Priyer

Long term performance of a process means Sigma Long Term and Short term performance of a process means Sigma short term. The question is why Sigma short term is calculated and treated differently than Sigma long term. Sigma short term of a process is usually given higher value than Sigma long term of the same process because, it is without any noise and reflects the current state of the process. Smaller deviation is seen in the process when measured in the short term, similar to students performing excellently in Unit tests and weekly class tests. The person studies a smaller portion and answers a smaller set of questions, similar to having a smaller set of population to test the performance of the process. In case of Long term performance of a process, the data points are more and hence more noise and more deviation. Greater deviation can be attributed to lot of factors and indicates measuring performance of a population rather than a sample. Hence Long term performance is measured differently. An anology would be the student performing well in the Annual exams. So simple answer is population and sample size determines it

Complaint Handling is definitely one of the areas that provides any industry direct Customer Feedback. It is the key "Voice of the Customer" , which cannot be ignored, handled with less attention, given robotic responses, or make Customer slog to provide you all information, so that they never dare to raise a complaint and lastly be accessible only when the Sun at your side is Up . Today's Complaint Handling systems tools are pretty much standard and in a way complex, having interfaces to capture customer query, indicate status of the work done, and reports for one to analyze which part of the world the Customer has raised a ticket and for what product. Somewhere down the line, today's systems have made the Complaint System complex , in order to reduce the effort required in consumption of this data in One's downstream systems. Now if you look at Ocado, they have left out the details that are required internally by their organization, completely out of the Complaint system . They have primarily focused only on the basics of Capturing Customer Query with features to attach images , and a promise of a timeline that they strictly adhere to. This is in line with the limited Time a Customer may have . Today's Customers do want to be treated as if any Human would treat another , if he is Face to Face. His motive is to get an acknowledgment of his request quickly and probably would like to hear what has been of his request. Hence quick response is a mandatory MUST. Well written responses are those responses that are structured with Context including Greeting at the start, message to be conveyed including action and conclusions/summary at the end .Ocado's message had all this. In addition to that, the message also mentioned how the Customer had added value to their organization by including the Product code, which made things easier for them to track, though it was not requested. Some Complaint systems at the end, ask for raising the request again, if the response was not satisfactory. This is an unnecessary quibble, which adds no value. Then the same organizations talks internally about resolving all Customer queries First Time right. Ocado, seems to have understood this and hence made sure that the first response is right and the no quibbles policy works just fine. If i was Ocado, i would have added one more thing OR elaborated a bit in the message and that would be to mention the "Interim Preventive Action that "PINK Ladies will come with a Consumption Tag of within 4 -5 days". Though they mention in their message, they take issues of quality very seriously, for a cynical customer (who has been on the other side), this part would still appear to be a gap in Ocado's well written email message. So in my opinion a definite Preventive action or an Interim Preventive Action added in the Response, will bring the Customer become a " Ocado HEAVY" customer or in other words "STICKY customer".

Inventory in Lean Philosophy is one of the 7 Wastes in 7+1 MUDA. Inventory stands for stocking of raw materials, finished goods, WIP Items created or piled, for future usage and deployment. It has evolved from Manufacturing where batch processing was on the rise and we had fewer customization of products. It made sense at that time, to stock materials well in advance, so that the products can be created on demand and manufacturers can reduce the time to market for their products, thus beating competition and becoming the differentiator. Over time when this differentiator became the basic requirement, companies that had invested hugely in stocking various items in warehouses had found the cost of storage pinching their bottom line. That is when “Inventory” was identified as a Waste rather than a Vice. In Lean Terms, Inventory is anything that is stocked, backlog, work in progress in a process, function or department that the Customer is not paying for. Only when the WIP is sold, then it can be converted to Revenue and add Value to the organization. Till that time, it is always cost. Inventory in various industries can be as follows Industry Department/Function Example of Inventory ITES Customer Support Desk “Open Customer Tickets/ Requests” that have not been resolved. Engineering Development # of Change requests at various stages of the SDLC Cycle. (Design, Develop, Test, Deploy) Research and Development Product Management # of Product Features queued for Backlog to be released in Platform Automotive Painting # of Units of Unfinished Doors to be painted Banking Derivative # of Transaction records to be resolved at Security Exchange at EOD. Hospitality House Cleaning # of Bedsheets that needs to be washed and dry cleaned Food Buffet # of Plates left unused. Entertainment Cinema Hall # of Unoccupied seats in a Cinema theatre for a film. Transport Airline/ Tour Bus/ Train # of Unoccupied seats on a route. Medical Doctor Prescription # Excess tablets remaining once the patient has recovered well before the completion of the course Real Estate Construction of High end homes # of Units unsold in a Project Fashion Home # of Clothes Accumulated over a period of time leaving the Wardrobe bursting out and not used. Home Furnishing Furniture Excess seating capacity like the # of Chairs in a House that is a waste of space and money. Education Class IV # of Pencils /Story Books that a student possesses in excess to their requirement The only way to Tackle this Waste, is to attach the demand of any resources to the Demand of the Customer/User OR to address your personal need. Easy availability of Resources and lesser time in procurement can help in Just in time procurement and usage of these resources.

Hi Venugopal I differ to your statement , that DMAIC and DMADV applies everywhere. An A3 project will never be considered a Black belt DMAIC or DMADV project. Continuous Improvement Manager role in essence is a role , that is looked as , one where the person is capable of identifying improvements, planning for them and executing them. Mainly a self starter attitude, motivating others, working in a collaborative environment and excellent communication is desired in this role other than the Lean Six Sigma skills awareness. If he has done a project using some other CI framework like Lean, or even for Lean -IT, or ITIL Lean , etc , he can still apply for the role and be selected. It is dependent on whether the organization hiring clearly understands, what is required of the individual , depending on what they follow in their Delivery excellence Business Unit to drive Continuous Improvements.

NO. It is necessary to have Lean Six Sigma skills and awareness about it, but executing a DMAIC or DMADV is not necessary. The person can also come from a Lean background and apply his experience derived by following the other methodology cycle followed for Lean projects ( 12 week cycle or 16 week cycles or A3 approach) to be succesful in improvement manager role.

The only way that a trained Six Sigma Green Belt/ Black Belt can take a formal project , is by taking small steps. He could divide the Project activities into phases and execute a phase, demonstrating benefit and quickwins. This will instill faith , credibility in the minds of management, to allow on a formal project to be taken up. Incremental benefits, quick wins, kaizen events all start with a small improvement idea. The idea once gaining prominence can be converted to a project.

Efficient means Doing Work in Right Fashion , to save on resources (Time, material, people etc.) expended. Effective means Doing the Right Work to achieve a purpose with the utilization of resources . Example of a Process highlighted is “Travel time during Commuting Process". To travel 20 kms during Peak hours from South to North Bangalore, the Effective Process would be to travel by a two-wheeler. It definitely achieves the purpose of Reducing Travel Time for a single person, but is not efficient, since many 2 wheelers cause congestion and increase pollution. To travel same distance, the Efficient Process would be to travel by BMTC bus, since it reduces congestion, but it is not effective in terms of reducing Travel time. To same distance, the Effective and Efficient Process would be to travel by Metro with point to point auto connectivity. It reduces travel time, and also is efficient in reducing congestion. Another example is “Increasing number of people in a Team to get the Project completed within deadline” may be an Effective process, but not Efficient. For Any repeated process steps, we drive it to be Efficient. For any new process, we should aim it to be Effective in achieving its purpose.

Little's law describes that the average time a unit of work stays in the process is equal to the ratio of Work in Progress units of work to the rate at which the unit of work is delivered out of the system (in other words Throughput) Flow Time = Work In Progress Inventory/ Throughput of work delivered. Applications of Little's law is powerful in the below scenarios 1) To determine the number of counters to be made available during issuing of Boarding passes , so that the rate at which boarding passes issued are more, in order to reduce the Average Wait Time at each of the queues. By decreasing the Average wait time a passenger spends in a queue, the Airport can be relatively less crowded at the boarding pass issuing centre, security checks and gate areas, thus enabling to cater to the inflow of passengers arriving for different flights at different instances of time with an unpredictable inflow rate. 2) In an Application Support life cycle model, Little's law can be applied to influence reduction of Average Turn Around Time per Ticket by either increasing the rate at which Tickets are solved per unit of time or reducing Backlog of Tickets (Inventory on Hand). This when studied with other metrics like number of Application support resources used for increasing throughput can give us an insight on Productivity of the Application support Team. Increasing the number of people to reduce backlog is not a good practice, but reducing backlog with the same number of people is definitely a good sign. The real life application is the enhanced Customer Experience to their queries/requests , lesser churn and increased engagement from the Application service provide 3) The number of toll gates on a highway is another application of Little's law to prevent queuing at Toll gates and ensure smooth flow of traffic. Little's law is of prime significance to maintain balance between inflow and outflow rates and helps study whether we would desire to keep the Inventory within the process at different stages to an acceptable limit , minimum or maximum. Hence it is unavoidable in cases, where Wait time in the process can result in significant business loss, brand reputation and dissatisfaction.

Single piece flow means processing without any stoppage, waiting time and on demand/pull from the customer/user. In daily life , the 3 examples that I can think of - 1) Adding extra smartbytes when your data(INTERNET) pack is over by buying few GBs or even KBs of data. Previously, we had to go to a shop to load currency to our cards in bulk, to use the internet/outgoing calls. 2) Internet Banking has enabled us to check our balance on demand (either mobile or laptop). Previously , we had to wait for the weekend to get our passbooks updated at one time (bulk processing), by going to bank and getting to know balance. (Some people prefer calling their bank manager even today to know the balance) 3) Viewing movies on demand in Netflix including original Netflix series , instead of waiting for it to be released in Theatres and view it in a group (batch processing).

The general definition of Value is "Value is a value only if the Value provided is Valuable to those who value it". Considering definition,below three checks can be evaluated. A value adding activity is one that customer is willing to pay for. A value adding activity is transformational by nature. A value adding activity is done first time right CHECK 1, 2 is important as both have the power to remove non value add activities in a Process, Solution, developing the Product or rendering a service. CHECK 3 is a self check to create value when one is taking ownership to drive it. So it is more of personal value addition in the WORK that is done , rather than overall big picture. Since Value is real ground perception of the consumer/ customer ,there has to be a feedback seeked from the consumer/customer to check how much of value was realized . That would be the real measure of value. This could be consumption made easier, reduction of effort, heightened delight, reduced cost, efficiency, quality and many more. To measure this , one more question should be asked. 4. Is this activity adding up , to the promised value to the customer . The lesser the difference between promised value and actual value , the more the value is Valuable to Customer