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Project Sponsor is leader who sponsors a selected Lean Six Sigma project and comprehends the benefits of Lean Six Sigma. The sponsor has the facility to allocate resources for training and completing projects, and to get rid of roadblocks which will arise throughout the course of the Lean Six Sigma project. Champion: champions are senior managers initiate and support a project within their scope of responsibility. They determine the broad goals and the scope of projects resolves any cross-functional team issues that may occur. Champions are trained in the basics of six sigma. Sometimes filled by former Black Belt or Master Black belt. The Champion is someone who attends Tollgates and can resolve the cross functional issues. Sponsor is that the person who will brag about your results to other Executives within the organization and typically only sees the results of the project. Responsibility of Project Sponsors: To identify the new project or Identify the existing project: the project would benefit the organization and ensure that it aligned with the company’s business goals and strategies. Select right Team Members: Ensure to select right team members for the project. The sponsors has to work with project leader and the stakeholders to identify the right team members. Track of Project status: Make sure the project is on track and there is no hurdles. The sponsors should review the project plan and provide inputs for successful planning and progress of the project Liaison between the project Members and the organization stakeholders: to get the necessary buy-in required smooth movement of the projects. He should be in the position to high influences on the stakeholders and high hold on the process owner Financial Approval: Approving any financial that are required for completing the project. The project success mostly lies with sponsors as they work with all the financial loss/gain. Project sponsors should ensure that the completed project is handed over to the process owners and show the continuous improvement. Identifying & Finalizing a Project Sponsor § Process Stakeholder who has high impact in the Process and has the ability to approve any financials for Project completion. § Has adequate knowledge on the financials of the project and can review the growth of the Project without any struggle. § Contribute to the Project Initiation and during subsequent Project Reviews. § Should be good coach and mentor the Project Members during the growth of the Project with his knowledge and ability. The success of the Project completely lies in the hands of the Project Stakeholder. Project Champions: Champions play an essential role in every successful Lean Six Sigma initiative. They assist as mentors to project teams. They are the bridge between six sigma black belts and organization management. Without champions, the teams will be struggled with internal obstacles and misaligned with core business objectives, team will lose the focus and lose the track of time which not yield the expected benefits. Champions are members of the leadership group who sponsor projects and mentor teams working on those projects. Champions must be trained in the necessities of the Six Sigma Approach. But do not need to be “expert” in Six Sigma tools and techniques but they do need to have high skills in facilitation, collaboration and conflict resolution. Depends on the organizational structure occasionally the Champion may also Sponsor projects or programs. But for better results it will be good to have both a sponsor and a champion for a successful lean six sigma program

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is one of the key metric to be tracked as part of a customer experience program. CLV is a measurement of how valuable a customer is to your organization. This metric helps you understand a realistic cost per acquisition. Customer lifetime value also called as a lifetime value. It is the profit margin a business expects to earn over the total of their business relationship with the normal customer. Many organization take a short time approach by overseeing this valuable metric. It is always important to optimize the lifetime value of existing customer which is essential for a company to sustain a viable business model. It is a financial projection and requires a business to make informed assumptions. To calculate CLV, a business owner must estimate the value of the average number of transactions, average sale and the duration of the business relationship with a customer. This historical data helps to calculate their customer lifetime value. Calculate customer lifetime value Multiply the Average Value of Sale, Number of Transactions and Retention Time Period Lifetime Value = Average (Value of Sale) × No of Transactions × Retention Time Period Or simply Customer Lifetime Value = LTV X Profit Margin Customer Lifetime Value Example For example the average sale for the flower bouquet shop is $500, and the average customer shops with them five times per year for three years. To calculate LifeTime value: Lifetime Value = $500 × 5× 3 = $7500 Profit margin is 20% then, Customer Lifetime Value becomes = $500 × 5× 3× 20% Customer Lifetime Value =$1500 This calculation explains that the customer lifetime value of the average flower bouquet shop customer is $1500. As a retailer, this value is used to project cash flow and to understand how many customers you must acquire and retain to reach desired profitability.

Quality Circles suggested by W. Edwards Deming in Japan in1950’s, they became active in the early 1960’s in Japan. In 1960, Kaoru Ishikawa and the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers presented the Quality Circle concept. It reached the United States when Lockheed introduced Quality Circles in 1974. The Quality Circle refers to the set of individuals who meet on a regular interval to discuss the work-related problems. The quality circles are small in group which is led by the manager or the supervisor who presents the solutions to the management. The purpose of this Quality circle is to motivate employees to voice out their problems which is affecting their work area. Help them to improve the performance as well as the organization as a whole. Mostly the focus will be on Occupational health, safety, improvement in the working environment and manufacturing process. The size of the quality circle will be six to twelve employees from the same work area come together to form these circles. These employees receive good training in problem solving, group process and statistical processes Quality circles are formed to fulfil the following. · Contribute towards the organization growth. · Provide healthy work environment for the employees · Explore the hidden strength of the individuals and depict the infinite opportunities. · Improve the product quality as well as the productivity of the organization. · Improve the team skills, Confidence, Capabilities, and Creativity through trainings and participation of volunteers in the circles. Quality Circle concept still relevant in Organizations practicing Lean Six Sigma? In fact not much as per my opinion. Quality Circles is a TQM (Total Quality Management) concept. Quality Circle contains representatives from all the departments who communicates the Quality problems to the organization to resolve the same. It is an old concept, because only members of Quality Circle will participate and discuss about issues and improving the Quality Process. Only higher management members of QC can take decisions. In Six Sigma, unlike TQM, even the employee at the every level of the organization can participate as team members in the Six-Sigma projects in improving the quality process. There is no hierarchy or designations can take decisions. Advantage is that the employee who is actually doing the job is involved in the process improvement and obviously no one knows the process better than him. Six-Sigma is more focused on a particular issue or pain area that needs to be addressed and resolved immediately whereas TQM quality circle focus more on the positive improvement in quality, but by how much it never says.. Six-Sigma is known to deliver better and effective results as compared to total quality management

MoSCoW is the method significantly used to help the stakeholders to understand the significance of the initiatives. MosCow Technique gives us the more granular view of the scope of the project and helps to deliver the most important feature to the customer first. It helps to manage to client expectation. It also helps to delegate work and to be clearly shows what is our high priority. It’s a great way to frame the conversation with the clients, stakeholders to understand the ‘Must have’ and ‘good to have’ initiatives. MosCow stands for a four category: Must Have Should Have Could have Won’t have Non – Negotiable needs that are mandatory to the customers Important initiative’s that are not vital and have significant Value Good to have initiatives that have a small impact Not a priority for this time frame to deliver Must Have: like Requirements, Critical features, No changeovers, to be done with the current delivery time box; Should Have: like important features, desired features, Valued to customer, can substitute to other feature but not with the current delivery time box; Could Have: like user improvement projects; sometimes valued, not necessary, with alternative we can deliver. Won’t Have: like least important, not appropriate one, not much worth, not appropriate for the current delivery Everybody are following MosCow method with or without our knowledge in our daily routine. We have planned lot of work to be completed per day or week. But we will not have enough time to complete all the task in a week. Here comes the prioritization. First we need to list out all the task and start the prioritization of the work. All Agile projects are using the Prioritization. Product Manager prioritize the features and delivery team prioritize that accordingly and deliver the stories on each sprint. Usually the last sprint will make use of improvement or good to have requirements. Usually startups are using advance prioritization techniques. Which consist of set of rules and framework that results the good decision-making. Prioritization often determines the success of the company.

Cost Effectiveness Equation belongs to GE Program called Change Acceleration Process (CAP). It was launched around 1992 and socialized to many businesses around the world at GE. QxA = E Q – Depicts technical strategy or Quality of an organization for a change initiative. That is, $, resources software. Eg: minitab, Computer hardware, etc., A – Depicts Cultural, Acceptance or soft strategy which includes people skills, interpersonal skills, team management skills, facilitation skills, etc., E – Depicts Effectiveness of deployment of a change initiative Simple way to define QxA = E is the Effectiveness ( E)of any initiative is equal to the product of Quality (Q) of the technical strategy and acceptance (A) of that strategy. If you take any project failures, it is not only because of technical skills. There are many projects are using excellent project tool and technology experts also fails in the new strategy. QxA = E. The organization should give more priority on A (Acceptance) side of the equation which is nothing but Depicts culture. Lack of Culture causes project failure in many organization. We need to build the culture. Good Technical tools are not enough to bring the success. There are five key elements when managing change in projects. 1. More focus on the Acceptance (Culture) side of the equation. 2. Strong leadership 3. Clear Goals and objectives 4. Manage Resistance. 5. Effective communication Focus on the Acceptance (Culture) side of the equation: The change in culture brings the Successful initiatives as output which automatically improve the performance of the organization in short span of time Good Leadership: Group of people who providing the direction to be very strong in Encourage, motivate, inspire the team and challenge the team to give the best at work. Goals and objectives: Clear vision for the future and that vision should motivate and inspire others in the team. Clear and difficult goals are great motivating factor Manage Resistance. Any organization face the resistance whenever the change is proposed. Those to be effectively managed. Make sure those are not interfering the progress of the changes in the organization. Also we should not completely ignore the resistance. It should be listened and managed. Communication: Communication plays an important role in any organization. Leadership should frequently communicate the need for the changes, the future vision and goal. Many changes are failed in the organization because of lack of communication. Effective communication resolves many conflicts in the organization.

Cost benefit analysis is the process used to measure the benefits of a decision. It involves measurable financial metrics like the result of your decision in project yield revenue or cost save. CBA is a tool to determine which potential decision makes the most financial sense for the business. Based on the CBA tool business can decide whether to pursue a project. Financial benefit-cost analysis includes the below 8 steps. 1. Determine the annual revenue of the project 2. Find the Project cost 3. Calculate the project net benefits 4. Determine the discount rate 5. Find the average incremental cost 6. Find the financial net present value 7. Find the financial internal rate of return 8. Analysis of Risk and sensitivity Other cost also you need to account for Indirect Cost – fixed cost Intangible cost – any cost difficult to measure Opportunity cost – lost benefit or opportunities There are some tools like BCR Benefit Cost ratio may also computed to summarize the overall relationship between relative cost and proposed project benefit. We have /regression modelling, Valuation and forecasting techniques are some of the tools used for Cost Benefit analysis. There are some exception when the organization still taking projects even that do not have favorable cost benefit. The environmental projects, Customer satisfaction projects which Organization wants to pursue even that do not have favorable cost benefit but it maintains the company’s reputation and customer satisfaction.

A North Star metric is the one measurement that’s predictive the long term success of the company. The idea behind the North Star Metric is that if the business brings more value to your clients, then the growth of your business has to go positive. It also gives the direction to the company’s long-term growth versus short-term growth. It enables the teams to focus more on impact and sustainable, product-led growth. If your clients receive a lot of value obviously they will stay longer, buy more and provide the reference to their friends to your business. Overall North Star Metric defines the relationship between the customer problems which product team is trying to resolve and the revenue that the business aims to generate by doing so To qualify as a “North Star”, the metric must do three things. Focus Your entire business has the same focus. At the team level, you still focus on a different number, but the goal is same for everyone. Clarity Everyone can see at a glimpse how the company is performing. Customer focus The Business is more concerned with adding value for the client than low-priced value, so automatically make room to be busy with retention. Checklist for a good North Star Metric 1. When your customers reach end result? (equals your client’s ‘success’ moments) 2. Does this apply to all your customer? (expresses value to the customer) 3. Measurable? (North Star Metric is measurable) 4. Best frequency (day/week/month) (North Star Metric is time-bound) 5. External factor have minimal impact? (North Star Metric is within your control) 6. North Star Metric growth tied to business – growth? (North Star Metric is a direct reflection of your growth) 7. Full pirate Funnel impact North Star Metric(North Star Metric has mutual effect on the entire Pirate Funnel) 8. North Star Metric change frequently (North Star Metric is growing with some frequency) Some of the Sample for North Star metrics are · Amazon : Number of purchase per Month ; · Uber – Rides per week; · Spotify = Time spent listening · Airbnb = Number of Nights booked · Facebook = MAU (Monthly Active Users)

The Product portfolio matrix tool helps to make right product portfolio decisions. The product portfolio matrix also called growth –share and BCG matrix. This helps how the decisions can effectively apply it to manage portfolio The matrix categorizes products as · Question marks · Stars · Cash cows · Pets (also known as dogs). Question Mark indicates High Growth, Low Market shares (basically uncertainty) Pets also known as Dogs: Low growth, Low market shares (Less profitable) Stars: High Growth, High Market shares (High competition) Cash cows: Low growth, high market shares ( most profitable) Quick view and interpretation Question Mark High Growth, Low Market shares Don’t know the opportunities; Decide to increase the investment Stars High Growth, High Market shares Doing Good. Good opportunities. Dogs Low growth, Low market shares (Less profitable) Not doing great in market. Difficult to make profit Cash cows Low growth, high market shares ( most profitable) No growth but having good opportunities Question mark, cash cows we can consider for DMAIC where the improvement can give the better results. Dogs : we can consider for DMADV because there is no growth and no profit. we can re-consider this projects

Standardized work: In simple way we can define as Based on the current technology, establishing the procedures to make products in the easiest, safest and most effective way. The goal is clearly communicate to the operator how exactly the job should be performed. It is one of the principles of Lean Manufacturing. Standardized work reduces variability because the process performed more efficient way which results reduces variations in the final output. The work we planned or performed are predictable and with high quality, less costs. As we said, Standardized work increases efficiency, this makes more time for innovative work. In Standardized work, we documents everything, it ensures there is no gap (understanding) in the operator performance. Standardized work requires three elements. a. Takt time (and cycle time): Rate at which production of products or parts will be produced based on the customer demand. Example: Your team receive a new product/part order every six hours, then your team needs to finish a product/parts in six hours or less than six hours to meet the demand. Here you have 6 hours is the maximum amount of time you need to fulfil with to meet customer demand. Simply we can define Talk time = Total available Production time (divided by) Average customer demand This will optimize your capacity to the meet the demand without keeping too much of inventory in reserve. Also note when defining the takt time, you should consider relatively short time frame for the average customer demand. Usually time frame will be weekly or monthly. b. Work Sequence: The sequence of operations operators need to perform within the Takt time, in the order in which they must be accomplished/completed. Example: In construction process, we have pre construction steps, during construction steps & post construction steps. Pre constructions steps (finding land, budget, building plan, etc) needs to be completed before we start the construction. Another example is packing items: item to be packed in flat or big box, label it and send it to shipment department with in the takt time.(sequence of work to be completed within takt time) c. Standard inventory (or in-process stock): To run any operation we need minimum quantity of parts and raw materials. This is called standard inventory or in-process stock. It allows Operator to do their jobs continuously without any halt, in order of sequence and repeating the same operation over and over in the same order. For example: for packing department , we need a raw material like packing material, tape, label’s, gift wrappers, Boxes, etc. we need these items to be stocked at minimum to make sure the work to be continued without any halt.

Regression analysis is used to find the relationship between the set of independent variable and the dependent variable or you can say how your independent variables that can influence the dependent variables. we are going for full regression because how the changes in each independent variable are related to changes in the dependent variable. It allows you to determine which factors brings most impact, the factor we no need to consider for analysis and how these factors influencing each other.