THE DMAIC PROBLEM – SOLVING MODEL
“What,” you may ask, “makes DMAIC different from or better than other problem – solving techniques?” (If so, you’re already practicing one of the key skills of Six sigma management: asking good questions!)
DMAIC as just a set of letters or steps is not better. But what is better is what you do as you move through the five DMAIC steps. The biggest differences or advantages of DMAIC probably boil down to these seven items:
Ø Measuring the problem: In DMAIC, you don’t just assume that you understand what the problem is: you have to prove (validate) it with facts.
Ø Focusing on the custom: The external customer is always important, even if you’re just trying to cut costs in a process.
Ø Verifying root cause: In the bad old days, if a team agreed on a cause, that was proof enough. In the good new days (a Six Sigma world), you’ve got to prove your cause with, again, facts and data.
Ø Braking old habit: Solutions coming out of DMAIC projects should not just be minor changes in crusty old processes. Real and results take creative new solutions.
Ø Managing risk: Testing and perfecting solutions – working out the ”bugs” – an essential part of Six sigma discipline and pretty good common sense.
Ø Measuring results: As we’ve noted, the follow – up to any solutions is to verify its real impact: more reliance on facts.
Ø Sustaining change: Even the best of new “best practices” developed by a DMAIC team can die quickly if not nurtured and supported. Making change last is the final key to this more enlightened problem – solving approach.
There’s more to DMAIC than these seven advantages, but they’re surely the most important. As we review the five DMAIC steps, you’ll get a better idea how the process works.
Step 1: Define the Problem
The first step sets the stage for the project as a whole and often poses the greatest challenge to a team. The team must grapple with an array of questions” What are we working on? Why are we working on this particular problem? How is the work currently being done? What are the benefits of making the improvement?
These kinds of questions, fundamental business thinking, drive new and original ways of thinking about business problems that in the past were too often ignored. Once these questions are answered – at least in a draft form – the DMAIC Charter can be developed.
Charters vary from company to company but typically include.
A business case: Why is this particular opportunity being chosen?
Problem / opportunity and goal statements: What’s the specific problem or plain being addressed, and what results will be sought?
Constraints/Assumptions: What limitations are placed on the project or resource expectations being made?
Scope: How much of the process and / or range of issues is “in bounds”?
Players and roles: Who are the team members, Champion, and other stakeholders?
Preliminary plan: When will each phase (D, M, A, I and C) be completed?
This project blueprint is intended to define and narrow the project’s focus, clarify the results being sought, confirm value to the business, establish boundaries and resources for the team, and help the team communicate its goals and plans. The project blueprint is the first, and often most important, tollgate that must be signed off on by the project Champion before the team proceeds.
The team’s next job is to identify the most important player in any process: the customer. Customers may be either internal (within the business) or external (playing customers). It ‘s the job of the Black Belt and the team to get good fix on what customers want – especially the external customers, whose “purchase decisions” determine whether the company continues to make money, grow, and so on.
This work, involving the voice of the customer (VOC) can be challenging. Customers themselves are often not sure about what they want or have trouble expressing it. They are generally pretty good, though, about describing what they don’t want. So the team must listen to the “voice of the customer” and translate the customer’s language into meaningful requirements.
Next we create a high – level diagram of the process the team will be working on. The notion of high level is critical: At this point, you do not want to bury the team in a large, bewildering, spaghetti like map of a detailed process flow. So this first diagram usually shows about five to ten major steps describing the current, or as – is process. This enables everyone on the team to have the same picture of the process and to work from the same assumptions. Creating the diagram also sets the stage for the next major step – Measure – by giving the team an idea of where it may want to collect data.
Step 2: Measure
Measure is a logical follow – up to Define and is a bridge to the next step: Analyze. The Measure step has two main objectives:
1. Gather data to validate and to quantify the problem / opportunity. Usually, this is critical information to refine and complete the first full project Charter.
2. Begin teasing out facts and numbers that offer clues about the causes of the problem.
Remember, Six Sigma teams take a process view of the business and use that view to set priorities and to make good decisions about what measures are needed. As shown in Figure below, a process has three main categories of measures.
1. Output or Outcome: The end results of the process. Output measures focus on immediate results (deliveries, defects, complaints) and outcomes on longer terms impacts (profit, satisfaction, etc)
2. Process: Things that can be tracked and measured. These items usually help the team start to pinpoint causes of the problem
3. Input: Things coming into the process for change into outputs. Of course, bad inputs can create ban outputs, so input measures also help identity possible causes of a problem.
The DMAIC team’s first priority is almost always the output measures that best quantify the current problems. This baseline measure is the data used to complete the Charter; sometimes, if the problem turns out to be smaller than or different from expectations, the project may be cancelled or revamped.
Process and a select few input measures are targeted to begin getting data on potential causes. Once it has determined what to measure, the DMAIC team forms a “data collection plan.” This is often where team members move from the comfortable sequestered conference or training room into the real world of getting people to help count and quantify what’s going on in the business.
Some of the most important techniques learned in good DMAIC training involve how to collect data, how many to count (sampling), and how often to count it. Getting cooperation from customers, colleagues, and suppliers, is usually critical. In fact, many people’s first exposure to Six Sigma projects is being asked to help collect data.
A common milestone in the Measure step is to develop an initial “sigma measure” for the process being fixed. (In some companies, it’s mandatory; others make it optional).The sigma measure is good at helping compare performance of very different process and relating them to customer requirements. With an early read on the number or count of defects or unwanted outputs of a process, an early sigma can be calculated.
Step 3: Analyze
In this step the DMAIC team delves into the details, enhances its understanding of the process and problem, and if all goes as intended, identifies the culprit behind the problem. The team uses the Analyze step to find the “root cause”.
Sometimes, the root causes of a problem are evident. When they are, teams can move through analysis quickly. Often, though, root causes are buried under piles of paperwork and old processes, lost among the complexities of many people doing work in their own way and not documenting it, year after year. When this happens, the team can spend several weeks or months applying an array of tools and testing various ideas before finally closing the case.
One of the principles of good DMAIC problem solving is to consider many types of causes, so as not to let biases or past experience cloud the team’s judgment. Some of the common cause categories to be explored are
· Methods: the procedures or techniques used in doing the work\
· Mother Nature: environmental elements, from weather to economic conditions that impact how a process or a business performs.
· People: a key variable in how all these these other elements combine to produce business results.
(These cause categories are sometimes dubbed the “5Ms and 1P.”)
DMAIC teams narrow their search for causes by what we call the Analyze cycle. The cycle begins by combining experience, data / measures, and a review of the process and then forming an initial guess, or hypothesis of the cause. The team then looks for more data and other evidence to see whether it fits with the suspected cause. The cycle of analysis continues, with the hypothesis being refined or rejected until the true root cause is identified and verified with data.
One of the big challenges in the Analyze step is to use the right tools. With luck, fairly simple tools can get to the cause. When causes go deeper or when the relationship between the problem and other factors is complex and hidden, more advanced statistical techniques may be required to identify and to verify the cause.
Step 4: Improve
This step – solution and action – is where many people are tempted to jump right from the start of the project. (We’ve heard folks say, “It’s how we’ve been conditioned: ‘See problem, Kill Problem”.)
In fact, the habit of starting to solve a problem without first understanding it is so strong that many teams find it a challenge to stick with the objective rigor of the DMAIC process. When they see the value of asking questions, checking assumptions, and using data, though, team members realize how much better this Six Sigma approach is.
Before even beginning to develop solutions, many teams go back to their charters and modify their problem and goal statements to reflect their discoveries to this point. It’s common to reaffirm the value of the project with the DMAIC team Champions. Teams may also modify the scope of their project, based on a better understanding of the problem and the process. But once the team has realigned its goals, Improve is the step for finally planning and achieving results.
Surprisingly, this may be easier said than done. Truly creative solutions that address the underlying causes of the problem and that people working in the process find acceptable don’t grow on trees. And once new ideas are developed, they have to be tested, refined, and implemented.
Why are truly solutions at such a premium? One reason may be that the team has been used to current approaches (and engaged in measurement and analysis) for so long that kicking free of old thinking is difficult. The other reason is that truly creative solutions are always rare events. Assumption busting and other creativity exercises help the team shake up its thinking and approach idea generation in new ways. The team may also look at other companies or other groups in their business to see whether they can borrow “best practices” from elsewhere.
Once several potential solutions have been proposed, the analytical headsets go back on, and several criteria, including costs and likely benefits, are used to select the most promising and practical solutions. The “final” solution or series of changes must always approved by the Champion and often by the entire leadership
At this point, Improve becomes Implementing. (In fact, some companies add a second I and call the process DMAIIC.)
Implementation is not a “just do it” activity. DMAIC solutions have to be carefully managed and tested. Small – scale pilots are practically mandatory; teams go through careful “potential problem analysis” to determine what could go wrong and prepare to prevent or manage difficulties. New changes have to be “sold” to organization members whose participation is critical. Data must be gathered to track and to verify the impact (and unintended consequences) of the solution.
Sound like a lot of work? Well, it usually is. But DMAIC teams have found that it’s also a thrill to see their efforts begin to pay off as defects are reduced, costs eliminated, and customers better served.
Step 5: Control
One of our colleagues often describes organizations and processes as being like rubber bands. You can work hard to stretch them into all kinds of new and interesting shapes, but as soon as you let go. Snap! It’s back to its old shape.
Avoiding the “snap” back to old habits and process is the main objective of the Control step. Ultimately, having a long term impact on the way people work and ensuring that it lasts is as much about persuading and selling ideas as it is about measuring and monitoring results. Both are essential.
Specific Control tasks that DMAIC Black Belts and teams much complete include:
Ø Developing a monitoring process to keep track of the changes they have set out.
Ø Creating a response plan for dealing with problems that may arise
Ø “Sell” the project through presentations and demonstrations
Ø Hand off project responsibilities to those who do the day – to – day work
Ø Ensure support from management for the long term goals of the project.
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