4 Concepts of Six Sigma That Can Help You Achieve Your Objectives at Work

Trying to achieve your objectives at work without a proper roadmap or plan in place is pure insanity. This is the same as going into a battle expect to emerge victorious without taking any weapons with you.

There are 4 concepts of Six Sigma that will help you emerge victorious in battle and this article will talk about them. Not only can these concepts be used to make improvements in how a person works, but they can also be used to achieve personal objectives as well.

1. Have a clear picture of the necessary improvement you need to make

When you say to yourself that you want things to be better this year, just simply saying it won’t cut the mustard. Some tough questions need to be asked like what areas do you want to improve? You have to set a realistic goal that has a starting point as well as an end.

If you are working in an organization, do you want to increase revenue? If you are very specific with what you want to achieve, you give yourself a big chance of achieving your objectives.

2. Don’t have a tunnel vision, expand your mind

There is a very famous expression that says knowledge is power and for anyone who wants to achieve their objective, having a tunnel vision doesn’t help. It means that you won’t be able to see the bigger picture and by expanding your line of sight, one is able to gain more knowledge.

If you are running a successful business, you should be able to measure things like labor cost, revenue as well as customer satisfaction metrics. If the goal of the business at the end of every year is to make more profits than previous years, you need to be in a position to evaluate all the things that will make you achieve that objective.

This includes things like offering customers good quality service, retaining existing customers and offering them discounts on products or services.No matter the chosen method, it has to be broken down into factor that will drive you to get the results you are looking for.

3. Make sure everything is put in a logical way or manner

Take ATM machines, for example, their main purpose is to give customers money after they have made a withdraw. When a large number of withdrawals are made in a day or the money runs out, the bank moves quickly to put the money back.

This is the same approach one needs to have to achieve their objectives. Just like how things move smoothly with the bank, one has to aim to follow suit and make sure everything is done in a logical way. Applying six sigma gives you the biggest chance to achieve your objectives.

4. Reduce any waste that’s in the way

A major goal of Six Sigma as a method is to cut downtime that is wasted while trying to achieve your objectives. When waste is reduced, you will notice that the way that things are done in your organization will speed up. It is used to make things better with the help of what is known as the 5S.

• Sort – Look around the workplace to see if everything is ok and if something is off, dispose of it very quickly.
• Set in order – When that is dealt with, look at what you have left and place each item in its place.
• Shine – This involves systematically cleaning the space you have whether on a weekly, daily or even monthly basis. If you are low on stock, make sure you restock because the two goals in this step are to keep things clean and have a clear view of inventory.
• Standardize – You have to make sure that you put things where they belong after using them while making sure that work colleagues do the same.
• Sustain – Make sure that you schedule a 5S review all the time so that it comes naturally to everyone.

Conclusion

The 4 concepts of six sigma when used well will easily help achieve your objectives at work because you will go into things prepared. Going back to the analogy of going into a battle expect to emerge victorious without taking any weapons with you, Six Sigma ensure you are armed and ready for battle.

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When it comes to Six Sigma methods and tools, the 5S method has been one of the most successful. This is due to its simplicity in describing the steps a process in the workplace should be comprised of to make it optimal. 5S originated in Japan and has proven to be one of the most invaluable Six Sigma methods the world over since it does an efficient job at reducing wastage in a process.

In Japan, the five Ss in 5S are seiri, seiton, seiso, seiketsu, and shitsuk. In English, they translate to sort, straighten, shine, standardize and sustain. These steps are sequential and incremental steps. This means they all need to be done in order since each step builds upon the last. If a step is missed or out of sequences the resulting process will miss its improvement window.

The diagram below shows what the five Ss of 5S are and the order in which they should be performed.

Before we talk about 5S in more detail, there is an extra S that is worth mentioning: Safety. Before undertaking any project or event, safety requirements need to be established. Furthermore, they need to be evaluated at every stage of the project or event to ensure everything is going smoothly and no one is in danger.

Once a process has been identified that could use 5S performance improvement, the following steps need to be conducted to make the event successful.

1. Sort (Seiri)

It all starts with making an inventory of all items and then sorting them out into two categories: necessary and unnecessary. This includes all equipment and materials. Those items that go into the list of unnecessary things need to be discarded, leaving only those that have been deemed necessary. Before being categorized, the items need to be red-tagged. After that, their fate is discussed with the appropriate stakeholders who then decide whether to keep or discard them.

2. Straighten (Seiton)

With only the essential items remaining, the next step involves putting them where they belong. The items must be arranged in a way that retrieving and storing them is easy and convenient. This means that whenever anyone wants a tool or piece of equipment, they must immediately know where to go to get it and where to put it back, reducing travel wastage. Doing things this way also makes it immediately known when an item is missing.

3. Shine (Seiso)

When the workplace is dirty and disorganized, it can be hard to identify problems. That is what this step is all about making sure the work environment, whether it is an office or construction site, is clean. Everything that remained during the sorting phase is thoroughly cleaned. In this step, there will be a lot of sweeping, vacuuming, mopping, painting, labeling and other cleaning activities. But the emphasis should be placed on uncovering and eliminating the actual root causes of the uncleanliness and getting rid of them.

4. Standardize (Seiketsu)

This step is about creating standards that will ensure the cleanliness of the workplace. People are assigned roles and responsibilities of what they must do to maintain the standards. All work areas are made consistent or identical so that it is easier for workers from other areas to come in and perform the process. And with the standards in place, everyone knows what is a normal or abnormal situation, and can alert management for further action.

5. Sustain (Shitsuke)

The final step ensures that the previous steps are not a once-off event when deemed a success. Here, the steps for an ongoing audit of the 5S event are outlined, leading to the constant maintenance and refreshment of the improved workplace. It is also important to let everyone know that sticking to the 5S method is their job.

As you can see, 5S is a method that embodies the heart of what Six Sigma represents; reducing waste in a process. It can be used in any organization for any process, whether it is in an office or manufacturing plant. And once the areas of 5S performance have been identified, continuous improvement makes sure optimization is always moving with forward momentum.

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Successfully Integrating 5S into a Modern Office Environment

5S is a practical approach to organizing a modern working environment, and it can be highly useful in a variety of different situations. It originated in Japan, much like many other prominent methodologies in the lean family, and it’s focused on ensuring that work can be done as efficiently as possible, identifying and removing waste while focusing on the tools and processes that are truly valuable.

Meaning and implementation

The name of 5S comes from the Japanese names of five principles, although their English names have been translated in a way that preserves the acronym as well. They are sort, set in order, shine, standardize, sustain.

• Sort: it’s important to keep a tidy and organized workspace, and the employee should dedicate a good amount of time from their daily routine to that. All unnecessary items and other form of clutter should be taken away as soon as possible, and they should never be allowed to accumulate under any circumstances.

This also applies to tools that are currently not being used, as well as already completed products that are awaiting transportation to another node of the manufacturing chain. If something cannot be cleared right away, it should ideally be left in a dedicated zone that doesn’t obstruct the worker’s routine.

• Set in order: similar to the first point, but with a different focus. This one is about ensuring that you can reach any desired element of a given set with minimal effort. If you always put your wrenches in order, you’ll know that number 14 comes after 12, and you will spend less time sorting through the toolbox looking for the right piece.
• Shine: a clean workspace is just as important as a tidy one, and 5S pay special attention to that aspect of daily work. Cleaning has another useful purpose too it can give the employee an opportunity to take a look around and figure out if there is any clutter that needs to be removed. 5S realizes the close connection between maintenance and cleaning, but assigns each one its own specific step in the process to keep everything streamlined and accessible.
• Standardize: everything that happens often and in a predictable manner should be made as standardized as possible. Those standards should then be maintained at high levels whenever possible, and the whole organization should contribute to their development. Ideally, you’d have the entire process of the company standardized from start to finish, but that’s usually not very feasible, so you have to go with a middle-ground solution.

As long as you’ve followed the previous steps and everything is arranged and tidied up though, there should be no reason to have any difficulty implementing this particular step of the process. If anything, implementing standards should become much easier once you’ve started to see some patterns emerge from your previous efforts. You’d be surprised how much you can learn about the way the company works from applying those principles.

• Sustain: last but not least, it’s important to be able to run your business in a sustainable way. This concerns not only your own operations, but the environment and other companies on the market as well. You have to be in a good position towards everyone around you, otherwise you’re going to run into conflicts sooner or later. It’s not difficult to run your business in a way that works well for everyone, and it will even benefit you in the long run too. It does take a lot of discipline though, and additionally, the company will likely have to go through multiple audits to ensure full compliance. But in the end, it will be a good effort with a justified reason.

5S in the digital world

In today’s work environment, we continue to move towards the paperless office, where everything is digital. The 5S approach can be applied to your electronic files using these same steps

• Sort out the files you no longer need
• Set in order the files in a logical manner, so you can’t them much easier
• Shine your disk drives and networks, so they are in the best working condition to run at peak performance
• Standardize the folder and file names to make it easy for others to find them
• Sustain the effort so you are continually deleting and archiving files as you go

Conclusion

The 5S method can be highly effective in ensuring that your company is moving towards a common goal that unites everyone within it, and that you’re prepared for the future too. It takes some effort to get everything in place, but once you’ve got the ball rolling, it will be a very smooth experience from then on. Of course, you’ll also want to ensure that the 5S process is being followed regularly and not just implemented once, but that falls under the category of discipline.

Learn more about 5S >>>

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Sort (seiri): Get rid of any thing that you do not need in the workspace. Anything that doesn’t serve a purpose — get rid of it.  If you apply the Pareto principle to sorting out what you need, it might help you establish the correct mindset. The Pareto principle states that 80% of any outcome is the direct result of 20% of the input. So ask yourself: what do you truly need and what purpose does it serve in your business processes?

Straighten (seiton): Having a neat and tidy workspace can save you time, money and increase the quality of any product or service. Any time you remove an excess barrier from any workspace, your focus improves tremendously, and it’s that focus that directly affects the quality of the end result.

Shine (seiso): Keeping something clean is different from keeping something tidy. Keep a well-lit workspace. Make sure you establish the root cause of dust and dirt, and develop a process that will ensure this is maintained. Keep a log of daily cleaning process.

Standardize (seiketsu): Set up a standard that makes sense, use color codes, and make visual displays of the high standard of maintenance. When you standardize, you will immediately reduce variations. Invest time in setting up standardization, and it will prove beneficial over the long haul.

Sustain (shitsuke): It is important to have the mindset of maintaining this new level of responsibility. The participation of everyone is necessary, because it only takes one bad apple to hinder the morale of the entire team. Continuous audits are in order. Get to the root causes of problems so that sustaining this new high-level process will be easier.

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In the modern workplace, we reference the 5S of Kaizen. These 5S’s are a workplace organization method, developed from the five Japanese words: ‘seri’, ‘seiton’, ‘seiso’, ‘seiketsu’, and ‘shitsuke’. When translated, these words become ‘Sort’, ‘Straighten’, ‘Shine’, ‘Standardize’, and ‘Sustain’. In this article, we will discuss the first S, Sort.

What Is ‘Sort’?

Using a broad definition, Sort is making your work processes simpler and easier by eliminating certain obstacles. When you eliminate unexpected errors, you prevent the chance of producing unnecessary or faulty products. At this point, you might be thinking about the basic understanding of Six Sigma. That is, to improve business processes, prevent errors, and eliminate waste. It’s no doubt that the Six Sigma methodology supports itself with the 5S’s of Kaizen. Additionally, you also practice Sort by evaluating the cost of manufacturing certain items and assessing what parts are not needed. This allows you to remove unnecessary factors, costs, and processes, further enhancing your productions.

Implementing Sort

Sort is only effective if you properly implement it into your company. When first practiced in Japan, the Toyota Production System used a simple method for following Kaizen. We define this as PDC, or Plan, Do, Check, and Act. Whenever an error occurs along a production line, all employees must stop their processes and search for the source of problem. This is similar to Root Cause Analysis. For most, implementing Sort is simple. First, designate an area where employees can remove and dispose of unnecessary parts. Typically, this area is referred to as a “Red-Tag” zone. This is required since not all items can be disposed of immediately. Additionally, you should clear your employees’ work zones of unused materials, further increasing the efficiency. Furthermore, keep track your process improvements by hiring a full-time supervisor who checks these processes regularly.

Another way to implement the Kaizen 5S Sort is by using the 5 Why’s. This process allows you to ask why an error occurs and locate where it comes from. By doing this, you organize your business processes, eliminate waste, and increase overall efficiency.

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