DMAIC: Principles to (Live and) Work By

It’s back to basics today as we discover (or rediscover) DMAIC. DMAIC stands for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. These 5 concepts make up a potent data-driven improvement cycle to direct and drive Six Sigma projects, with the aim of improving production measures within businesses.

It’s not just a concept though, as you can follow these procedural steps to make sure you are applying proper project governance within the Six Sigma framework. If you prefer a more in-depth look at each DMAIC facet, you can head over to 6Sigma.us which has a great series on this here.

Define

You must clearly articulate the problem(s) your business is suffering from. Start with the problem, consider the customers – how does it affect them? – and the critical process outputs – voice-of-the-customer and critical-to-quality. You need to have a clear understanding and statement of your business goals, as well as any potential resources you may have.

You should also know the scope of the project, and a high-level timeline are essential. Pool your current knowledge, write everything down, and work from there. Then you can set goals, and create your dream project team to take charge of things.

Measure

This step allows you to take an objective standpoint when viewing your business’s progress. It’s necessary if you are to establish current baselines that will inform any improvements you wish to make.

Measure, as the name implies, involves the collection and collation of data. Here, you you can establish metric baselines for process improvement. These baselines must be viewed against the concluding performance metrics once the project has been completed, to find objective data on potential improvements that have or have not been made.

Once this is determined, your project team can then decide on the areas to be measured as well as criteria and methodology required. This can involve a lot of effort to assess the viability of the proposed systems for measurement, but it is ultimately rewarding, as good data allows you make the best decisions.

Analyze

Analyze focuses on a few things. You should locate, identify, validate and select the root causes of problems that need to be eliminated. Businesses conducting examinations and improvement implementation will neglect to discover or correct the root cause of production problems. Often, you’ll find this is due to lack of resources (such as time), and will eliminate only the surface symptoms. You need to look deeper and investigate the latent causes.

You will find that root causes vary greatly and any number of potential origins can stem the same problems. Data collection plans are useful as they enable you to validate the root causes and rule out irrelevant issues.

Improve

Improvements should be identified and tested before being implementation. Creativity is a great asset here, so don’t overlook brainstorming or free association to get your solution-engine going. Follow these steps:

• Create;
• Select simplest solutions;
• Test using PDCA cycle;
• Anticipate avoidable risks (based on results using FMEA);
• Create implementation plan;
• Implement solution(s)!

Control

The final stage involves monitoring and maintaining your improvements to ensure continued, sustainable success. You’ll need a control plan, and any documents will need to be updated as appropriate. Your control chart assesses the stability of the improvements made. This helps to ensure relapses do not occur, and your hard-won changes stick around.