When considering Voice of the Customer (VOC) initiatives in your organization, are you focused and asking the right questions? Lack of direction and unclear communications create results that produce failure for both the organization and their customers. The real goal of any organization is to be profitable, but when we don’t really listen to the end-users of our product or services, failure is the typical outcome. The simple act of not listening has caused the decline of revenue and profit for organizations, that otherwise offer a superior service or product.

Ask a Customer the Right Questions

Customers simply are looking to satisfy basic human needs with our products or services. In today’s digital age, those communication channels are everywhere, coming into the organization through multitudes of channels. In the course of a simple conversation, a customer will easily divulge information that is vital to the success of the organization. The key is asking the right questions to get the conversation flowing.

To ensure success with the VOC program in an organization, there are three questions that will help you focus the research:

1. What do you want to know? – Have a clear understanding of what information you want from a customer conversation.

2. Who do you want to hear from? – Determining the right group of customers that can answer your questions is crucial.

3. What are you going to do with the information? – Understanding how you are going to take action with the information gathered is critical.

Translating the Conversations

Through these conversations, organizations typically gather generic customer needs. They must take those conversations and go on to translate these generic needs into specific items called critical-to-quality requirements (CTQs). To verify that the CTQs are specific enough, the true test is to ask, Can a formula or detailed operational definition be written to describe this need? The needs should be detailed enough that they allow practitioners to align improvement or design efforts with customer requirements.

If you do not understand what you specifically need to know, you run the risk of not learning anything productive or useful to your VOC efforts.

Check out the “Voice of the Customer and CTQ” video >>>

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As a Lean Six Sigma professional, are you training to get results? Unfortunately, training is one of those things people do because they have to. Taking a training course will help meet the requirements for a promotion or advancement in responsibility. The thought process sometimes is just to take the course or finish the college work to meet a standard.

Training Is Your Most Valuable Asset

Here is the way you must approach training. Training has to become a deeply ingrained and practiced habit. Studies have shown that the most highly successful people spend between $10k-$20k per year, investing in their personal and professional development. It becomes a mindset. The most successful professionals understand that time equals money. Wasting time or spending it in a manner that does not achieve the highest level of results is just like wasting money. For them, training and professional development must be repetitive and of a frequency that deeply embeds the concepts they study. This reputation makes those concepts habits. Habits produce consistent performance.

For Lean and Six Sigma professionals, that means you cannot just take one Green Belt class or learn lean concepts within a workshop, and think that is sufficient to know the material. Consider taking the course multiple times from different sources and instructors. That is where the real learning will take place, and the concepts will start to sink into your long term memory. People often forget the networking benefits of taking classes from different organizations and instructors. Hearing the experiences and observations from your classmates are often as valuable as those from the instructor.

Here are some thoughts to keep in mind when you are approaching a training objective:

• The first exposure to a training class will simply introduce a topic. Most of the content will be lost in your memory in a couple weeks.
• The second exposure will highlight topics you missed in the first session, and remind you what you learned. More of the content will be remembered, but it won’t be clear how to apply all of it.
• The third exposure starts to embed information into your mind and create relevant associations to the work you do. Most of the content will be captured in your long term memory, and you’ll be able to apply most of the concepts to your current job.
• The fourth exposure enables you align more closely with the instructor and conceptualize the information, and think about how you would teach the topic to others, using your own experiences and examples.

As a Master Black Belt, I still go back and take classes that I’ve already taken. I recently took a Green Belt online course, and found it very valuable. I know the content already, but I learned some new ways to explain the concepts, to make it easier for students to understand. It also reminded me about some tools that I often skip or forget to use. It was a valuable use of my time, even though it seems like it would not be necessary.

Too often, I hear people say “but I took Green Belt training 5 years ago, why do I have to take it again?”

Maybe you’ve heard people in your company say something similar. This is the attitude of someone looking to “check the box” and not really learn and apply the content to their work. A mindset change is needed.

Getting Results from Professional Development

As you begin a training experience with Lean Six Sigma classes, get your mindset in order. Approach things in the same way as some of the most successful people from around the globe. Treat your time in the same way as you treat your money. Invest only in training that will improve you and make the most of professional development. Understand that the more difficult training courses should be retaken multiple times (from different instructors) to get the most value from the educational opportunity. Don’t view the retaking of classes as waste, rather think about how the class can serve you in a different way each time. Everyone brings to the table their unique experience and you will get a different perspective on the training objective.

Invest your time generously, and you will build a solid professional reputation and get the highest level of results in your work.

Speaking of training, have you checked out our Six Sigma video series or Toyota Lean training materials?

The post Professional Development: Are You Training to Get Results or Checking the Box? appeared first on 6sigma.

Making time for what is important. That is the trick we all struggle with in our professional schedules. Many find that the demands on their time outpace the time available on the calendar. There are so many professionals out there that truly have a scheduling problem. If you look at their calendars, you will find, more often than not, double and triple bookings of their time. The premise being that when that block of time comes up, they will just have to make a choice on what meeting is the most important at the time. Now, that may be the best solution, but what happens to the other meetings scheduled during that time? How do you get the monster under control and make white space’ for what is important? There are some straightforward strategies to get your time under control and make a priority for important tasks. The first thing is to understand how things get messy.

Making White Space for What’s Important

Operating under the premise is that you have a 40-hour work week and meetings take up a large portion or percentage of that week. Now the question is, is your job to attend those meetings and provide valued input? If you’re a consultant or advisor, then it seems you are on track. However, if your job is to produce things or supervise the production of things, you are not spending time on what is important, which is, to produce things. There is where the rub occurs.

The biggest problem starts with scheduling your work time. Get your schedule consistently lined out with the tasks you are required to do for work, which is, producing things. Block that time out and fiercely protect it. As you schedule the time to do work, then you also must add white space to address problems and issue. As a supervisor, manager, or executive, you will encounter problems or issues that require your attention. These events are either dealt with quickly or they go on a follow-up list and put on the back burner. If they go on the back burner, your business and customers can suffer when those problems are not addressed. When you have saved some white space, you will have time to deal with problems and issues in a timely manner. Problems and issues get fixed, and employees or customers feel their problems are heard and being dealt with.

The best approach you can take is to stop being the only decision maker. You have made yourself into the constraint, since there is only so many hours in a day. One of the key concepts of Lean is to empower employees to make their own decisions, so you don’t have to be involved in every meeting and decision. With proper coaching and mentoring on problem solving, you can raise the skill level of your employees to handle the day-to-day “fires,” so you can spend more time thinking strategically and long-term, which will free up your schedule. This also leads to better decisions by your employees, as they are closer to the problem than you.

Changing the Culture of Scheduling

So, first thing, take control of your schedule. Do not allow others to make your schedule. Block out your work time and put in enough white space to resolve the challenges of business. Protect those blocks of time with a passion, and delegate attendance to your staff who can better make the decisions. If they make the wrong decision (in your mind), then coach them for next time.

When you are aligning your work process with company goals, things will become easier and more efficient. Remember, a goal-oriented calendar with white space for problem resolution (that only you can decide upon) is the most effective tool you have available, and aligns perfectly with Lean quality management processes.

Learn more about the Management for Daily Improvement program, a  curriculum that will show you exactly how Toyota practices Lean (Toyota Production System).

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As you stare across the piles or paper and clutter that marks your workspace in the office, you get a feeling of resigned frustration. You know that this collection of organized chaos cannot possible be the best way to work, but it makes total sense to you. Others may see it as a disorganized mess, but you see a well organized system. Only you can decipher the code of chaos. Well, today is the day to make a change! Clear the minefield of chaos and restore order and discipline to that space you call a desk.

Using the 5S Tool to Restore Order

Today is National Clean Off Your Desk Day. To regain control over your workspace, it is the day to take action. Experts agree that the average worker has on average 36 hours of work in those mountains of clutter on the workspace. Those same workers spend about three hours a week searching’ the chaos for specific things they need to get the job done. What a waste!

Now it’s time to take charge and organize the chaos and clutter. We cannot think of a better tool to help you take control than the 5S Tool used with Lean Six Sigma methodology.

5S Tool

Sort – The first step is to go through all the clutter and determine what must be retained at the worksite. Only essential files, paperwork and documents are allowed to remain. When you find something that doesn’t belong, return it to the correct person or department or simply get rid of it.

Straighten – Now all you have left at the workspace are essentials. You must now give each of these a single, proper place. You’ve heard the saying, A place for everything, and everything in its place. That’s exactly what we’re talking about. Be creative and organized in establishing places for things so that returning an item to where it belongs is natural or easy.

Scrub – To help maintain the order you’ve created, thoroughly clean everything remaining at the workspace. The time and money spent on polishing or cleaning, will be returned manyfold in a more positive attitude and with greater productivity.

Standardize – Make things in your workspace consistent with files and organizers. Model your workspace after the most organized person in your work area. Find out how they organize and work to duplicate their system. If everyone does the process the same way, things will become significantly more efficient.

Sustain – This final step means to put a schedule and system in place for maintaining and refreshing the 5S’d workspace. It is your responsible to maintain and sustain.

The Dawn of a New Day

Your workspace is now clutter free, organized and streamlined. It is like a new day. You feel more refreshed and confident. You get things done quicker, with more accuracy. It feels great to come to work and you are proud of your space. Success is about habits and the 5S tool allows you to have a habit that is easy to practice. Now, let’s get to work!

Get your free download of the 5S tool here.

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Understanding the Value of Capability Analysis

Understanding the true value of the variables in a process can be defined by the capability analysis. The capabilities and value of a process can be determined by comparing the width of the process spread to the width of the specification spread. When a process is capable, the process spread is smaller than the specification spread. When the process is centered and within the specifications, it is more capable of consistently producing product that meets customer expectations. The benefits is that it offers a key measure of performance that is easily translated in a visual representation that is applicable across all industries. Further value of the capability analysis is that it estimates the proportion of product that does not meet specifications. It provides calculations for the percentage of the time your process will fall above the upper specification, or below the lower specification. This can be compared to the yield, to determine how many failures are due to variation (common cause), and how many are due to outliers and mistakes (special cause). It also provides a summary number that explains how capable the process is of staying within the specification limits (known as Cpk and Ppk).

Here is an example:

If we are collecting data on the weight of cereal boxes, and we have to meet specifications between 85 and 92, then you can see below that we will not always meet those specifications. Sometimes the data falls below 85 (about 2.45%), and sometimes the data goes above 92 (about 7.1%). Therefore, this process is not capable. It will fail to meet specifications about 9.55% of the time. We should expect a yield of only 90% unless we reduce variation, shift the average, or work with our customers to define new specification limits.

If the process specifications were 80 and 100, then you can see below that the process would be capable. There is no chance that we will have data outside the specifications. This is performing close to a Six Sigma level (if the nearest specification is at least six standard deviations away).

Bottom line, it summarizes a significant amount of information in one chart.

Finding Value for Customers

Statistically speaking, you are assessing the capability to make this highest quality product by comparing the width of the variation in your process with the width of the specification limits. The capability analysis is crucial to achieve this with your project. By using this tool, you will be able turn your efforts from just meeting established requirements to applying change that reaps true quality improvements that are consistent. Ultimately, you will be able to offer the highest amount of quality and customer satisfaction from your process with the lowest amount of variation.

Capability Analysis is a valuable tool across the Lean Six Sigma practice.  If you would like to learn more about Capability Analysis, consider the following items we offer: Histogram Generator (free), Process Capability (Intro and Advanced) eBook (Shmula Pro members), and Six Sigma training videos (Shmula Pro members). You can also attend a Green Belt or Black Belt training program, or Minitab training class.

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Can Electronic Health Records (EHR) expose quality opportunities in our current Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) mapping process? A recent study shows that EHR information can provide significant opportunities to improve FMEA mapping in the quality process. FMEA mapping simply outlines steps in any given process, then identifies and prioritizes the potential opportunities for failure. By using this systematic and prioritized method, teams can make consistent and continuous improvement. Conversely, when information is left unidentified in the FMEA, can real improvement be made?

Quality Opportunities Missed in FMEA

To understand this potential opportunity, researchers recently conducted a study where actual patient data was utilized and provided to a mock quality committee. As with any other FMEA, the committee put together their FMEA mapping based on the information provided to them. The research team then compared the information in the committee’s FMEA mapping the actual data identified in the EHR. The results were enlightening. The study showed that 35% of the processes completed were not identified in the committees FMEA mapping. More illuminating was the fact that people from 12 different categories or positions were involved in the discharge process, and not in the original FMEA mapping. Further, what the original FMEA mapping identified as one activity in their map, EHR data showed it was actually a multi-stepped process, involving completely different people.

EHR Strengthens FMEA Mapping

This study clearly shows the potential EHR has to strengthen and extend the reach of current FMEA mapping processes. Significant amounts of data previously undiscovered in EHR could have a dramatic effect on the success of FMEA mapping. Lean Six Sigma professionals should look to EHR as an untapped resource that could expose significant opportunities for success in your quality improvement opportunities. Use the EHR to drill down to any quality improvement opportunities that are truly hidden gems of quality.

Want help? You can access a FMEA template for FREE >>>

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