Vishwadeep Khatri

Fishbone Diagram or the Ishikawa Diagram is criticized for an inability to distinguish between necessary and sufficient conditions. The Ishikawa diagram merely shows causes of an event. Necessary conditions - A set of circumstance in absence of which, the event cannot occur. Sufficient set of conditions - A set of conditions which if present will ensure that the event will occur. Just to distinguish these, here is an example. Writing an exam is a necessary condition to pass the exam but is not a sufficient condition. If you are drawing a fishbone diagram for "only a few people pass an exam" - you may mention "many people do not write the exam" as one reason. This is not a sufficient condition - even if more people had written the exam, it may not have ensured that more would have cleared. In many cases, people who do not write are the people who lack confidence or knowledge. Well, this opens a room for debate. How would the necessary/sufficient distinction make our root cause analysis more useful? Please explain with an example.

I urge you to see the online presentation here and post a comment to the following question starting with a Yes or a No! Have you seen people into this kind of career cycle?

A good project using Lean or six sigma skill set could be carried out in business or customer pain areas. I am mentioning a few examples here. -streamlining the booking and confirmation process -enhancing customer experience without increasing cost. -reducing missed pick ups -reducing operating costs without affecting quality of service. -improving availability of cars without increasing cost. Hope this helps.

Hi Uday, You may create a new section in your resume showing competence. This section can carry the skill sets that you are equipped with along with evidence. This section shall not be a part of your chronological sequence of job experience. If you search on LinkedIn, you can get some good examples for naming and highlighting such a section.

Hi Prashant, Please explain your objective of data collection and analysis.

Good to see this detail. In a change project, it makes sense to tackle quick wins first. If you have completed the analyze phase, you may like to place your X's in appropriate regions of the effort impact matrix and chose immediate focus areas. If some of the elements under incorrect system activity, fall under quick win area, you may like to include them. Does it seem to address the challenge?

Hi Sandeep, You might find an interesting usage of Experimental Design while creating test cases. The objective is to create a combination of test cases that tests all functionalities of a module (with the aim of reducing testing time without losing comprehensiveness.)

A structured Lean Six Sigma deployment may not be needed here. However, experience with Lean Six Sigma tools like Concept FMEA for risk assessment, Decision Tools to choose the best option, Hoshin Kanri for policy deployment, VoC capturing methods for market study, CTQ focus for decision criteria shall be a big plus. This is exactly the reason why some of the world's largest banks want their VP - Strategy to have an MBB qualification.

Market Research is an integral part of many large Six Sigma projects. It is so because gathering Voice of Customer is a key requirement. A Market Research professional can contribute in large Lean Six Sigma projects by providing inputs for new product development (DMADV roadmap). Market research professionals can also take end to end marketing improvement projects using DMAIC methodology. Lean Six Sigma methods form an integral part of data driven decision making. Market research makes use of customer data for sense making, decision making and policy making. A Market Research professional can look forward to participation in cross functional projects (the kind of profile that product managers normally handle).

Hi Mayank, The story in manufacturing is also same. Automotive clients are more concerned about ppm (parts per million defective) while process owners focus at Defects so as to ensure no Defectives.

Correlation analysis is used to check how strongly one variable moves with another. For example, time spent in heating is directly related with temperature of an item. This can be understood by drawing a scatter plot taking one variable in X axis and the other on Y. Regression Analysis converts the relationship into a mathematical model. If the two variables have a cause and effect relationship, one can use such a model (equation) to predict the output if the value of input is known. As an example, one may be able to predict the height that a gas balloon shall achieve if the gas pressure is known. Hope this helps.

Hi, This topic has been discussed at http://forum.benchmarksixsigma.com/topic/771-what-is-15-sigma-shift/

Thanks for this post Clint. I agree with you - many people are not exposed to tolerance generation through basics of robust design.

You may like to have a look at http://globalnews.benchmarksixsigma.com/ for project examples.

Dear Ravi, There are many examples that you can find at http://globalnews.benchmarksixsigma.com/ Best Regards, VK

Companies who have reached zero defects in some process using trial and error have spent considerable time and effort reaching there. Dabbawalla is a 150 year old organization with small margins and limited competition. If you wish to achieve great performance levels in limited time, it is better you use the tried and tested Lean Six Sigma methods and be ahead of competition.

Yes, Indrajeet. Good usage of Balanced scorecard in a company surely makes project selection easy for Black Belts.

You may like to review the following How critical is the impact of a non conformance? If non conformance has serious impact, you can not afford to wait for non conformance to happen. Go ahead and collect continuous data to analyze trends and patterns in advance. What is the cost of data collection for each type? If continuous data has same cost and convenience as attribute, choose continuous data.

Hi Ajit, Good to see this question of yours. You surely have reached an important stage. Before I can respond to your question, I have a follow up query. Is it validated that "incorrect system activity" is one of the critical X? If yes, how was it found out? Regards, VK

For products that are repeat purchases, quality is likely to win. How about products that form a one time purchase? Do you have the same views for all types of products and services?

You are absolutely right Inderjeet. If we have an option we mostly prefer continuous data, especially in a critically important process.

Someone asked me recently if the Lean Six Sigma methods are really standardized globally. This seemed to be an incomplete question. I wanted to know about the intent. The revised question I got was - Can people get different results if they are using the same information and the same assumptions? My answer was - yes, and no. Methods are standardized to a large extent. People may or not get same results depending on the chosen method. The answer is yes for many statistical analyses for given data sets. Once a statistical method is chosen, the results obtained by different users making use of same data-sets are likely to be same. Let us consider some examples showing how such statistical methods are standardized by ISO. The list below highlights a few important ones. (there are many more) Let us assume you are trying to assess the average turn-around-time for a process using some sample data collected for a limited time period. There is an international standard for this and it is named ISO 2602:1980 If you wish compare average performance before and after a particular change, you may like to use ISO 3301:1975 If you want to know whether data capturing mechanism is reliable and shall provide trustworthy data, there is ISO 10012:2003. For detecting and treating out-liers in your data, there is ISO 16269-4:2010 For risk assessment and mitigation, there is ISO 31000:2009 Not all methods provide standard results The answer to the question is NO, if it comes to qualitative methods like Quality Function Deployment, Design FMEA and the like. No two teams are likely to get same results if they use the same methods. While using ideation techniques, the objective is not to get same standard answer but to generate multiple alternatives. You may notice that even such methods are standardized. For example QFD finds a mention under ISO 9000:2000 and Design FMEA is covered under TS 16949. Lean Six Sigma methods are largely standardized. However, methods being standardized does not necessarily mean that we are likely to get same results. The beauty of lean six sigma lies in diversity of available methods. It makes sense to learn more of these so as to consider the most suitable one's for a given situation.

ISO standards mostly deal with "WHAT" and not the "HOW". For example, ISO 9001 is a quality management system that prescribes what should a company do to meet the requirements, get certified and to be able to showcase to their customers that they have a quality assurance system in place. If the same company has to implement Lean Six Sigma, it shall have to carry out Lean Six Sigma projects. Each such project shall delve into "What specifically needs improvement" and "How can the improvement be brought" with the help of world's bet tried and tested methods. ISO and Lean Six Sigma are not comparable. ISO provides generic frameworks, requirements and guidelines, while LSS projects work with sharp focus on a specific problem or improvement area to bring business benefits. With ISO, companies get certified while with use of Lean Six Sigma, they seek better business results. While ISO does not guarantee business results, Lean Six Sigma has grown because of its ability to improve results. With ISO, if certification is the focus, it may not matter how it is achieved as long as it is sustained. But with Lean Six Sigma, success and sustenance is dependent on how well it is understood and driven.

Hi Guest, Thanks for bringing more views. The discussion I started was specifically about manually controlled traffic in a high density peak traffic situation. It is here that one has to wait and the situation creates a valid challenge. Point 2 raised by you does not apply. Point 3 suggests that traffic shall continue to crawl if you have small batches. Point 4 does not apply to the situation. Kindly review your response.