Six Sigma has really evolved into being a tool that can be used in all industries. The tools are universal for each business. Over the last 25 years Six Sigma has evolved into one of the leading management methodologies and has been adopted by most Fortune 500 companies. Six sigma specializes in removing wasteful process steps and setting up quality methods to ensure everything is running as efficiently as possible and to also help catch processes that can be improved on.
The primary methodology that is taught in Six Sigma is called DMAIC. This stands for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. This is the method in which most six sigma projects are run. In the define stage the six sigma team will determine what the issue they are wanting to address actually is. Measure is the stage where the team gathers the details and data to better review the problem. Analyze is the stage when the team reviews the data they collected from the measure stage. After they analyze the data they move into the next stage, improve, where they design and implement process changes to help solve for the issue. Control is the final phase where quality processes are added to ensure that the changes made are helping to solve for the problem. If in the control stage they are finding that the issue is still there they may decide to go back to one of the previous steps and go back through to find another solution.
It is easy to understand the ideas behind the steps, but harder to actually understand how to actually implement them. Here is one simple example of DMAIC:
Using DMAIC in the hotel industry:
· Define- Say you want to improve customer service but you are not sure how. In the define stage you will review your current processes to see what all impacts customer service. So for example you can look at your room service processes, your front desk processes to sign people in and out, or your housekeeping services. You then find out which area needs the most help. There are many tools in six sigma to determine this; these will be discussed in a later blog.
· Measure- So we have narrowed our list down and found that we want to work on our room service. You will want to analyze all the different aspects of customer service and use different resources. Some things you may want to look at is quality of service (how the employee interacted with your customer), the speed of the service, or the presentation of the service.
· Analyze- In the analyze stage you will look at the data you gathered and determine where the issues may be. So form the last stage we may have timed the speed of the service and determined that it was taking longer than 30 minutes to bring them their requests. We also did surveys in the last stage to gauge the overall customer satisfaction of the customers and determined they wanted the service done within 20 minutes. This gives us one thing that we will want to look into to change since we can see we are failing our customer expectation.
· Improve- Now that we have our issue, let’s fix it. In analyze we not only realized that our turnaround time was not fast enough to meet the customer’s needs, we also found out that there was a time lapse from when the customer dialed the number to room service, until the request was given to the employees who prepared and delivered the request. This lapse on average was nearly 15 minutes. So to fix this, in the improve stage we implement new processes where the customer service call is typed into a database by the receptionist who answers the call. This database feeds directly to the back where the requests are handled removing the call to them which was originally how it was done. This eliminates the step that took wasteful time.
· Control- So now we have eliminated steps that were not only taking up extra time from the employees, but also improved the speed of customer service which resulted in higher customer satisfaction. The hotel has decided to make sure this new change will continue, they built in a reporting database to track the calls and time it takes to answer. They also decided to give survey cards on all room service calls to get an idea of how they are doing and how they may be able to continue to improve
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As you can see from the example we were able to identify the issue, use data to see why it is an issue and how we can correct it, implement the changes effectively, and set in place control methods to be able to ensure that it is maintained going forward. Although there are many tools involved in each step, just knowing this basic layout is a great foundation to any project. Being a Six Sigma Black Belt, I use this methodology on a constant basis.
I will be going over more tools used in Six Sigma in this blog. If you have questions on this methodology, six sigma in general, or consulting service you can email me directly at thutchinson@fullcirclebusinessconsulting.com or on my website www.Fullcirclebusinessconsulting.com.
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