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

2. 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

3. 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

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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. Flow charts
See Boise Cascade example – figures 13.3 and 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

15. 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

16. 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
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MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

17. 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 records incidence of surgical infections – only UCL matters, so process is stable and any improvement would come from change in the overall process.
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MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. Pareto diagrams
See figure – 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 – successive Pareto diagrams enable team to drill down.
MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

22. 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

23. Cause and effect diagrams
See figure – diagonals are causes of the problem and smaller branches are the components of these causes.
See figure – 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

24. 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

25. 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

26. Scatter Diagram
See figure 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. *
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MANAGING FOR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE, 7e, © 2008 Thomson Higher Education Publishing

27. 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

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

29. 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

30. 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

31. 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

32. 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

33. 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

34. 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

35. Simulation modeling 2
See figure – process map for call center – andfigure – 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

36. 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, to .49 = new order, and so on. Thus a random number of = 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

37. 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