Tools for Process Improvement MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Content of this chapter We examine some methods and basic versions of tools (primarily charts and diagrams) for initiating quality improvement for a chosen process. In this way relevant and critical information is gathered and analyzed to point to problems and solutions Green Belt training includes these. MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

It it’s not broken, we haven’t made it complicated enough. Thought of the day It it’s not broken, we haven’t made it complicated enough. MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

The Deming Cycle Act Plan Study Do MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Plan (1 of 2) Define the process: its start, end, and what it does. Describe the process: list the key tasks, people involved, equipment used, and materials used. Describe the external and internal customers and suppliers, and process operators. Define customer expectations:both external and internal customers. Determine what historical data are available and what data need to be collected MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Plan (2 of 2) Describe the perceived problems, for instance, failure to meet customer expectations, excessive variation, long cycle times. Identify the primary causes of the problems (various tools for this). Develop potential changes or solutions to the process, and evaluate. Select the most promising solution(s). MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Do Conduct a pilot study or experiment to test the impact of the potential solution(s) – major importance! Identify measures to understand how any changes or solutions are successful. Note example in text – restaurant with long waiting lines. Trial solution included renting fax machine for orders and having 1 of the cash registers for these orders. After trial, purchased fax machine and put walk in and fax orders on both registers (worked better). MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Study Examine the results of the pilot study or experiment. Determine whether process performance has improved. Identify further experimentation that may be necessary. MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Act Select the best change or solution. Develop an implementation plan: what, who, and when. Standardize the solution, for example, by writing new standard operating procedures. Establish a process to monitor and control. MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Creative problem solving Many creativity tools are designed to help you change the context in which you view a problem and its environment. Paradigms – often cannot be changed until there is a substitute Story – “Pig.” See figure 13.2 – templates for process improvement MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

The Seven QC Tools Flowcharts – just saw one! Check sheets Histograms – frequency diagrams Cause-and-effect diagrams -- fishbone Pareto diagrams – cumulative defects Scatter diagrams Control charts MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Key Idea Flowcharts provide a picture of the steps needed to accomplish a task. MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Flowchart Shows unexpected complexity, problem areas, redundancy, unnecessary loops, and where simplification may be possible Compares and contrasts actual versus ideal flow of a process Allows a team to reach agreement on process steps and identify activities that may impact performance MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Flow charts See Boise Cascade example – figures 13.3 and 13.4. Cross-functional team eliminated 70% of the steps. Motorola reduced manufacturing time for pagers from 40 days to less than one hour(!) MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Key Idea Run charts show the variation of a process over time in a graphical fashion that is easy to understand and interpret. They also identify process changes and trends over time and show the effects of corrective actions. MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Run Chart Monitors performance of one or more processes over time to detect trends, shifts, or cycles Allows a team to compare performance before and after implementation of a solution Focuses attention on vital changes in the process Often the data is from sampling Plot all points and connect the dots, then compute mean and draw as horizontal line -- comparisons * * * * * * MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Control Chart Run charts with upper and lower control limits. Focuses on process variation over time Distinguishes special (outside control limits) from common causes of variation. See figure 13.6. records incidence of surgical infections – only UCL matters, so process is stable and any improvement would come from change in the overall process. * * * * * * MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Check Sheet See figures 13.7 and 13.8 Requires no extra calculation – totals are included Forces agreement on the definition of each condition or event of interest Makes patterns in the data become obvious quickly xx xxxxxx x MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Key Idea Histograms provide clues about the characteristics of the parent population from which a sample is taken. Patterns that would be difficult to see in an ordinary table of numbers become apparent. MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Histogram Lets you SEE the pattern where tabulation does not – excel column displays – cannot see pattern in table 13.3 Shows centering, variation, and shape Illustrates the underlying distribution of the data Base on new data if changes, e.g. new operator. At least 50 observations MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Pareto diagrams See figure 13.10 – cumulative responsibility for % of all defects – e.g. 90% of our problems are from incompleteness, surface scars, or cracks. Data often gathered from check sheets. See figure 13.12 – successive Pareto diagrams enable team to drill down. MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Pareto Diagram Helps a team focus on causes that have the greatest impact Displays the relative importance of problems in a simple visual format Helps prevent “shifting the problem” where the solution removes some causes but worsens others MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Cause and effect diagrams See figure 13.13 – diagonals are causes of the problem and smaller branches are the components of these causes. See figure 13.14 – hospital emergency admission problem – four departments are responsible – environmental services, emergency dept, med/surgical unit, and admitting. Note, for example, how late discharges contribute to bottleneck and in turn are due to no orders and/or no ride. MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Cause and Effect Diagram Enables a team to focus on the problem, not on history or personal interests of team members – oh, this all started, we didn’t use to, it’s all their fault – who cares? Fix it! Creates a snapshot of collective knowledge and consensus of a team; builds support for solutions Focuses the team on causes, not symptoms Effect Causes MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Cause and effect diagrams First used by Kaoru Ishikawa Often called Ishikawa or Fishbone diagrams We may try using one to discuss campus course scheduling as part of DMAIC. MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Scatter Diagram See figure 13.15. A picture of a regression relationship – errors increase in relation to employee grievances. One to one correlation would show a straight diagonal line.– typically the relationship is curved, because it is stronger at some points under the curve and weaker at others. * * * * * MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Scatter diagrams Supplies the data to confirm a hypothesis that two variables are related Provides both a visual and statistical means to test the strength of a relationship Provides a good follow-up to cause and effect diagrams We might try using the formulas built into Excel to see some correlations – kinda fun. You could gather the data. MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Other Tools for Process Improvement Kaizen Blitz Poka-Yoke Process Simulation MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Poka-Yoke (Mistake-Proofing) An approach for mistake-proofing processes using automatic devices or methods to avoid simple human or machine error, such as forgetfulness, misunderstanding, errors in identification, lack of experience, absentmindedness, delays, or malfunctions MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Mistake-Proofing Two aspects – prediction = recognizing likelihood of defect and posting warning Detection – stopping the process Example – Yamada Electric – worker must insert two springs under a button – eliminate oversight by first putting the two springs in a dish in front of the parts box. MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Service poka-yokes by type of error Task errors—use color codes, surgical trays with indentations Treatment errors – interaction with customer – provide servers with four specific cues Tangible errors – e.g. messy facility – paper bands around clean towels for hotel rooms MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Service poka-yokes by type of error Customer errors in preparation – flow chart for customer to have info BEFORE calling Customer errors during encounter – beeper signaling credit card left in ATM Customer errors at resolution stage – gift certificate for customers who provide feedback MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Key Idea Process simulation is an approach to building a logical model of a real process, and experimenting with the model to obtain insight about the behavior of the process or to evaluate the impact of changes in assumptions or potential improvements to it. MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Simulation modeling Maps steps, times, and decision-trees in a process. Planners can not only see the process but can experiment with changes. Works by observed probabilities and mapping of how things occur in the actual system. Must validate the model before experimenting. MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Simulation modeling 2 See figure 13.18 – process map for call center – andfigure 13.19 – simulation results. Calls arrive at support level 1 with known frequency – average time between and shape of distribution – probably exponential Simulate this by generating random number between 0 and 1.0 and outputting the corresponding time value that has that exact probability of occurring. Create an “event” in the model – incoming call. Next, determine nature of the call – see next slide MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Simulation modeling 3 Suppose following probabilities – error in billing 17%, new order 32%, cancel account 9%, technical help 37%, other 5%. Like Pareto diagram. 0 to .17=billing, 0.170001 to .49 = new order, and so on. Thus a random number of .357738495 = new order, and so on. Times to handle each category will be different. They are probably uniformly distributed. MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

Simulation modeling 4 We also need probability customer request will be resolved at each of the three help levels, and probability customer will hang up and possibly cancel account at each stage and time length. Model tracks and prints out queues, wait times, success rates, defection rates. Validate model against actual data and then experiment. Note Nersesian’s dilemma. MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing