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I have seen examples of the 3 M’s in many places. I think it is important to understand their interrelationships before letting solutions rip!

The 3 Ms

Muda: Waste - One or more of the 7 types -  (Overproduction, Waiting, Transport, Extra Motion, Extra Processing, Defects, Inventory)

Mura: Variation (unevenness or fluctuation ) in performance

Muri: Hard to do / burdensome (usually caused by Mura and/or Muda)

Example abound of how the 3 M’s are related. Here are some:

Example >> Poor layout of a facility (indicated by Transport Waste) would lead to “difficulty in getting the job done in a timely manner” which leads to accidents and making mistakes due to always being in a rush

Example >> Unstable process (Variation or Unevenness) - think of situations where machine alarms keep going off, - would create Waste downstream (Waiting, Defects)  creating Muri - hard to do for operators - like sorting / inspection / disposition.

Example >> Searching for tools or information (Extra Motion) would result in less time focusing on value-adding activities.

Example >> Documentation too wordy / confusing  / not visual  (Extra Processing) would result in spending too much time in finding what is needed in a timely manner.

In the previous post, I outlined how lean projects can be manged through Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycles. Here, I’ll be walking through an example.

Plan

This step includes drawing current value stream (VS) map in terms of processes (or activities), calculating processing times on the value stream, and analyzing for waste. After conducting some brainstorming, the PDCA team can list opportunities for removing such waste by reducing, re-organizing, realigning, training. Finally, we prioritize such opportunities start implementation with those with highest impact first.

In this example, a pizza shop takes orders for delivery over the phone and processes manually.  Customers complain about delivery time being long. Here is how the process works:

• The order taker writes down all order information (type of pizza, size, ingredients, ..etc.) as well as the address.
• Order gets verified by the manager before forwarded to the kitchen. In case of any missing information, the order taker calls the customer back for corrections
• Prepare pizza
• Pizza sits in queue before baking
• Bake, cut, package and label pizza
• Pizza waits in warmer for delivery
• Deliver pizza

The goal here is to eliminate all complaints due to “long delivery time”and increase customer satisfaction.

Times form the above value stream can be summarized as follows:

Lead Time: The time from the customer calling in until the pizza is delivered. In this example, the Lead time is 44 minutes.Value-Adding: All activities that add value to what the customer experiences / pays for. Those steps amount to 15 minutes which is about 34% of the lead time.

Delays / Waiting amounts to 8 minutes.

The PDCA team has conducted root-cause analysis to eliminate waste (and shorten delivery time). The team decided that the manual system for orders created delays and inefficiencies. So it was decided to implement a computerized system for entering orders and communicating them to the kitchen using computer monitors. Also, it was decided to hire an additional delivery driver. The future value-stream table is expected to look as follows:

Do

• Prepare and implement action plan for  computerized system
• After implementation, let the system run and stabilize
• Collect delivery times data again for measuring progress

Check

• Data analysis after implementation of plan show a reduction of  lead time by an average of 11 minutes. This is a reduction of approximately 25% of lead time.
• Complaints due to long delivery time were reduced by 60%.

Act

The updated  value stream after implementation will become the “current” for the next PDCA. As can be seen from the updated value stream table, delays due”waiting for oven space” and “waiting for driver” are still there and could be minimized or eliminated by coming up with efficient methods and creating additional capacity.

Mustafa Shraim

Lean initiatives can be implemented in a series of Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycles. In addition to the value stream map metrics, is important to keep a set of metrics to measure progress so that lean and quality objectives are tracked after each cycle. Here is an example of a PDCA outline:

Plan

• Draw current value stream (VS) map in terms of processes (or activities) OR use future map from previous cycle
• Calculate times for current VS map
• Analyze current VS map for waste (delays, additional inspections, extra motions, transport, search time, etc)
• Make a list of relevant, comparable metrics (Cost of non-conformance, delays, search times, inspection times, quality levels, delivery times, customer feedback)
• List opportunities for removing such waste by reducing, re-organizing, realigning, training
• Select easiest opportunities to implement with highest impact first
• Draw future map based on selected opportunities

Do

• Prepare action plan for selected opportunities
• Implement plan by assigning tasks / due dates (no delays)
• After implementation, let the system run and stabilize
• Collect data again for measuring progress

Check

• Analyze data and compare against the “before” set of metrics listed under the Plan phase
• Provide visuals (charts / figures) to show progress / improvement

Act

• Update future value stream (this will become the new “current” value stream)
• List of things you’ve learned from this cycle? Implement in other areas and document for availability and easy access.
• Goals achieved? If yes, What’s next on the opportunities list? If no, What’s the next goal?
• Go the next cycle of PDCA

I’ll use an example in Part II.

Meetings!

In Part 1, I classified waste that can be generated from meetings. At the end of that post, I suggested tracking meetings for a period of time with regard to meeting objective, number of people attending, duration, progress made, etc. After getting such information, we may be able to answer some questions like:

• What objectives or goals were achieved?
• What is the proportion of time spent in meetings to solve ACTUAL quality / customer problems?
• How much time per employee was spent in meetings?

Other questions or metrics may also be established but it is important to have a baseline. Then after improvements are made, metrics can be compared against those baseline figures.

Here are some improvement ideas:

• Restrict meeting duration (e.g. 30 minutes) - and publish start and end times before the meeting. Also start the meeting ON TIME and end ON TIME
• Restrict Agenda - most of the time agenda is too broad and/or goal is not established
• Publish goal / agenda ahead of time so participants are ready. The alternative is that during the meeting someone might say “I’ll look into it” without any time frame. Lack of agenda will lower participants’ expectations of the meeting.
• Restrict participation to those who can add value!
• Assign roles for taking minutes, keeping the team focused on topic, and keeping track of time. These roles may be assigned to one but preferably more participants
• Summarize meeting minutes right after the meeting and share with participants. Don’t forget to include action items, responsibilities, and due dates!

Meetings!

Everyone has probably been in meetings before and had thoughts such as: “what a waste of time!”, “useless”, “we have to meet again on this?”, “who’s in charge here?”. It has been reported that meetings carry a lot of waste (muda). They take long and/or there are many of them… so they generate waste such as:

• Waiting >> Others in the organization may be waiting on decisions to be made or someone that needs to be doing their job so other work downstream can get done!(double waste here)
• Waiting >> Meeting does not start on time because not everyone is there on time!
• Overproduction >> Long meeting for lack of agenda and/or leadership
• Waste of talent >> Keeping talented individual from doing their work by having them in so many meetings
• Over-processing >> Too many people in a meeting for an issue that can be resolved by a few
• Mistakes / Defects >> Not involving the right people could lead to making mistakes or scope-creep
• Extra Motion >> In and out of many meetings

What can be done about meetings? Before answering this question, meetings should be tracked for a period of time (like three months!). Include objectives, number of people, time, progress made, etc.

Answer: The Customer!

(1) What does the customer want? >> Use current requirements, marketing surveys, quality function deployment, and other tools

(2) What is the customer getting now? >>  Conduct a detailed assessment, collect complaint data, returns figures, consumer reports, etc.

(3) Identify gaps between (1) and (2) above

(4) Group and prioritize gaps. Use Pareto analysis, if needed.

(5) Start PDCA’s (cycles of plan-do-check-act) to identify root causes and implement solutions for each or a group of prioritized issues.

(5) Re-do Pareto Analysis and go to the next prioritized issue.

(6) make it a routine (kata)

When the customer experiences a product or a service, he/she evaluates such experience. Most of the time, this evaluation does not formally reach the product maker or service provider for many reasons. However, this evaluation is often felt by the provider through returns, repeat business or new business through word of mouth.

When the customer is dissatisfied,  it is usually due to a problem. For minor problems, most people don’t complain about the service or return products. In some instances, it is just not worth their time to do that. But in most cases, they do something else if they can.

For the provider, it is a lost opportunity that is not measured immediately. A customer suddenly cancels subscription or does not plan on renewal the next time around. Or may be one mentions such a problem to friends who are considering the product or service. Some put their lack of satisfaction on social media outlets making ripple effects. In all cases, it is a customer issue that was not accounted for but will likely have  impact on the bottom line.

In summary, cost of poor quality may be extended to the lost opportunity and customer good will using the Taguchi loss function. This can be estimated by taking a sample of most recent complaints then determining the projected overall cost.  In general, as the issue (problem) with the product or service is experienced by more customers, the loss (to society) becomes more severe. Ideally, our target loss is zero which can only be achieved with perfection.

 Number of complaints

Without an effective platform - lean (quality) management system- Lean initiatives might not be carried through to the finish line. A good Lean management system can effectively sustain gains and extends to other areas where they are needed.

A Leanmanagement system includes quality management system, financial management system, HR management system, environmental management system, ..and other, as applicable. Leadership, discipline, standards, and accountability are essential ingredients. Standards carry the documentation systems (manuals, standard works, procedures, visuals, dashboards). In the absence of good management system, particularly the standards, Lean initiatives are not sustainable. Here are some signs that the management system is weak and far from Lean:

• Employees develop tricks outside the system to get the job done
• Employees enter redundant information that no one cares about or analyze
• Problems are not readily visible and need “special investigation” to uncover
• Company spends a lot of time and effort before audits to clean up the system 
• Employees in production are not aware of customer complaints or involved in resolving them
• Line standards are not updated with improvements (e.g. visual workplace, poka-yoke)
• Dashboards are not updated regularly with useful information on performance
• Corrective actions are past due (months!!)

What’s important here is that these signs (and many others as well) create waste and result, directly and indirectly, in employee and customer dissatisfaction.

(For discussion on lean quality management systems, please join our group Lean QMS on LinkedIn.

I recently co-authored an article summarizing a Six Sigma project. The article was about a Six Sigma project in e-mail marketing in which design of experiments was used.

The project did not exactly follow the Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control or DMAIC as we know it. Instead, The headings of the DMAIC process were as follows:

• Define / Measure
• Measure / Analyze
• Improve
• Control

The Define/Measurephase includes some Plan-Do-Check-Act cycles in determining and verifying factors to be included. For example, checking feasibility of that certain level combinations can be run. When we move to the Measure/Analyzephase, we are actually collecting and analyzing data based on the experimental design . Sometimes we need to do preliminary analysis before we add more samples and conduct more detailed analysis.

The point is that smaller PDCA cycles are often within each phase and between consecutive phases. The phases of the projects are dynamic in nature and not static. In the end, each project is unique and so should be treated.

When a company implements Six Sigma methodology, it usually hopes to achieve Six Sigma Quality. This means keeping a defect rate at about 3.4 defects per million opportunities (DPMO). For example, if an airline uses delayed or lost baggage as a measure of their performance, then it should keep that number below 4 lost/delayed luggage pieces per million on the average.

Can an organization declare they are at a Six-Sigma quality level when they’re only tracking one metric? In the case of an airline, what about on-time arrival? waiting time for check-in? double-booking? and complaints about their online reservation process? The answer is obviously “No”. All experiences by the customers must be accounted for. So once each of the experiences by the customer is less than 4 DPMO, we can say that the organization is at a Six Sigma level from customers’ perspective.

One more thing; What’s important to the customer is decided by the customer.