Category Archives: CI Tools

CI Tools, Continuous Improvement, Quick Wins

Leveraging Quick Wins!

When it comes to Continuous Process Improvement, action is what it’s all about. It matters not a bit what training you provide, slogans you use, or posters you post if you do not promptly move into action to get things done, measured, and stabilized so the solution sticks.

‘Quick Wins’ is a powerful tool for moving teams into action.

But it is more easily said than done.

What Is A ‘Quick Win’?
The key elements are right there in those two words: it’s got to be quick and it’s got to be successful. A Quick Win must be completed in 4 to 6 weeks at most, but many are implemented much faster such as in a “kaizen blitz” where a small group focuses full time on an improvement for a day or two, or half-time for a week.

Because of the speed imperative, if a solution requires a significant capital investment, it is not going to be a Quick Win.

If it requires a large team or cross-functional buy-in, chances are it will be a slow win if it succeeds at all.

Many Quick Wins do not require a formal team; often a natural work team can identify the problem and implement a quick solution. For a solution to become a Quick Win it is almost always an improvement that can be completed with the people closest to the work and with the resources close at hand.

Sometimes a Quick Win is a high value improvement executed with speed. But even an improvement with small dollar impact can have a great ROI — because the time and expense invested is so low and the organization begins reaping the benefits so quickly.

Why Do They Matter?
According to John Kotter, author of Leading Change and The Heart of Change, creating Quick Wins builds momentum, defuses cynics, enlightens pessimists, and energizes people.

In addition, and as depicted in the image above, when involved in any type of improvement or change initiative, education, promptly followed by action, yields motivation, and success inspires success. Theoretical opportunities and methodologies are meaningless until a person starts to see the possibilities through real-life hands-on process improvement.

Conclusions?
So a Quick Win is a shot of adrenalin for a Continuous Improvement culture. The people involved get a great deal of satisfaction from making the work more effective, more efficient, or lower cost. Their effort pays off, and pays off quickly.

Plus, they are more inclined to look for another such improvement. The people who see or hear about the Quick Win are often inspired to begin looking for their own Quick Wins as well!

Ultimately, the motivational value of a Quick Win makes the return on the effort even higher.

CI Tools, Continuous Improvement, Customer Satisfaction

Increasing Customer Satisfaction

Dr. Deming

There are a variety of approaches to hearing the Voice of the Customer, a voice with which we should be very familiar!

Consider that we can know all there is to know about our internal processes and still not know enough about them to increase client satisfaction. For this sort of challenge we need additional tools and methods.

Customer Surveys are a staple for measuring and possibly surfacing areas for improvement. A popular tool for measuring customer satisfaction is the Net Promoter Score. Studying variation in the Net Promoter Scores (NPS) by area, customer type, and over time can help pinpoint trouble spots that are impacting customer satisfaction.

Analyzing customer Complaint Logs can help identify and address the problems that customers have identified and shared, but this is a bare minimum in the effort to increase customer satisfaction. The Complaint Log is a place to seek information about where we are falling short on what the Kano Model calls “Must-Be Quality.” The absence of the quality dissatisfies even though the presence in itself will not please the customers because it is assumed. Addressing gaps in the Must-Be Quality can lift one out of the hole, but will never lift customer satisfaction any further.

To effectively increase customer satisfaction, we need to create and deliver work that will delight the customers. One client described his method as the Ambassador Visit: “I go to meet with the customer, I say thank you for your business, and then I shut up. And listen.” Providing a good forum and opportunity for the customer to express what they like and don’t like is very useful. What’s more, the Ambassador Visit provides a forum to discuss what the customers see coming down the road, so we can proactively anticipate and address their needs.

Another client finds tremendous value in visiting clients as they work with the product — meeting them in the field to watch, listen, and study the customer’s challenges and how the product currently helps them — and how it could help them if something were to be changed. This approach, sometimes called Contextual Inquiry, provides value in understanding what is truly working as expected for the customers and how we can solve problems for the customers that they did not even think to mention.

Regardless of which or how many of these tools we might use, we might also keep in mind, on a daily basis, Dr. Deming’s frequent quote, “Quality is for the customer.” He also reminded us, “No customers, no orders, no jobs!”

Charting, CI Tools, Continuous Improvement

Using Flow Charts

Often we have a process through which we want to increase the throughput or output without adding resources. In these situations a Process Flow Chart or Process Evaluation Chart is an excellent tool to start with.

A Process Flow Chart or Process Evaluation Chart (the latter is populated with measurement data) can be created by bringing together the participants in the process and mapping it out together. Some organizations believe that mapping the processes with the frontline associates always results in lightbulbs going on and the associates voicing concerns and ideas once their process is on the wall.

There are always surprises, they find ‘black holes’ or dead ends, see the ‘wastes’, waiting and handovers get visible and they learn what the other ‘swim-lanes’ (teams or team members) do and how what they do impacts others and vice versa. They always start to create action logs based on the concerns/ideas and they serve as the basis for the improvement project.

Another approach is to start with observation. Follow the process, observe the work and gather what data is available about the current process. This can be compiled into a draft of a flow chart to bring to a meeting with participants from all areas of the process under study. At this meeting, the group goes through the draft, discussing, adding to, questioning, and correcting the draft to better reflect reality.

Below is a graphic summary of flow chart symbols and their meaning:

CI Tools

Clarity Applies to Processes Too

SIPOC

Our previous post focused on performance management and on how important it is for managers to express clear expectations when engaged in the practice.

Along similar lines, ‘clarity’ applies to processes too.

In fact, over the past fifty years, a tremendous number of analysis and problem-solving tools have been developed and are available to deploy in the unending quest for clarity, with the end goals being better service to customers and producing greater value with less waste.

In today’s world, the efficiency and efficacy of continuous improvement depends on selecting the best analysis and problem-solving tool at the right time; and, perhaps, the most important tools for success start with scoping.

SIPOC: Defining and Scoping Improvement Projects
One of the most valuable tools early on to effectively define the process, problem, and project is the SIPOC (Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs, Customers).

Some organizations always start with the SIPOC to get the team on the same page so they can answer:

  • What is the process?
  • Its purpose (why are we doing this)?
  • Who owns the process (surprisingly sometimes not obvious/known)?
  • Who are the customers/suppliers?
  • Who is the primary customer?
  • What do they get out of the process or provide for the process?

Once the team members have achieved clarity and a shared high-level understanding of the process using the SIPOC, and have gathered the data that enables them to measure the gap between the current situation and the ideal, they can create a good problem statement, objective, scope, and timetable.

These together are key components of a Project Charter, the ‘North Star’ of a project that helps keep the project moving forward to successful completion.

CI Tools, Execution

Implementation!

completed

If you truly want to achieve maximum results from your improvement effort, it’s essential to have an effective implementation and sustainability plan.

Consider that, even when people excel at identifying major opportunities for improvement, if they don’t execute, they don’t make gains. In our work with hundreds of organizations, we have observed that the most successful are outstanding at execution.

These execution plans involve the use CI tools for measurement, applying accepted best business practices such as the “4 Disciplines of Execution” (see related post), as well as a number of key focus areas, including:

  1. Get senior leaders to become actively involved
  2. Identify clear project plans for delivering results, including measures and milestones
  3. Engage team members and stakeholders
  4. Set expectations and consequences — both positive and negative
  5. Develop an organized structure and an activity / accomplishment reporting plan – communication matters!
CI Tools, Continuous Improvement, Root Cause

5 Key Questions Leading to the Right Root Cause?

root cause
When 5 Whys Aren’t Enough?

Several previous posts focused on identifying waste or opportunities for improvement. Once this step is completed, and a specific problem is identified as the “best” opportunity, the next step often involves finding the root cause of the problem.

This is a critically-important step and, if we’re not careful, we can find ourselves working on the “wrong assumptions.” In fact, we’ve consistently found that few things are more dangerous than common knowledge – when it is wrong.

Root causes are tricky and elusive things. Brainstorming and the “Five Whys” can be effective tools, but neither approach guarantees the “right” result or conclusion. In fact, when the “wrong” root cause is selected, the most common culprit is an untested conclusion.

The best course of action is to think quite broadly when brainstorming and to consider carefully every possible way that the people, technology, information, materials, environment, or methods might be contributing to the problem.

In addition, when the brainstorming of possibilities is over, we should put on our skeptical hat and test each one – before going to the next “why” to find the root cause. Otherwise, we risk arriving at the wrong conclusion.

Here are five key questions you might consider to test a possible cause is to see if it is consistent with the data you already have.:

  • Did the proposed cause precede the effect? If not, it is probably not the real cause. If poor call response rate is being blamed on the new answering system, was the call response rate better before the system was installed? If not, the new system cannot be the culprit.
  • Does the data indicate the problem is trending or cyclical? If so, you can probably rule out ideas about causes that would produce steady effects. For example, to test the possibility that shipping errors are on the rise due to poor technology, ask whether the technology has changed. If there have been no changes in the technology, any changes in the results must be caused by something else.
  • What other effects would you see if the proposed cause were true? Are you seeing them? If not, look elsewhere for the cause. For example, to test whether ‘poor morale’ is causing a high number of defects, ask where else would signs of poor morale show up. Are you seeing them there?
  • If the proposed cause were not true, could the effect have happened? Could the product weight be dropping if a blockage had not developed in the dispensing line? If the answer is ‘no’, you know you must find the blockage.
  • If the cause had been X, would it always produce this effect? If the answer is ‘yes’, then in order to test this, you simply need to check whether the supposed cause actually occurred. For example, if my car will not start, a possible cause is that I left the lights on. (I drive one of those old fashioned cars that require operator involvement to turn off the lights.) If I check and find the lights are in the ‘on’ position, I can confirm my theory. Otherwise, I must keep looking for the cause.
CI Tools, Continuous Improvement, Defining Problems

Defining Problems?

defining problems

Our previous few posts have focused on identifying waste.

After an area of waste or an opportunity for improvement is identified, the next step is to define the specific problem. Few decisions have a greater impact on the likelihood of success of an improvement project than the definition of the problem.

For example, Stephen Covey says that the way we see the problem is the problem. Albert Einstein warns that we cannot solve problems at the same level of thinking with which we created them. The way we define and communicate the problem the team is expected to solve will greatly influence the speed and efficiency with which a team will complete its work, the degree of satisfaction between the team and the project sponsor, and the efficacy with which an organization prioritizes and sequences the problems to devote resources to.

Consider these different approaches to defining the same problematic situation:

  • Order fulfillment is too slow and is costing us a lot of business.
  • Our lost sale rate has increased from an average of 125 per month over the previous six quarters to 190 per month this quarter.
  • Our Order-to-Delivery timeline has increased to 60 days due to a bottleneck in packaging.
  • Profits are down.
  • Sales has missed their target for the past three months.
  • Packaging is too slow due to old equipment.
  • Order-to-Delivery time from the Mid-western plant in Q3 increased by 15 days over the same quarter prior year, and was cited as the cause of 42 lost sales in Q3 impacting revenue by $270,000 in the quarter.

Some of these are statements of fact, while others are judgments. Some are very broad and others are very specific.

They may ALL be valid observations about the same situation, yet the problem solving efforts they would guide would differ greatly in urgency, efficiency, and efficacy. Developing a good problem statement at the start will help you define and lead an improvement project that most efficiently arrives at better results.

In our next post we’ll share four best practices for defining problems.

CI Tools

Increasing Throughput Without Adding Resources

Continuing with our theme of Continuous Improvement (CI) tools, people often need to increase the throughput or output of a process, but don’t have access additional resources to do so.

In these situations a Process Flow Chart is an excellent tool to start with.

A Process Flow Chart or Process Evaluation Chart (the latter is populated with measurement data) can be created by bringing together the participants in the process and mapping it out together. Some
organizations believe that mapping the processes with the frontline associates always results in lightbulbs going on and the associates voicing concerns and ideas once their process is on the wall.

There are always surprises, as people find ‘black holes’ or dead ends, and see the ‘wastes’ that are often invisible during the typical business day. Unnecessary waiting and handovers suddenly become visible; details about the things other teams or team members do suddenly become clear as people realize how their work impacts others and vice versa. Action logs based on the concerns/ideas are almost always a result at well, and they serve as the basis for the improvement project to increase output simply due to the heightened awareness stemming from the flow chart.

Here is a sample of a simple flow chart:

flow chart
Sample flowchart

When creating a flowchart, process steps are shown as shapes of various kinds, and their order by connecting the shapes with arrows or lines. Different shapes are used to indicate actions, decision points, recycle loops, work and wait times.

Here is a summary of the most commonly-used shapes:

flowchart symbols
CI Tools, Continuous Improvement, Project Management

Will My Project Succeed?

crystal ball

Every organization has more processes with opportunity to improve than they have organizational capacity and management attention units to execute. That’s why it is so important to identify the best opportunities and to work on the right things.

Over the years we’ve compiled a list of eleven factors that can predict, with a fair degree of accuracy, if a project will be successful. A successful project certainly does not need to score 10’s in all of these, and some of these eleven are more important than others and carry more weight in the prediction:

  1. The potential benefit of the project to the organization is clear, substantial and quantifiable. (10 = very clear, quantifiable, substantial)
  2. The problem to be solved is clearly defined and quantifiable, and the project scope is focused and well-defined. (10 = very clear, focused, and well-defined)
  3. The project has top management’s commitment and support (resources, sponsorship and follow-up); no influential person is actively opposed to the project. (10 = very strong support)
  4. The sponsor and team leader are clear about each one’s role and partner effectively to ensure the success of the project. (10 = very clear)
  5. The team leader and key resources are devoting enough of their time to the project to complete it very quickly. (10= full time)
  6. The team is staffed and led by the right people for the job, and they are determined and capable to quickly achieve results. (10 = very determined and capable)
  7. Meaningful and accurate facts and data about the process are available. (10 = very available)
  8. H. The process to be improved is repeated frequently enough to efficiently study variation in the current process and to and test and measure improvements. Hourly? Monthly? Annually? (10 = very frequently).
  9. The processes to be improved are within the team’s span of control. (10 = under control).
  10. J. The expected time frame for completion of the project or for achieving concrete and measurable milestones. (10 = 4-8 weeks to completion or measurable milestone)
  11. The processes are stable, that is not undergoing very recent or imminent major change (10 = very stable).

Careful consideration of each of these eleven factors will help you focus your capacity on those improvements with the best chance of long term success, moving your organization further faster down that never-ending road of Continuous Improvement.

CI Tools, Communication, Continuous Improvement, Waste Walk

Don’t Just Do Something: Waste Walk Best Practices

waste walk

Continuing the theme of “waste walks,” there are several fundamental guidelines that should be followed in order to optimize the value and outcomes.

Here are some best practices for implementing Waste Walks (or “going to gemba“) that have proved successful in organizations and that have brought-about break-through results:

  • Communicate before starting. Begin by breaking the ice with the people in the work area so they know what is happening and why; make it clear that this is not a fault-finding mission, that there is amnesty, and that the Waste Walk is an effort to “help, not to shoot the wounded.”
  • Communicate with the gemba team. Establish ground rules, making sure to describe the theme or the forms of waste the team will be targeting, along with any other expectations relative to objectives people issues, desired outcomes, and so on.
  • Describe the start and end points of what you want to observe and study.
  • Conduct the Waste Walk and maintain communication protocols throughout; remind the team that as they interact with and pose questions to those doing the work, they must listen carefully to the answers.
  • Reconvene in a meeting room afterward to record ideas, consider what the team has learned, set priorities, and move into action! Sometimes it gets harder as the team disperses, so be sure to maintain communication and measure progress after-the-fact.
  • Be inquisitive…curious…
  • Make Waste Walks a regular part of people’s work; they should not happen once in a blue moon

Finally, if there is an over-arching theme or mantra associated with an effective waste walk, it is NOT “Don’t just stand there; do something!”

Conversely, the best over-arching mantra is, “Don’t just do something; stand there and learn!”