Avinash Modi

Root cause is the event which was deviated from the standard practice or should be practice which lead to the occurence of the final failure/defect through a chain of causes. For Example. Less moisture contain in cookies produced. Why less moisture - because dough moisture containt was low. Why low moisture in dough- because less water pumped while dough preparation. Why less water pumped -because pump sensor not working correctly. Why sensor not working correctly- because while maintenance it was missed to check Why it was missed - No checklist for verification after maintenance . Answer of last why is the root cause for the less moisture contain in cookies and answers of other Whys are causes.

DMAIC approach should be used when you don't know the problem and solution but you do have target to achieve. For example : "We want to reduce our Fossil fuel consumption by 10 %" Here in this project we dont know what are the reasons for high FF consumption but somehow we need to reduce that so first will need to identify problem or reasons for high consumption and then solutions as well, hence we should prefer DMAIC approach. Kaizen approach should be used where one already knows the problem and the solution For example: "Changing single drive motor of high HP to multi drive motor of low HP for better performance and low electricity consumption" Here in this case changing motor is itself idea/solution for reducing high electricity consumption. In a nutshell DMAIC approach to be used for a Goal/problem and Kaizen approach should be used for idea for improvement.

"Bells and Whistles" Firstly if anything the customer cares or pay for shouldn't be considered as Bell and whistles, this kind of solutions might help the company to delight the customer and stand out of the crowd. Suppose you are providing a service of finance. You are providing all the required documents accurately and on time and customer is happy. Now suppose company starts providing the summary report explaining the outcomes of the report will be an added advantage to the customer. However company might not charge for this thing. So it's obvious that customers will get delighted with this NVA activity.Going forward it could be a necessary thing for customer to have it and thus then would not be NVA but a VA service. So NVA service in present which delights customer will be a VA service for future.