As for the seat belt example, in this case, it could be that, unless you fasten the seat-belt, the car engine would not start. The Level 2 Poka Yoke would not be as effective and advantageous compared to Level-3, however, Level-2 Poka Yoke's are quite popular and widely made use of. In situations where even a Level-2 poka yoke is not possible, the rail-track example can still have a control based on warning alarm, signals flashing, or a manually governed gate. These are often refereed to as Level-1 Poka Yoke. In such cases there is dependency on the alertness and action by a human to respond appropriately to the warnings to prevent the mistake from happening. For car seat belt example, if not worn, may result in an alarm beeping with a red light flashing, but will not prevent you from starting the engine. Obviously the reliability of such controls are the least compared to the other levels and human dependency is higher. Considering the understanding of PokaYoke and the levels of implementation possible, let us examine the 4 definitions one by one. 1. Human error will not happen at all..... This is certainly not right, since the very purpose of going for Poka Yoke is to reduce the dependency on human to prevent error occurrence. However, as we tend towards level-3 Poka Yoke, the effort is made to reduce the circumstance(s) in which a human can falter. 2. Human error may continue to happen but the defect will not happen... This is an ideal objective for Poka Yoke, however depending upon the level of Poka yoke, the elimination of defect occurrence may not be guaranteed, though the closest to this expectation is achieved by the level-3 Poka yoke. 3. Human error may happen, the defect is less likely to happen......Even when a human lapse occurs, it should not get translated to a defect; this is the premise upon which the Poka Yoke is evolved. However, we still maintain that the likelihood of defect occurrence is greatly reduced though may not be eliminated. 4. Human error may happen, the defect will also happen but will be detected and corrected automatically..... This may not be in line with a Poka Yoke definition, since the defect has been allowed to occur, but we resort to a containment and rework action. By Poka Yoke, we certainly expect more than this scenario. With these deliberations and examples, the 3rd definition appears most appropriate that "Human errors may happen, but the defect is less likely to happen".

Immediate choice between "False alarm" and "Missed Alert" will be "False Alarm" rather than "Missed alert" - as the saying goes "Better to be safe than to be sorry". However situations where there are too many false alarms can instill a detrimental psychology. For example, the fire alarms in our high rise buildings. Whenever the alarm goes off, all the employees are expected to get up, leave their work and quickly walk in an orderly fashion towards the staircase. Some of them are also expected to ensure evacuation of people from restrooms and other areas. We have seen the alarm going several times - either for a mock drill or it would have gone off due to a system fault. It is very unlikely that we would have experienced it going off for a real fire (and of course, we wish it never happens!). Often we see that the alarms are not taken seriously at all and several employees assume with high certainty that each incident must be a false alarm or mock drill. However these are situations where such "False alarms" are highly necessary to prepare for an emergency that might be very unlikely, but could be disastrous if it occurs. Control charts operate to give alerts on situations that require an action to be taken when a process mean shifts. However they are developed based on the statistical probabilities and there is always a chance that a point that fell outside the control limit need not be a result of mean shift. However the decision rules have been worked with such probabilities that the chances of a false alarm would be much unlikely than a genuine alert. Similar is the situation with most other statistical tools viz. Tests of hypothesis, Acceptance sampling plans. However the statistical methods give us a confidence level, that provides a quantification of 'how safe' do we want to play, and this can be chosen depending upon the criticality. I would like conclude that in most situations, there are always risk factors associated with getting False alarm and Missing an alert. However we should plan to manage the probability of occurrence of false alarms taking into considerations the severity of consequences. For situations with high severity risk viz. involving life, health, financial, it is acceptable to build high factor of safety, that would expect us to put up with certain "False Alarms".

Central Limit theorem states that irrespective of whether the population follows normal distribution or not, sample averages pulled from the population will always follow Normal distribution. The Law of Large numbers states that the frequencies of events with the same likelihood of occurrence even out when we see over a large number of trials. i.e. as sample grows larger the outcomes (of interest) will tend towards the Expected value. We can make use of the CLT when ever we have a situation where a sample mean which spreads over the frequencies of occurrences is available and relevant. Several statistical methods and tests do make use of this principle. Popular one is the control chart. However there are non-normal situations where it may not be practical or relevant to have such sample means. For example failure data are represented by Exponential distribution, which is non-normal. Here the frequencies are distributed over time period. One cannot expect to take sample values representing the time spread and use them for reliability prediction and analysis for improvements. There are many situations where the presence of non-normality in the population is an indication of certain abnormality that needs to be identified and addressed. For example a multi peaked distribution of a quality characteristic on a lot received from a vendor could indicate mix up of the lots from two populations. A skewed distribution may represent a screened population. Such information should not get camouflaged by picking up sample means and associating with treatments meant for normal distribution. To conclude, while the CLT is a powerful concept that has its sphere of application, the studies and treatments for Non-Normal distributions have their importance as well depending on the context.

The popular definition of "Value Adding" process using the three essential conditions viz. "Customer must be willing to pay for the process", "Process must be doing a transformation" and that "it should be first time right"..... has been one of the early interpretation of a VA process in Lean Management. This has been a very useful definition to drive the point very clearly that we would not be performing our processes the best possible way... in fact, in our profession, we all must have experienced the realization that we are living with process having steps that have been built in right from beginning to get it going and we rather overdo than miss out, especially when we are trying to sell an new product / service. Another possibility is that over time, we have brought in patches of modifications to overcome certain complaints or special requirements. This could have resulted in additional steps creeping in. We then become busy in managing our deliveries, TAT and output Quality, that we do not often question ourselves whether we are running our processes as efficient as it could be. That's when these 3 criteria helped our thought process in questioning each step and the relevance of each step towards to 'value add' definition. While going by these 3 guidelines for identifying VA steps, several debates spring up. in many of our lean studies we have ended up classifying that as per definition, over 90 percent of the process steps are "Non Value"add. Such studies raise high expectations among the management that the processes can be leaned upto 90%. While there would most likely be certain low hanging steps that can be addressed for either elimination or simplification, many other steps that fall in the NVA category by definition, may not be dispensable easily. For instance, one of the most common activity that is considered as NVA is inspection and rework. Very often, Quality Practitioners double up as Lean specialists as well..The responsibility of driving Lean at the same time being accountable for Quality falls upon the same professional. Some times this situation leaves them with an unenviable challenge!. We may have interim inspections and corrections in the process, without which there is high risk of errors being passed downstream. We can eliminate these steps only if the capabilities of the preceding process(es) are assured and sustained. . So they end up being NVA process that are 'necessary' for the time being. One of the modifications that we did is to introduce a sub-category for the NVA, and call such steps as "Value Make-up" steps. "Value Make-up" process steps are those steps which are inserted to "make-up" for the value deficiency of preceding process steps. The "Value Make-up" process steps can be reduced or eliminated by improving the inherent process capabilities of the preceding processes. Apart from the above discussions, it is also seen that there may be certain activities introduced in the process flow, that may not satisfy the VA definition, but are considered as "Enablers" for other value added process. It is difficult to imagine that the customer would agree to pay for such processes, but they are considered essential. It is already a prevalent practice to name such process steps as Value Enabling activities. For example, to process a health insurance policy, the customer may be expected to fill in a declaration form on his / her current health. Though this may not fall into the VA definition, this process step would enable faster processing of the policy. It is also debatable on the third criteria, i.e. whether the activity is being done right the first time. As per this, an inspection and rework activity is considered NVA. However, some times the very fact that there is a powerful detection and correction system in place drives customer confidence and they may even be willing to pay more. Even in many advanced process in Japanese companies, 100% inspection has been automated or robotized, despite the advanced process capabilities they are known for. Passengers get higher confidence in travelling in an airplane due to the 100% security screening, though as per definition the screening activity does not qualify as a VA process step. We can go on with more examples and discussions, but to conclude I would say that the common 3 checks for defining VA process holds good and is certainly a great starting point and ongoing guide in the Lean Journey. However, the thought process need to be oriented that...... for all the NVA activities, there are always opportunities to find a way to eliminate or simplify them, with out compromising the output value. This is an area for continuous improvement with the right checks and balances.

5S is an orderly discipline applicable to any process in life, even though they have been popularized from a manufacturing background and most of us tend to relate accordingly. The below table gives a brief description of how it could apply for different non-manufacturing situations, viz. Pharmacy, Dentist, Fast food restaurant, Airplane boarding, Training. All of us will certainly realize that good practices such as these and more are being applied in situations as below and many other, whether they are being recognized as "5S" or not. In all these situations, it is obvious that the efforts are towards improving the efficiency and effectiveness, which translate to dollar savings in terms of revenue maximization and Quality of delivery.

There are many experts who consider the presence of a process as a significant roadblock in the effort towards creative design work. It is also understood that there are many innovations that happened purely by accident. Is there any value in the use of Lean Six Sigma in the world of product innovation? Why/ Why not? Any innovation with respect to a product has to transform itself through a design process and then the design expectations have to be fulfilled by a process. The process will actually create the product with repetitive consistency. It is true that innovative ideas do come up suddenly, we may even say accidentally. However, it is the result of the thinking process of an individual brain or collective brains of a team. Most innovations invent path breaking solution to some need for people. Invention of aircraft provided solution of very fast travel, and invention of internet provided communications at a speed one had never dreamed of. Not all innovations are accidental, and there are several which are a result of focused effort by groups of talented people, led by a visionary leader. Such planned innovation efforts can be systematically driven as a structured approach using certain Six Sigma tools and methods.For instance if a particular innovative effort is aiming for providing a specific solution to human, it would be important to gather baseline data on the current situation and also apply measurement methodologies for assessing the results of the innovation. It is agreeable that striking upon the actual innovative idea, (the eureka) is unpredictable brain power and is difficult to represent it as a process outcome. However a process approach can help to facilitate the thinking process that led to the innovation. Even as part of our usual Six Sigma DMAIC cycle, it is possible that during the improve phase, innovative 'eureka' could emerge as part of the solutions. Now, coming to the developments that need to take place subsequent to the innovation, a design and development process, verification and validation processes, production deployment... all these are familiar to experienced professionals in this forum and it is needless to explain how the DFSS kicks in! I do not see a need to go beyond that!

Kaizen refers to small improvements in work place. Most popular methodology for Kaizen is Quality circles or Small Group Activities. Kaikaku refers to a larger revolutionary change. it could be an enterprise wide ranging project, that brings in a large savings or improvement to the process or product. Kakushin refers to an innovative change of a higher order than the above. it could be a total newly conceptualized product. As explained above, each of the three terms refer to change, but at significantly different order of change and usually carried out by different levels of employees. They are connected to one another in the sense that to have the innovative spirit evolved in the organization, it is important to have the thinking process at all levels. At any stage, Kaizen may be encouraged and driven in the organization and it applies to all employees at all levels. Kaikaku could be a good BlackBelt type of project that brings a major process change, and could be impactful enterprise wide. While Kaizen would apply basic tools like the 7 QC tools, Kaikaku projects would need more advanced tools for data analysis and process analysis. Kakushin calls for " out of the box" thinking and could lead to discovering new product or disruptive game changers. What would a company lose if any one of them is not practiced? Absence of Kaizen will leave process to stagnate and erode competitiveness. More important, it will deprive the employees from using their brains to improve their own work place and could leave them demotivated. Absence of Kaikaku will deprive the organization from opportunities of simplifying processes, such as lean application, major Quality improvements and customer value adds. it may also be noted that the absence of Kaizen and Kaikaku could potentially leave the company unprepared for Kakushin. Kakushin leads the organization towards being an industry leader and radically changing its market position.

1. A cause may be necessary but not sufficient for a problem to occur This is a situation that crops up for most problems, where we quickly and certainly identify certain conditions, situations or factors that have been prevalent, without which the problem could never have happened. A popular example is when a change is implemented in a product and it fails after deployment, one of the obvious and necessary condition is that there has been an inadequacy in the testing / approval process, though that by itself could not have caused the problem. In short, any lapse in a failure containment system is always necessary but not sufficient reason for a failure. More examples are possible. In such situations, one of the immediate reaction is to fix the identified ""necessary" condition to help arrest or contain further occurrences, until we proceed and figure out the other causes. 2. A cause may be sufficient but not necessary for a problem to happen This represents a situation where multiple, possibly independent causes exist. For example, being absent is sufficient to fail in an examination, but not necessary. However, being present for the exam is a necessary condition to pass the exam, but not sufficient.The problem with dealing with causes that are sufficient for the failure, is our ability to pre-identify all such potential causes exhaustively. Ideally we should prevent all such causes, and the degree of exhaustiveness with which we do so, will result in the degree of non-failure. Goes without saying the if such a situation occurs, it has to be addressed and the learning used in strengthening the related FMEA. 3. A cause may be neither sufficient nor necessary for a problem to occur. Most of us will be familiar in the use of Brain storming and the Fish-Bone diagram. Once we list down a list of causes through brainstorming, we try to start narrowing down to potential ones and then the most probable ones. Those causes that are identified as "not necessary and sufficient" tend to get eliminated to help get closer to the actual cause. However, even if an individual cause may be insufficient to cause a problem, it has to be seen if it becomes a threat when combined with other cause(s). 4. A cause may be both sufficient and necessary for a problem to occur. Whenever we consider a cause to be necessary and sufficient for a problem, we tend to make several involuntary assumptions. For example, if a person has to get an electric shock upon touching a metal surface of an appliance, it is necessary that there must be a current leakage. However a combination of current leakage and earthing failure makes it sufficient for providing an electric shock. (We are assuming many things, for example, no lightning should have struck the appliance when the person touched it!) If we look at it the other way, it is sufficient to have a reliable earthing on the appliance to avoid getting an electric shock. It is often difficult to relate one cause as sufficient and necessary for a problem. It is more common to associate it with a set of causes.

The term excellence refers to highest level of performance. The terms Process Excellence, Operational Excellence and Business Excellence, all imply team performance. While varied interpretations are possible for the definition and scope of each of these 3 terms, it appears that we have been continuously trying to emphasize totality in the coverage of excellence. Starting with process, it has been re-scoped as Operations, then further re-scoped as Business. Whereas the term 'Personal Excellence' points to an individual performance. While individual excellence could be an important enabler to attain Business Excellence, what is more important is that so long as the personal excellence fosters into team excellence, it is fine. While the pre-requisite of personal excellence may be debatable for attaining Business excellence, the other two factors viz. Process and Operational excellence are certainly a must. Organizations ultimately have to pursue Business Excellence, which will encompass the Process and Operational excellence. The predominant tools and techniques for Business excellence would include Strategic ones related to Business Process Management, whereas for Operations and Process Management, it will be the tactical tools. Approaches relating to Cultural aspects will be important all round for facilitating the awareness, acceptance and involvement of change.