Do You Need to Increase the Scope of Your Six Sigma Project?
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Call Center Cafe and Call Center Best Practices bring you this article on increasing your Six Sigma scope by Tony Jacowski .
Did You Go Far Enough?
The problem in a company is that no one aspect works in isolation. You may have made vast improvements on getting the product out the door, but is that the entirety of producing an improved product with improved methods to release it?
The product is released on time and with a great cost savings, but the next aspect in delivery and customer support very likely needs to be analyzed as well. Or perhaps the billing system with the merchants is not efficient and the company has a reputation for being difficult to take returns or address invoicing issues. All of your hard work to make a great product that has high quality could be for naught.
Scoping Out the Six Sigma Project
When you are called in to apply Six Sigma methodologies, often the company has a specific need where they want to use your skills. But, did you go far enough? Take the example above; the product is released, project managers and supply chain are happy, but the product is delivered to the customer using the same methods previously used.
Perhaps the supply chain can only produce a certain amount of products in a day and the transport system is set up to only deliver full loads, so you have a delay on getting the product to market. Or perhaps the transport system will take partial loads, but your costs are increased substantially. Are these issues outside of the scope of your Six Sigma intervention? They shouldn’t be.
Promote Phased Analysis
When you come into a project there is probably an immediate need for resolving a problem – that’s why they called you. Because other aspects of the product lifecycle aren’t creating any major headaches at the moment, often they are excluded from the Six Sigma scope.
Additionally, the Six Sigma expert must be careful when coming into a project. You will NOT win friends if you insist that every aspect from billing to call center to service may need to be looked at. You might come across as a salesman trying to land a longer term project.
If your services are being requested then the person probably hasn’t put all the pieces of the big picture together. For several reasons, you may need to promote a phased approach. You are the expert, so some companies might not realize that their accounts department has as much influence on slow product sales as a bad package design. You also can’t go in insisting that all aspects of the business must be reviewed because there is an immediate need and that needs to be addressed first.
You could risk the dreaded company politics. If you are working with R&D, you might cause friction if you want to look at supply chain and making changes could be an uphill battle.
However, you can clearly show your improvements in quality, cost, or efficiency and then show where you need to go into the next phase of the project to continue on the improvements already shown. By giving a clear, easy to understand review of what you have accomplished, you can then show where you need to go for the next stage in helping develop an outstanding company.
Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solutions – Six Sigma Online ( http://www.sixsigmaonline.org ) offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean 6 sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts.
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