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Monique — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:54:19 +0000

Are Your Technical Service Goals in Sync?

Monique — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 15:05:21 +0000

Are you accomplishing your goals for your team? Have you designed an organizational structure with unnecessary competition and red tape? If you feel like your wheels are spinning fast, but you are still moving in slow motion then take time to consider what you can do to breakthrough and encourage technical service excellence.

Audio Transcript

Hello there! This is Monique here with LeanSixSigmaSource.com and the topic of today’s blog post is, “Are Your Technical Service Goals in Sync?” Now this particular blog post has to do with my recent experience and visit to MW Windows in Rocky Mount, Virginia. MW Windows is a manufacturer of windows and window products. After my visit, I will never look at a window the same again. It’s not just a pane of glass. This is much more involved in the particular windows. Different sizes, different shapes, different insulations, sashes, the whole works. It’s a very, very involved process and I am very pleased that allowed me the opportunity to visit their facility.

Now what stuck out on that visit was the fact that they indicated to me that they do something a little differently, then what I’ve heard of in the past. And what they do is they have a technical services team. That team is comprised of process engineering, quality professionals, and also the maintenance staff, so that is all under one umbrella at MW Windows. And I find that very fascinating. You know before I actually went to visit the facility, I shared this particular detail with my father because he is a production supervisor at a manufacturing plant and when I told him that he was just like in awe, like really. So, hearing his feedback from a supervisor’s prospective, um – why is that so important? Well, the issue here is that when it comes to technical services, you have internal and external customers. Your internal customers are gonna be the people that are directly involved with the process. That could be fabrication, that could be within your assembly area, like my father. That could also be quality, in terms of quality of materials and things you receive into the plant. So, technical services touches a number of different areas, but the bottomline is that you want to be able to provide the best services to the customer. Is it a disservice to assembly, if they get bad parts from fabrication? Yes! Does that fall under [the] technical services umbrella? Yes! Is it a disservice to your external customers, if they have to return a product because it doesn’t function properly? Yes! Does that fall under technical services? Yes!

And the issue here is that when you have them separate, you often find that there are separate agendas. When there are critical issues that are directly impacting your customer, those particular functions support each other. They have a very interdependent relationship okay. So a lot of times you’ll find out that maybe your drawings don’t have the proper tolerances on it or something. Or maintenance needs to check out an equipment issue to make sure the equipment’s operating to specification. Or your particular process has not been designed to be capable of performing the process the customer desires. So, they are really, very closely related to each other.

Now the issue comes in when you have them separate sometimes you have to break through red tape to get things done and bottomline if the plant manager comes in, operations manager or whatnot comes in and has a particular issue, they don’t really care who gets it done – they just want it done. And when you have separate agendas, it just causes confusion because you’ve got one group working this way, one group working this way and not everybody’s on the same page or even aware that their services are needed to help push a particular issue toward a resolution. And that’s the bottomline a resolution. So, of you’re thinking to yourself – how would I go about encouraging this type of organizational structure where I work. The best thing that I would recommend, it’s a technique that I learned in the book, I think it was Kanban Demystified about pitching the team approach. If you have them separately you may have some Senior positions involved, but the bottomline is that you want to be able to work together to help that customer. Having high visibility of what everyone’s working on, is going to make your process more capable and prevent you from having all those unnecessary approvals, barriers to implementation and things like that. So, that’s one thing that you can do to empower the group to tackle the issue amongst themselves and also have the authority to do so based on the organizational structure, so you don’t get people on separate agendas, separate objectives and things of that nature.

So, when you think about the root causes of issues, you can drill down to methods, materials, people, equipment, measurement technique, or the environment. So, it just makes sense to have process engineering, your quality professionals, and then your maintenance staff all under one umbrella. Tell me what you think. This is my opinion, but tell me what you think. Please feel free to leave me a comment on my blog here. I want to thank you for listening. This is Monique here with LeanSixSigmaSource.com.

Made To Order Products Deliver Made To Order Stories [VIDEO]

Monique — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:31:45 +0000

When evaluating your current enterprise strategies, do you consider your custom product more of a hassle than a goldmine? Are you have trouble going from maybe on time to just in time? Stay the course and consider the inherent value that your made to order products deliver to your customers?

In the midst of economic opportunities, it is important to take time a formulate a game plan on how to do more with less. Now, more than ever consumers are becoming increasingly more narcissistic and want their buying experience to revolve around them. The truth is that businesses would do well to differentiate themselves from the competition by catering to this need. People want to feel like what they are buying is of high quality, affordable, and that no one else on the block or the planet for that matter, has on like it. From Courture gowns, to platinum-colored M&Ms that read, “My Life Would Suck Without Lean“, consumers are obsessed and in fact expect to have a wide variety of choices that exude their style and sense of individuality.

How Can Businesses Keep Fresh?

The first thing you can do is evaluate virtual touch points on your website. Customers are not just searching for jewelry, but rather custom jewelry. Does your website reflect the fact that you offer custom jewelry? If not, it’s time for a makeover. The checkout process is also a point to review. Does your customer get a range of options to customize their purchase?

Make Components Interchangeable

Often what can hold you back from smoothing out your lead time for made to order product is the design of the actual components. Take time to zero in on how each part fits together. Do you have universal connections, such as common hole sizes and drill patterns? Standardizing can reduce the need to have a large number of unique components and simplify training for assembly. Interchangability is key to keeping up with demand and designing for Six Sigma quality.

Deliver an Experience that Sells Itself

Once you overcome the technically challenges, it is important to understand the value that you are delivering to your customer. Marketing your made to order products will be easier than ever. A happy customer will be busting at the seems to tell someone else about their experience. A story you won’t have to spend a dime to tell because the consumer will tell it for you. In a flat world that is becoming more comfortable with free social media tools - everyone has a voice and can connect with friends, family, and business associates in an instant. What would you want your customers to say about you?

“I just bought this boring shoe that everyone else has.”

“I just made my own shoe with my own name on it and NO ONE else has one like it!”

[See post to watch Flash video]

Travel Light? Enter to Win Apple Macbook Air!

Monique — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 12:07:35 +0000

Breaking News! John Traveler of EightHourJourney.com wants you to travel light. He’s giving away an Apple Macbook Air!

Don’t miss out on your opportunity to win this ultra-light, super-sleek Apple laptop. I’m entered to win. . .Are you entered?

Well, you have no time to waste - Contest ends June 30th, 2009 at Midnight EST

Winner will be announced July 6th, 2009

For more information on the Go Mobile Contest – Visit www.eighthourjourney.com

Why Your Business Needs a Continuous Improvement Blog

Monique — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:35:10 +0000

Sharing online can be the source of tremendous rewards for many businesses and organizations. A blog is an excellent way to connect with people outside your facility, location, department, or division. Whether you decide to share via the internet or intranet, there is no better way to chisel away the walls of communication.

Here are four reasons why you should start a continuous improvement blog.

Connect with Multiple Locations: In order to avoid feelings of isolation, you can have a common platform to share successes, stumbling blocks, best practices, or benchmarks. Within a large organization it may be easy to become disconnected from locations in different times zones. Your company blog can be a medium for collaboration as well as a tool to help reduce variation in standard operating procedures.
Develop Unity in the Organization: As Forrest Breyfogle III teaches at Smarter Solutions, there should be two levels of planning within the organization – Enterprise planning and Project Planning. Enterprise planning is the 10,000 foot view of the organization or the high level processes. The project level is more of the functional, daily operations planning. Whatever you are working on the project level should be directly tied to key enterprise level strategic goals and objectives. The enterprise level metrics should be the same for the project level. Everyone should be focused on the same goals. Communicating on your blog would be an easy way for satellite locations to get direct feedback from corporate to confirm that you are indeed working on the right things, at the right time, and avoid project duplications. Employees can stay up to date by subscribing to company RSS feeds via email.
Upload Training Materials: With business process improvement projects you will map out new standards of work or establish new procedures for a particular function of the organization. When you present project updates or tollgates, you will be responsible for releasing the details of the changes implemented. Keep stakeholders and process owners in the loop of new expectations by posting the new standard work on the blog. Get instant feedback to ensure the message was understood and clearly communicated. Videos are also a great way to format training and accommodate multiple learning styles. This training will also archive your steps toward meeting strategic goals and objectives.
Shareholder Value: Publicly traded organizations can benefit from blogs by keeping shareholders up to date on improvements and having a medium to evaluate their return on investment. You will always have to submit SEC filings, but what a better way to add value to the relationship than by providing a multimedia portal for two-way, transparent communication.

Wordpress.org is an excellent place to start to get your own continuous improvement blog started today!

I would love to hear your feedback on this post – Does Your Organization Currently Use a Blog?

FMEA: How To Perform a Failure Mode and Effects Analysis Tutorial

Monique — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 06:19:46 +0000

FMEA

stands for Failure Mode and Effects Analysis. This DMAIC tool is used to evaluate risk in a process. FMEA will help to improve the quality and safety of work tasks. Using this SigmaXL template will allow you to document a baseline for improvement and provide compelling data to confirm a need for changes to the current process. Detection level is critical to quantify the cost of poor quality. You would never want to pass on a defect to a customer or create an environment that puts employees at a risk of injury. FMEA encourages a proactive approach when used to assess risk in newly designed products or processes. This tutorial demonstrates how to use SigmaXL software to record before and after risk levels. View video for more information on this technique.

Used in DMAIC Phase(s). . . .

Analyze
Improve
Control

To learn more about Six Sigma certification or to view a course demo, visit the Six Sigma Training page.

The Misuse & Abuse of the Term – Efficient

Monique — Wed, 27 May 2009 12:43:10 +0000

If you are following me on Twitter, you might remember that Monday I sent out a series of tweets expressing why I feel the term “efficient” is often misused and abused in regard to business process performance.

This morning the most recent entry in my Lean Six Sigma news feed was the following Spokesman Review story:

City adds job to promote efficiency

Six Sigma overseer will cost $120,000

Staff writer, Jonathan Brunt, goes on to state

“As city leaders craft plans to lay off dozens of employees to meet an expected shortfall in next year’s budget, they decided Tuesday to create a new high-paying job responsible for overseeing ideas to save money.

The Spokane City Council approved the position – at a cost of about $120,000 a year in pay and benefits – that will promote government efficiency based on Lean Six Sigma, a business-efficiency program popularized by General Electric and other companies. “

My concern is that he describes Lean Six Sigma as a “business-efficiency program.”

What’s wrong with that description?

Lean Six Sigma is a systematic approach to identify, measure and reduce (if possible, eliminate) variation or waste in a process. The business system should operate to produce profit. If you are spending more than you are making you won’t have a business. After the non-value added activities are elimated or reduced the Lean methodology gives you the tools to then focus on adding value to process. Unfortunately some companies fail to understand this and bail before they get to this pivotal point. What people fail to realize that there is usually so much waste in the process that you forget to go back and add value later. This fallicy has led to layoffs being touted as Lean initiatives, which is far removed from the truth. I think Ron von Stekelenborg said it best this morning on Twitter.

@leanstekel Cost-cutting is like cutting into fat as well as muscles; lean only removes fat

I do find it refreshing that the Council voted 6-0 in favor of hiring a business process improvement manager.

How is the term “efficient” misused?

I think the term efficient is abused or misused when individuals neglect to quantify and define quality metrics. Unfortunately, some use the term and never qualify with relevance or a description. To give you an example you might think of a process such as an online checkout transaction.

The organization might have reviewed the process and determined that the current process frustrates an overwhelming majority of clients, citing too many clicks are required to complete transaction. The critical to quality metric should be defined as the number of page clicks required to complete checkout. So, if you improve the process such that it now requires one click checkout rather than six clicks. Then yes, that is a more efficient approach and a value to the customer. It’s relative to the process and can be expressed as a number.

Another example that comes to mind is that say a mobile phone manufacturer wants to reduce the complexity of assembly by reducing the number of unique components for a design. So instead of having one unique part for every digit and character on a phone, you may decide to develop on complete keypad. If you previously had 18 unique keys and the keypad drops you down to one unique component, then you reduced the number of unique components by 17.

So, again I would not describe this effort as just efficient. I have defined the metrics that are critical to quality and express the improvement in terms of the metric not blanket, vague statements like, “It’s more efficient”. Without a number, I’m not going to take your word for it that it’s more efficient.

Although, Brunt may have butchered the true meaning of what is Lean Six Sigma, he did a much better job of later citing in example of an efficiency improvement in the following statement,

“Danek said Six Sigma has already made the city more efficient, leading the city to streamline its approval process for contracts that don’t require City Council support from an average of 29 days to 10 days.”

During your next meeting or discussion, don’t let colleagues get away with labeling something as efficient without evidence. What is the ocular proof or is it just smoke and mirrors jargon?

I want to hear what you think. Leave a comment below. Do you think the term “efficient” is often misused and abused?

How to Use Twitter for Developing Valuable Business Relationships

Monique — Mon, 25 May 2009 22:04:12 +0000

Are struggling to figure out how Twitter fits into your business model? Have you read or heard that twittering is good for your business, but you are frustrated because you are not getting the results you want?

Well, if you have had this experience I would invite you to reflect back on the reason why you joined Twitter.

Why Use Twitter for Business?

Twitter is a means to communicate with other people in an abbreviated format. You can share your current activities, thoughts, and experiences. As a business strategy, it’s also a medium to connect with individuals who may be interested in your products, services, or profession. That seems like a good concept, but in the excitement of emerging into the Twittersphere, signing up and getting settled in; it’s easy to get distracted. You may have decided to setup some Twitter automation services to automatically follow or unfollow. But, if your focus is adding value to your business this may be a high price for convenience.

What is the Value of a Follow?

If you decided to automatically follow you may be losing sight of the intangible value of a follow. I made the same mistake on my personal Twitter account and had to do the following assessment to re-calibrate my strategy.

My Twue Life Story – The Short Version

I started twittering two weeks ago with two separate accounts one personal account and one account for my blog Lean Six Sigma Source. As soon as I joined, I began following my favorite bloggers, authors, etc. Then later setup autofollow on personal account, but disabled autofollow in blog account. Well, my follower count blew up on my personal account. People were coming from everywhere following me. I thought it was cool. Until I realized, that I lacked interaction with the people I started autofollowing. I saw fewer tweets from the people I was really interested in. I began to feel lost in a twitterstream and frustrated until. . .

I read the most recent post from Yaro Starak titled, “You Are As Good As the People Around You.” The two of the key takeaway points were. . .

1. Become a leader in your industry by being better, more prolific, and more helpful than everyone else in your industry (this will take time).

2. Find people who are equally motivated, talented, and committed as you – your current online peers – and form relationships with them now.

Then, it hit me that I was doing this all wrong. I realized how could I be a leader if I’m following everyone and their mother? Or if I want to connect with others I view as valuable, how can I see what they are saying if I have a lot of noise or waste in the process. I had to figure out how to reduce the noise to let the value re-surface and focus vital few. As a result, I dropped from following 640 to following 19 twitters.

Here’s what I did and what you can do to come back into the light, build valuable connections, and look forward to tweeting with purpose.

Five Step Value Added Action Plan

1. Disable Autofollow

2. Assess Which Followers Have Interacted You via Direct Message or @Reply

3. If Still No Interaction With That Segment In Your Following Group – Determine If You Believe The Connection Is Still Valuable

If connection Is Still Valuable – Keep Following

4. Move Valuable Twitters You Are Following into VIP list via Hummingbird

5. Unfollow Everyone Else That’s Not VIP

The Result – I saw the sunlight. The clouds parted and the sun came out. Without all the noise I could actually see and hear what all my valuable following group members or VIPs were saying. Which was something I couldn’t do as of this morning. This is my strategy now and as Joel Comm states in his bestselling book, Twitter Power: How To Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time - ”There are no rules.” So you have to find what works for you and implement your own action plan based on your business goals and objectives. Align your strategy with those points in mind.

Remember, you have to interact to build relationships or prove you are worthy of following. Lead my making valuable contributions and make genuine efforts to help others in the process.

Take time to ask yourself – What do you value most?

Tell me by commenting to this post – How Has Twitter Helped Your Business?

RUN CHART: What is a Run Chart?

Monique — Sun, 17 May 2009 17:15:39 +0000

A Run Chart

is a time-ordered series data plot used to observe the performance of a process. Run charts are often shown on daily visual management boards to track key performance indicators. Recording daily trends can help identify abnormalities or variations in your process. You will want to record data in a run chart prior to establishing control limits in later phases of DMAIC project cycle. This tutorial demonstrates how to use SigmaXL software to test for randomness in a data set. View video for more information on this technique.

Used in DMAIC Phase(s). . . .

Measure
Analyze

To learn more about Six Sigma certification or to view a course demo, visit the Six Sigma Training page.

Are You Sick of Chronic Complainers?

Monique — Mon, 04 May 2009 15:14:21 +0000

As a change agent, we lead groups of cross functional teams from all levels of the organization. Soft skills training is invaluable to effective leadership. This training will enable you to direct the change adoption process. For every change there is usually some form of resistance. CAVE dweller will seem to be lurking in the shadows ready to pounce. The term CAVE dweller was coined in the 1990 publication, “IS LATEST CRITICISM WORTHWHILE TALK OR JUST WORTHLESS?” by Bo Poertner. CAVE is an acronym for Citizens Against Virtually Everything. In my career, I have been opposed by persons that could be considered CAVE dwellers. I found myself ill-prepared on how to respond early on. It wasn’t until I had some mangagement training that enhanced ability to react appropriately.

Change Agent Soft Skills Training Tip

In every Lean Six Sigma project you are challenged to maintain forward momentum and when you get feedback like, “This is not going to work!” Don’t let this stop you in your tracks. It is important for you to acknowledge the complaint and turn the complaint into a constructive opportunity for the person to contribute.

I love the way Tim Ferriss defines complaining: “describing an event or person negatively without indicating next steps to fix the problem.”

Encourage the complainer to offer a solution to the problem. This takes you out of the equation and focuses the attention on the problem. The beauty of this method is that you will gain buy-in if the team agrees this is a good idea. You don’t have to have all the good ideas – this is a team effort. When the objector sees that the team values the suggestion they will scream from the mountain tops that this was their idea. Congratulations, you just earned an evangelist. So if anyone else not on the team opposes they will back you up.

Not All Complaints are Bad

The worst thing you can do is silence a complaint. Remember, customer complaints are the catalysts of continuous improvement. Here are a couple of examples:

“I had to call Tech Support multiple times before my issue was resolved.”

Dish Network won the J.D. Power Award by addressing this complaint with One Call Resolution Training Success

“I hate waiting behind a person with a cart-full of items, when I only need to buy this one tube of toothpaste.”

Hence, the development of Express & Self Checkout Lines

Complaints do happen, but transform complaints into an exchange of solutions to problems, rather than a counterproductive rant. How long do you think you can go without complaining? 24 Hours? 5 Days?

How about 3 weeks! In the book, A Complaint Free World: How to Stop Complaining and Start Enjoying the Life You Always Wanted, you can take the challenge to Stop Complaining dead in its tracks.