Q 252. PICK chart is used for organizing and categorizing process improvement ideas in Define phase. Explain the usage of PICK chart with examples.

 

 

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Wiki Definition: A Pick chart is a Lean Six Sigma tool, developed by Lockheed Martin, for organizing process improvement ideas and categorizing them 

 

Pick chart is a 2*2 matrix in which the vertical axis talks about the complexity/difficulty and horizontal axis talks about cost benefits.

Easy	Payoff Low	Payoff Hard
	Possible	Implement
Hard	Kill	Challenge

 

What does each of the Quadrant means?

• Possible – Low payoff, easy to do
• Implement – High pay off, easy to do
• Kill – Low payoff, hard to do
• Challenge – High payoff, hard to do

How is it useful:

Pick chart is pretty useful when there are many process improvement or problem solving ideas and we want to categorize them as per the 4 aforementioned quadrants. This will give an insight to the mgmt of an organisation where each idea is vis-à-vis its ROI and how much impact it can have on the organisation’s customer(s).

Let us see what each of these quadrants means to an idea 

 

Possible:    An Idea placed in this quadrant means that it (idea) will take less time to complete, either due to less complexity or less difficulty level, and implementation of the idea would result in a lesser ROI.

Implement:    An Idea placed in this quadrant, means that it (idea) will take less time to complete, either due to less complexity or less difficulty level, and implementation of the idea would result in a greater ROI.

Kill:   An Idea placed in this quadrant means that it (idea) will take more time to complete, either due to more complexity or more difficulty level, and implementation of the idea would result in a lesser ROI

Challenge:    An Idea placed in this quadrant means that it (idea) will take more time to complete, either due to more complexity or more difficulty level, and implementation of the idea would result in a greater ROI.

Let us see examples for each of these quadrants. 

 

Examples:

Let me provide examples from software industry.

Possible: Imagine an excel sheet is used for PMO activities. Now a person with a VBA(a microsoft application language that can be used for MS products such as excel and actually good for writing macros) knowledge, writes a few lines of code and automates programatically some of the complex things in that excel in a short span of time. This speeds up the work for the PMO team and gives the customer a fool proof mechanism to look at the cost sheet and saves some time for all the stakeholders. Nothing more than that

 

Implement:  Imagine development team tinkers with an existing licensed automation testing or a custom automation framework to an open sourced automation framework which is relatively easier to do (than creating automation environment from scratch) and provides the customer a cost effective, end customer satisfying solution.

Kill: Imagine development team does refactoring of an existing code which can help the support (maintenance) team to easily maintain the code in the future but does not provide any great tangible benefits/hard savings for the customer

Challenge:

Imagine a typical agile development team improves its unit testing, functional testing from being manual to automated testing.  This will expedite the testing time of the application and can issues can be quickly found and addressed. This will result in more tangible benefits for the customer

Conclusion:

The examples given are just hypothetical to drive home the point as what each quadrant could have as ideas.  (Same) Examples given above can go into different quadrants depending upon several parameters.  Thus you can see how PICK charts help in categorizing the process improvement ideas.

 

                            

A PICK chart is an efficient Lean Six Sigma tool, which was originally  proposed by Lockheed Martin,  for  selecting among different process improvement ideas and methods during define phase of lean six sigma project. 

A pick chart  depicts  visual comparison of  different actionable tools, with reference to their ease of implementation and their effectiveness or likely improvement gain.  

In the Visual chart, all  the methods can be grouped in 4 categories on a 2*2 matrix; one axis connotes a graded  scale of payoff/ benefits/improvement , another  axis denotes  ease of implementation. The ease of implementation includes the cost factor as well as availability of other resources and compliance to the method. 

PICK stands for Possible, Implement, Challenge, Kill

Possible:- Low payoff, easy to implement

These are the ideas, that can be possibly implemented, but the exact payoff needs to be assessed and  compared to higher payoff ideas.

 

Implement:- High payoff, easy to do

These are the ideas, which are to be  immediately implemented, without further deliberations.

Challenge- High payoff, Hard to do

These are the ideas with good benefits, but because of  constraints, it’s difficult to implement. The challenges posed need to be overcome to  reap the benefits of the ideas. These ideas are not discarded immediately, and constraints optimization is best tried  and still if its not being overcome, then they are rejected.

Kill- Low payoff, Hard to do

These ideas are to be immediately discarded without much consideration, as there is low benefit and high constraints in implementing ideas.

The PICK charts can be implemented anywhere, in any kind of business with much ease and can be quite useful in framing the improvement ideas usually after brainstorming sessions in define phase.

 

 

 

 Image reference: www.txm.com

PICK chart a lean six sigma tools was developed by Lockheed Martin for Lean Production. Initially this was developed to prioritize implementation of process improvements/Kaizen in plant

 

 

 

• P=Possible-Low Pay off and Easy to Do
• I=Implement-High Pay off and Easy to do
• C=Challenge-High Pay off and Hard to do
• K=Kill- Low Pay off and Hard to do

 

 

  

This is 2X2 matrix in which 4 Category available for decision where X axis has scale of benefits or payoff and Y axis has easiness of implementation. Then we have to make a decision and see in which quadrant of PICK chart which is divided into categories viz.  Implement, Possible, kill and Challenge.

 

Example:-In Kaizen month We have collected 310 Kaizen/Improvement and CFT is going to review .

 

Basic of Review is

 

 

• High Impact / High Investment/Pay Off & Low Investment/ ROI/Pay Off
• Easy to do/Hard to do

 

 

KAIZEN /IDEA SUMMARY
	Low pay Off	High Payoff
Easy	132(Possible)	86(Implement)
Hard	38(kill)	54(challenge)
Total	170	140

 

 

Team focus and priortize first on low hanging fruits which we can easily implements which are easy and High Pay off  than will plan for Hard and High Pay off .

 

 

• ·   First we focus “Implement” ideas the ones that should be acted upon,
• ·   the “Challenge” ideas may still be viable if there’s an easier way to do them.
• ·   “Possible” should probably only be done if there’s spare time.
• ·  And “Kill” ideas are generally dismissed, but Kill-ideas should be revised and reviewed into accomplishable ideas.

 

 

The steps to be followed to create PICK chart are as below :
Step 1: Raise the question and put it on the chart. Ask the team the question and then the team is supposed to answer the question at different stages and ensure that the data collected is relevant.
 

Step 2: Every component of the data should be post on a different note like a sticky note. Arrange these notes on the left side of the chart.

Step 3: Then each team member should read all notes and draw it’s relevance and importance. Then each team member should decide themselves whether the idea should remain as the element of significant sample. Then these notes should be removed and stick on the other side of the chart. Then, the data is filtered enough to be processed by tools like affinity diagram, etc.
- All team members write open-ended questions that are addressed to the learning objectives.
- All team members have their own notes.
- The mediator randomly picks one note from the group.
- After all the notes are read, then the mediator will ask the group if there is any question about the idea which is just read.
- Then mediator collects all notes that are being raised. Then make clusters of notes.
- The above steps are repeated again and again until all notes are set in the cluster.
- Then these clusters are subdivided in small groups and titles are assigned to each small cluster.

Applications:-

 

• Identify Projects on the base of priority
• Make & Buy Decision
• Kaizen Implementation Priority
• Data Analysis
• Education
• Marketing
• Agile software development

 

 

Use of PICK charts in define phase of six sigma

 

- to evaluate pre-process unprocessed data.

-to reduce big raw data to get to the reach base problem.

-to broken down the data into the needs and is often called as pre-processing.

-to analyze customer responses and extracting key phrases to verify the needs and their context.

-to ensure the traceability to the unique starting place. This will help in organizing the data for further classification.

-Prioritize the Project selection on the basis of PICK chart,

Benchmark Six Sigma Expert View by Venugopal R

Many methods are used for prioritizing project ideas as well as for prioritizing solutions during the ‘Define’ and ‘Improve’ phases.

 

An organization always has limited resources but has to handle multiple tasks. For any on-going business, there is bound to be a flood of day-to-day tasks and there would also be some that keep cropping up suddenly. It could be chasing a new business opportunity, addressing a major customer issue, production issues related to material, resources or equipment... and so on.

 

Despite the best attention and support provided by the executive leadership, it will usually be a challenge to mobilize a set of improvement ideas, get the teams involved, convert them to projects and get a continuous improvement program going. Hence it is important to involve the teams from the beginning and use a relatively objective approach to collectively decide where the priority of focus needs to be.

 

Effort vs Pay-Off Chart

GE came up with Effort vs Pay-Off Chart to classify and prioritize a list of solutions during the ‘Improve’ phase. The chart can certainly be made use of in the ‘Define’ phase as well to prioritize project ideas. The classification for each quadrant of this chart is as below, which is self explanatory.

1. Low Effort, Low Pay Off (Low Hanging Fruits)
2. Low Effort, High Pay Off (Jewels)
3. High Effort, High Pay Off (High Hard)
4. High Effort, Low Pay Off (Drop)

 

 

PICK chart

Similar to the E vs PO chart, the ‘PICK’ chart was developed by Lockheed Martin to classify a list of generated project ideas into 4 categories viz.

1. Possible (Easy to do, Low Pay off)
2. Implement (Easy to do, High Pay off)
3. Challenge (Difficult to do, High Pay off)
4. Kill (Difficult to do, Low Pay off)

 

They are represented using a four-quadrant window as below:

 

 

PICK chart along with PPI

It is recommended that the use of PICK chart may be further enhanced by combining along with the Pareto Priority Index (PPI). The PPI method provides a numerical value for each selected project as per the below formula:

 

PPI = (Savings x Prob. Of success) / (cost x time of completion)

 

The numerator of the PPI formula provides a quantification in terms of the Pay-Off along with its probability of success. It not only considers the savings, but also the probability of success, which is certainly dependent on the level of difficulty to implement. This helps to represent the X axis of the PICK chart.

 

Higher ‘Effort’ could require higher work hours and higher cost. Hence the denominator would represent the Y-axis of the PICK chart.

 

On the PICK chart we have 10 project ideas plotted, spread across the four quadrants, depending upon their X and Y co-ordinates.

 

A more detailed discussion about the PPI chart could be a separate topic of discussion.

PICK Chart.pdf

PICK stands for Possible, Implement, Challenge and Kill

 

PICK chart is basically a visual tool used for decision making. This tool could be used after brainstorming and may be used not only in Define phase but other phases of Six Sigma Project as well. In fact one could use it without doing a Six Sigma project as well.

 

PICK chart helps ideas that are Possible, Implement, Challenge and Kill basis two criteria

1. Effort in implementation

2. Pay off after implementation

 

 

Depending on the quadrant where a particular idea falls, that specific action is taken. 

 

Areas where this could be useful for businesses

1. Project selection

2. Solution selection

3. Investment option selection

4. Strategic decision making

PICK chart (Possible, Implement, Challenge and Kill) chart is a visual tool used to categorise process improvement ideas generated after brainstorming sessions. When a team is faced with multiple improvement ideas, PICK chart helps in deciding which ideas should be implemented easily and have a high pay-off.

A 2 x 2 matrix has 4 categories. The horizontal axis shows the scale of payoff or benefits and the vertical axis shows ease of implementation.

POSSIBLE - Low payoff, easy to do

IMPLEMENT - High payoff, easy to do

CHALLENGE - High payoff, hard to do

KILL - Low payoff, hard to do

 

 

 

We will get a better idea of what to do next, once the options are sorted out.  

Implement  ideas are the ones that should be acted upon,

Challenge ideas can be done only when an easier way is found.

Possibles  can be done later in spare time.  

Kill  ideas are mostly dismissed.

Everyone has given the correct answer and explained the concept well.

 

R Rajesh, Ajay Sharma and Ram Rajagoplan have been selected as the winners as they provided relevant life like examples of using the PICK Chart.