The importance of planning in any endeavor is not to be underestimated. When using Six Sigma DMAIC, Lean, or Kaizen to achieve significant process improvement, planning is everything. You wouldn’t attempt to drive a car without knowing how to drive it first. The saying “Measure twice, cut once” is more than appropriate here. It teaches you to be prepared, so that you can make precise, informed decisions guaranteed to deliver effective results. A man once said, “I love it when a plan comes together,” so let us help you with yours!
Starting Out
There are many operational obstacles that develop in a business and are often be too much for managers to deal with alone. This is why they turn to practices like Six Sigma, Lean and Kaizen to help turn their company around. But without effective planning comes confusion, unalignment, disarray, and ultimately failure.
It may even be worth hiring a consultant to help manage your project in its early stages. Consequently, without proper planning, changes you make will often be counter-intuitive to maintaining a strong customer pull-flow system. These changes are also likely to negatively affect the business’s production processes. Likewise, the very same processes you are trying to improve!
Use a Six Sigma Project Charter
If you want to make a substantial difference to your company, the best way to go about it is a Six Sigma Project Charter. Coincidentally, this is the most widely-used process improvement plan available. This acts as your mission statement, a breakdown of everything under consideration. Additionally, this includes the problem, the processes it affects, and any potentially viable solutions. It also provides the drive that keeps the project going. More specifically, it gives the project leader and the workers a detailed, systematic approach to how to implement the proposed changes. Not only does it reduce confusion, it ensures your staff practice effective business methodologies throughout the project.
Training
Training is also important when planning for process improvement. Establishing a successful program can be simplified greatly by ensuring the right staff receive the proper training. Most projects fail due to too much reliance on the leader, with workers turning to them for guidance and direction. Considering the size of some projects, this leads to some leaders becoming overwhelmed. Good leaders should make certain that their efforts are as comprehensive as can be, as many approaches prove to be unable to address the wider needs of the company. By preparing early on to maintain thorough and precise working practices, you will be able to deliver an effective and transformative process improvement project with few difficulties.
Flexibility, Resources, Success
By allowing the plan to remain flexible, you also prepare yourself for any extraneous factors that may not have been accounted for previously. This then allows you to change direction, implement new ideas, or rearrange your team, according to new data. Similarly, efficient and practical allocation of resources is imperative to completing a successful process improvement project. When using resources correctly, you ensure the handling of the program’s creative changes are confident and effective.
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