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 PROGRAM BOOK
For Professional Lean Six Sigma
Certi cation Programs

The Lean Six Sigma Framework

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 Dedication
To all of the SkillFront Entrepreneurs, thank you for inspiring us, keeping us
focused, and making sure we do our best to guide you to execute ideas,
grow businesses, and dominate your markets online and of ine.

We are proud of seeing you while you serve your clients at your highest levels
possible and positively in uence their lives that wouldn't happen otherwise.

Without you, your engagement, and your loyal support, SkillFront could not
come where it is today.


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 Table Of Contents CLICKABLE

Table Of Contents _________________________________________________________5

Welcome To The SkillFront ________________________________________________15
Become A Bit Better Than You, Everyday ______________________________________20
Introduction to the Lean __________________________________________________26
Lean Control ________________________________________________________________26
What Is Meant by Lean Control? _________________________________________________27
Lean Applications ____________________________________________________________28
Elimination of Waste Is the Soul of Lean ___________________________________________29
The Five Core Principles of Lean _________________________________________________31
Principle #1. De ne Value from the Customer’s Perspective __________________________________31
Principle #2. Describe the Value Stream for Each Product or Service ___________________________32

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 Principle #3. Create Flow in Each Value Stream ___________________________________________32

Principle #4. Produce at the Pace (Pull) of Actual Customer Demand ___________________________33
Principle #5. Strive to Continuously Improve All Business Operations __________________________33
Key Takeaway from Lean Principles ____________________________________________________34
Eliminating Waste _______________________________________________________35
Lean: Sustainability’s blue-collar brother __________________________________________35
Type of Sustainability Aspects Related to Eight Wastes ________________________________36
Caterpillar’s use of Six Sigma in supply chain sustainability ____________________________39
Critical Success Factors________________________________________________________40
Continuous Improvement _________________________________________________42
Cultural Indicators ___________________________________________________________43
JIT (Just-in-time) Pull Systems _____________________________________________45
JIT manufacturing principles ___________________________________________________45
Inventory reduction to expose waste ____________________________________________________46
Demand-pull production system ______________________________________________________46

 Quick setups to reduce lot sizes ________________________________________________________47

Uniform plant loading _______________________________________________________________48
Flexible resources __________________________________________________________________48
Line/cellular ow layouts ____________________________________________________________49
Total Quality Management _____________________________________________________50
Employee empowerment ______________________________________________________50
Conclusion: The evolution of JIT into “lean operations” _______________________________51
Lean Thinking __________________________________________________________52
Overview ___________________________________________________________________53
Lean thinking practices ________________________________________________________56
It’s about people rst __________________________________________________________59
Lean Manufacruring _____________________________________________________61
Lean 5S ____________________________________________________________________61
Kaizen _____________________________________________________________________62
Lean ______________________________________________________________________64

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 Wastes ___________________________________________________________________________65
Terminology ______________________________________________________________________65
Principles ________________________________________________________________________66
Mean Lean __________________________________________________________________66
Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) __________________________________________67
Implementing Lean Manufacturing ______________________________________________69
Architecting Lean Enterprises ______________________________________________75
What Is Lean Enterprise? ______________________________________________________75
Understanding Lean Enterprise _______________________________________________________75
Lean Enterprise Principles ___________________________________________________________76
What Does It Take To Become A Lean Enterprise? ____________________________________76
Leadership Commitment ____________________________________________________________77
Employee Involvement ______________________________________________________________77
Execution ________________________________________________________________________78
Organisational Culture and Change Leadership _____________________________________79
Risk Management In Lean Enterprises ____________________________________________82

 Intersection between Lean Implementation and Risk Management ____________________________83

Key Takeaways from Lean Enterprises ____________________________________________84
Lean Project Management _________________________________________________85
Principles __________________________________________________________________85
Specify the optimal bene t / cost ratio from the customer's point of view _______________________85
De ne the minimum value-adding work packages and work processes _________________________86
Establish clear responsibilities, tasks and competencies at the lowest possible organizational level ___86
Ensure a continuous ow of results by limiting work in progress ______________________________87
Identify errors immediately and eliminate them sustainably _________________________________88
Project types ________________________________________________________________89
Lean Construction _________________________________________________________________89
Lean Product / Lean Software Development ______________________________________________89
Lean Innovation / Lean Startup _______________________________________________________89
How Does Lean Project Management Work? _______________________________________90
Agile: Fast Feedback in Living Order ____________________________________________________92
The many avors of Agile include ______________________________________________________92

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 Hackathons: Fostering an Agile Culture _________________________________________________95

What is Six Sigma? _______________________________________________________97
What is Quality? ________________________________________________________99
What is the Hidden Factory? ______________________________________________100
Six Sigma Process Excellence Disciplines _____________________________________101
History of Six Sigma _____________________________________________________103
How does Six Sigma work? ________________________________________________104
What is Sigma and Why is it Six Sigma? ______________________________________106
What is the Focus of Six Sigma? ____________________________________________110
How does Six Sigma DMAIC Process work? ___________________________________112
Six Sigma Roles and Responsibilities ________________________________________115
Six Sigma vs Business Process Reengineering (BPR) - A Comparison _______________123
What is Statistics? ______________________________________________________126
What is Descriptive Statistics? _____________________________________________128

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What is Inferential Statistics? ______________________________________________132

Accuracy vs Precision ____________________________________________________134
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Introduction to De ne Phase ________________________135
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Introduction to Measure Phase ______________________136
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Introduction to Analyze Phase _______________________137
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Introduction to Improve Phase ______________________138
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Introduction to Control Phase _______________________140
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - A Real World Example _____________________________141
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - De ne Phase - Capturing Voice of Customer (VOC) _______142
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - De ne Phase - KANO Analysis _______________________146
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - De ne Phase - CTQ Drilldown Tree ___________________149
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - De ne Phase - Six Sigma Project Charter _______________150
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - De ne Phase - Change Acceleration Process (CAP) _______155
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - De ne Phase - Process Mapping / SIPOC _______________160

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 Six Sigma DMAIC Process - De ne Phase - Process Mapping / Flow Charting _________161
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Measure Phase - Identify Possible Project Y's ____________163
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Measure Phase - Types of Data _______________________164
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Measure Phase - Variation / Discrete vs Continuous Thinking _
165
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Measure Phase - Data Collection Strategy - Sampling ______167
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Measure Phase - Measurement System _________________172
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Measure Phase - Process Capability ___________________184
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Analyze Phase - As Is Process Map ____________________191
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Analyze Phase - Data Door Analysis ___________________192
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Analyze Phase - Control Impact Matrix ________________199
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Analyze Phase - Why Analysis _______________________200
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Analyze Phase - Hypothesis Testing ___________________201
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Analyze Phase - Analysis Examples ___________________205

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Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Improve Phase - Solution Parameter __________________211

Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Improve Phase - Generate Possible Solution ____________213
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Improve Phase - Screen Against Musts and Wants ________216
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Improve Phase - Conduct Cost-Bene t Analysis __________217
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Improve Phase - Failure Mode E ect Analysis (FMEA) _____218
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Improve Phase - Pilot Solution Implementation _________220
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Improve Phase - Validate Measurement System __________221
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Improve Phase - New Process Capability / Mapping _______222
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Control Phase - Statistical Process Control _____________223
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Control Phase - What is a Process Control? _____________224
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Control Phase - What are Control Charts? ______________225
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Control Phase - SPC - Out of Control __________________227
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Control Phase - Leading Indicator vs La ging Indicator____229
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Control Phase - Control Chart Selection _______________230
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 Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Control Phase - Risk Assessment and Mistake proo ng - Poka
Yoke _________________________________________________________________232
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Control Phase - Control and Implementation Plans_______234
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Control Phase - Review and Sign-o __________________236
Next Steps For The Pursuit Of Growth _______________________________________237
Thanks For Learning With The SkillFront ____________________________________240



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Welcome To The SkillFront

“ As to methods, there may be million and then some, but
skills are few. The one who grasps skills can
successfully select his or her own methods. The one
who tries methods, ignoring skills, is sure to have
trouble.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essayist and Poet

New Year's Eve 2010.
As the rest of the world went about celebrating the
dawn of a new year heading into 2011, I lay in my bed,
next to my baby, who was born less than four short
months ago.
My husband sat next to me, and I can still remember the
sound of reworks set off in the neighborhood.
I could see the colors of reworks, re ecting off my
husband's face. He turned and looked at me, while tears
were pouring down my cheeks, and he said, "You didn't
sign up for this. We're going to x it!"
I lay down and put my hands back behind my head;
closing my eyes, I felt every aspect of my being lled
with rage.

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 My mind raced back to the winter, nearly twelve months
before, to me getting promoted to a leadership position
at one of Switzerland's largest local banks. As the
manager of the busiest branch in the middle of the city
of Zurich, I was leading thirty to forty employees,
contractors, and agency staff. To this day, I can't help but
marvel at the thousands of working hours, the millions of
Swiss francs, and the enormously complex processes
necessary to make a simple nancial investment product
shown in our portfolio of products.
And yet, there I was lying, heading into 2011, with the
termination letter in my hand. It turned out that my
employer didn't want to occupy their demanding
positions with mothers of newborn babies. They couldn't
wait any longer and quickly sent me my noti cation at
the end of my twelve-weeks of of cially deserved
maternity leave.
At this moment, you may be wondering why I didn't go
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back to my corporate career, although I could have
reasonably quickly nd another job, given my
quali cations and job experiences, even if I had this big
"obstacle" of having a few months old baby.
Let me tell you this. The shock of getting red helped
me admit three very important things that I haven't been
entirely honest to myself before:
1. Large companies move slowly. Good ideas often died
on the vine simply because they had to be approved
by too many people.
2. Climbing the corporate ladder is an obstacle to doing
great work. I wanted to focus on getting things done
and making things better, not constantly positioning
myself for promotion. Politics and turf wars are an
inescapable part of the daily experience of working
for a large company.
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3. Frustration leads to burnout. I wanted to enjoy my
daily work experience, but instead, I felt like I was
running a gauntlet each day. It began to affect my
health during my pregnancy, happiness, and
relationships with my husband, friends, and family.
The longer I thought of these facts, the more I realized I
wanted out. I desperately wanted to work on my own
terms, as an entrepreneur.
The next ten years took me on a journey, trying to bring
up my baby, become a good wife, and transform myself
into the practical scientist to unlocking measurable
results in every area of my life every day. A scientist I call
the SkillFront Entrepreneur.
My name is Yeliz Obergfell.
I am a married woman.
I am a mother.
I am a businesswoman.
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And most important:
I am a SkillFront Entrepreneur.
I train entrepreneurs at all levels —from want-to-be
entrepreneurs to owners of large enterprises— to
execute ideas, grow businesses, and dominate their
markets online and of ine.
I wasn't trying to become an expert.
In fact, I wasn't even sure what being an expert meant. I
was, and I am still trying to be a student of my own
passion; helping and serving other entrepreneurs
succeed in business.
I wanted to set myself free after getting laid off. I had no
clue that what would start with a decision to change my
life would transform into a global movement thanks to
the principles, frameworks, and support of SkillFront, the
Skill Platform for Entrepreneurs.
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 I started the idea of SkillFront in 2011 with zero
knowledge of marketing, sales, persuasion, closing, e-
commerce, or automated digital marketing systems.
On top of that, I had never delivered a service that was
100 percent created by me, and I had spent most of my
career selling other services.
From 2011 to 2014, I struggled to get the message I felt
in my heart and soul out to the world. Although we were
having some mild success, I was paralyzed trying to
gure out not only the psychology of being a female
leader with my message, but also the science and
technology to sustain and scale my business.
I have always been an avid learner, but before I decided
to learn everything I could about how I can succeed as
an entrepreneur, most of what I read was ction. If there
is one thing I am good at it, it is taking in a huge amount
of information and distilling it into essentials. I am a
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synthesist by nature, and my travels through the
business literature quickly became an exercise in
separating the diamonds from the rough.
The more I learned, the more helpless I felt. For every
great resource I found, I had to process ten other
resources to gure out how to apply that resource in
practice to excel on my own entrepreneurship journey.
I started to wonder: how much of what's out there —and
there is a lot out there— I really needed to know. How
could I separate practical business and entrepreneurship
skills from the dry theory and technobabble? I only had
so much time and energy, so I started searching for a
lter: something that would direct me to the useful skills
and keep me away from the chaff. The more I searched,
the more I realized it didn't exist — so I decided to
create the SkillFront.
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As of this moment, 143,487 SkillFront Entrepreneurs are

actively using the SkillFront Platform to quickly get their
ideas, products, and services out to the world!

I don't share that with you to impress you. To some of

you hearing this, that is a big thing, and to others, it's
nothing. I share it to demonstrate what is possible
when you learn, live, and leverage the practical science
and art of being an entrepreneur while combining
those skills with lessons you are going to earn in real
practice.

So take a deep breath. It's time for you to unlock the

blueprint of success as an entrepreneur and get to work.

Welcome to the SkillFront.

Yeliz Obergfell, SkillFront

Cofounder, Vice President – Entrepreneur Experience

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 Become A Bit Better Than You, Everyday

“ Before you can be great, you must be good. Before you
can be good, you must be bad. Before you can be bad,
you must try.”

— Jim Edwards, Copywriter and Digital marketer

The Key To Success: Model The Best
During one of the seminars I attended more than a
decade ago in Nashville, Tennessee, I had one of the
most signi cant aha moments in my personal and
entrepreneurial growth journey, which impacted my
business more than everything else I learned until today.
That was the discovery of thoughtful modeling to build
my own skills and career. Children use modeling all the
time to learn how to speak, use tools, or tie their shoes.
If you look at it carefully, modeling is not only essential
to build new skills, but also it's necessary for the
continuity of skills, lessons, know-how, and the world's
intellectual and cultural legacy from one generation to
another.

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 One caveat here: I have seen and met many people who
mix modeling with copying someone else's materials,
patents, works, ideas as they’re, and use them for their
own goals. Don't do this. That is illegal and unethical.
What I mean with thoughtful modeling is:
1. Look for a business that is already successful in
your chosen eld or a leader who has created the
kind of life you want to live.
2. As Tony Robbins rightly put out there: Success leaves
clues. Find them. There's no need to reinvent the
wheel. Those who have succeeded before you have
done so, followed a plan, and you can do the same
thing. Look into their history and their rise to the
top. How did they get to where they are today? What
kind of obstacles and setbacks did they face, and
how did they overcome them? What are their
philosophies about their work and their life?
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3. Use this information to build the path of your
success that mirrors theirs. Your strategy may be
similar to the business or leader you're modeling, or
you adjust it for your present circumstances.  
So, I started looking at other businesses, studying how
they came to where they're today. After all, their
techniques worked for them, they could work for me.
But for some reason, my efforts made very little (if any)
success and income. I was frustrated because I could
see others making money successfully. What was I doing
wrong?
It took me almost four years of studying, researching,
and interviewing successful business people before I
realized that what I was seeing on the surface wasn't
their full arsenal of skills and strategies. The
entrepreneurs who were making decent money were
doing it through steps and processes invisible to the
naked eye.
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 While I had learned and modeled the part of their
businesses that I could see, multiple things were
happening behind the scenes that made the magic
work.

I found that the difference between a $10,000 and

$1,000,000 business was all the things happening after a
buyer initially contacted those businesses.

It took me years to discover and master these hidden

skills below the surface of the iceberg, but when I did it,
the results spoke for themselves. I wanted to launch
SkillFront because I know there are entrepreneurs like
me who have been trying to be successful, yet are not
having much success.

This and other SkillFront programs are the culmination

of a decade spent analyzing thousands of companies
I was modeling what I could see happening on the
and their success models. I have built a number of
surface of successful businesses, but they made
successful companies of my own, and I have worked with
the real money in ways I couldn't see.

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 tens of thousands of students and clients to guide them
to build businesses in every industry you can dream of -
both online and of ine.
This and other programs in the SkillFront platform will
unlock the practical skills and frameworks that are
mastered and continuously used by champion
businesses and leaders in their industries.
I hope that while you're learning those skills, you will
realize your dreams of success are a lot closer than you
think. You will soon see that by providing a ton of value,
communicating effectively with your audience, and
building out your sales processes and ows in a very
strategic way, you can get your product, service, and
message out to the world. And you can get paid what
you're worth while doing it.
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All Skills You're Going To Learn Are
Evergreen
If you've tried to learn how to build and grow your
company in the past, you've probably purchased courses
and courses that teach systems that worked when they
were created but became outdated. Often, before they
even reached a wider audience and found their way to
you.
SkillFront programs, on the other hand, are playcourses
for creating and scaling successful businesses that will
exponentially increase your sales and income. SkillFront
teaches evergreen skills, frameworks, and strategies that
will be just as useful 20 years from now as they are
today. It's the mission of the SkillFront to focus on
principles and methods that are timelines, even if
technologies and tools change.
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 We don't just teach this stu ;

We actually do it.

There are many people teaching business and

entrepreneurship from one or another angle, and the
vast majority of them are making money by teaching
other people’s business strategies. Russell Brunson calls
those people "shovel sellers" because during the gold
rush, the people who made the most money were the
ones selling the shovels. Today's modern shovel sellers
are selling you those strategies without actually using
any of the techniques themselves.

The difference between SkillFront and most others is
that we actually do this for real. That's right. The skills
we're going to reveal to you have been learned and then
veri ed by our own real-world practices, or we have
earned them after thousands of tests, sleepless nights,
mistakes, trials, errors, successes, as well as failures.
One of our amazing partners MicroTrain from
Chicago, the United States of America, and their
valuable trainees for their successful course and
certi cation programs.

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 We have tried these skills in countless different

industries, from law practices to multinational e-
commerce giants, from coaching services to software-
as-a-service providers, from physical product retailers
online and of ine to real estate brokers, from healthcare,
tness, wellness and leisure providers to sports clubs
and educational institutions, and everything else you
ever imagine in between.

We also directly work with hundreds of other businesses,

advising them and increasing their pro tability in almost
every niche and industry you can dream of.

I am excited for you to dive in and have some fun with

this. So, let's get started!

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Introduction to the
Lean
Would you order a delivery pizza for dinner from a
restaurant advertising delivery in 6 hours? How about a
restaurant that can bring you a cold, stale pizza in only
5-minutes?
To meet the consumer’s needs, the pizza shop must be
able to give customers the number of pizzas they want
when they want it. Preparing pizzas in advance is too
wasteful because most consumers are not likely to buy a
stale pizza. Meanwhile, if you take too long to deliver the
pizza, you will lose customers to a more responsive
competitor. The concept of lean focuses on making what
you need to meet customer demand only when you
need it. For a pizza delivery shop, that probably means a
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fresh pizza at the customer’s door in around 30 minutes.
This philosophy can apply to a range of operations, from
simply washing a car to manufacturing a complex
aircraft.
Similarly, the concept of lean manufacturing refers to
eliminating waste in the manufacturing process. The
Toyota Product System is the model for modern
manufacturers that want to control waste.
Lean Control
Lean control, or simply lean, has become an immensely
popular business control and improvement methodology
in recent years. Lean control is a highly re ned example
of non nancial controls in action. Lean is a system of
non nancial controls used to improve product and
service quality and decrease waste. Research suggests
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that up to 70% of manufacturing rms are using some
form of lean in their business operations. Lean was
initially focused on improving manufacturing operations
but is now used to improve product development, order
processing, and a variety of other non-manufacturing
processes (sometimes called “lean in the of ce”).
What Is Meant by Lean
Control?
Lean’s popularity has both resulted from, and been
driven by, an explosion in the volume of lean-related
educational resources. Amazon offers almost 1,800
books and other materials about lean, and Yahoo! hosts
over 90 online discussion groups relating to lean.
Colleges and universities, industry trade associations,
and private consulting rms routinely offer courses,
seminars, and conferences to explain what lean is and
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how to use it.
Lean control is a number of things. According to James
Womack, “it is a process for measuring and reducing
inventory and streamlining production. It is a means for
changing the way a company measures plant
performance. It is a knowledge-based system. It takes
years of hard work, preparation and support from upper
management. Lean is so named because it purports to
use much less of certain resources (space, inventory,
workers, etc.) than is used by normal mass-production
systems to produce comparable output.”
The term came into widespread use with the 1990
publication of the book The Machine That Changed the
World, by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel
Roos.Womack, J. P., Jones, D. T., & Roos, D. (1990).
This abundance of education resources on the topic of
lean is actually a mixed blessing for managers who are
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just now becoming interested in lean. On the one hand,

today’s managers don’t have to search far to nd lean
Lean Applications
materials or programs. But the wealth of lean resources
Lean will always be associated with Toyota Motor
can also be a source of confusion for two main reasons.
Corporation because most lean tools and techniques
First, there is no universal de nition of lean and little
were developed by Toyota in Japan beginning in the
agreement about what the truly core principles of lean
1950s. After World War II, Toyota’s leaders were
are. For instance, quality programs such as Six-Sigma, or
determined to make the company a full-range car and
even lean Six Sigma, are other titles competing for the
truck manufacturing enterprise, but they faced several
“lean” intellectual space. Therefore, lean experts often
serious challenges. The Japanese motor vehicle market
approach the subject from differing perspectives and
was small and yet demanded a fairly wide range of
describe lean in different ways. To make matters worse,
vehicle types. This meant that Toyota needed to nd a
lean is a topic that produces a signi cant amount of
way to earn a pro t while manufacturing a variety of
zealotry. So, many experts strongly argue that their
vehicles in low volumes. In addition, capital was
particular “brand” of lean is the one right way to
extremely scarce, which made it impossible for Toyota to
implement and use lean. In these circumstances, it’s no
make large purchases of the latest production
wonder that managers become confused about where
equipment. To succeed, or even survive, Toyota needed
and how to begin.
a way to build vehicles that would require fewer
resources. To achieve this goal, Toyota’s leaders,
principally Eiji Toyoda and Taiichi Ohno, began to create

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 and implement the production techniques and tools that
came to be known as lean.
To gain the most bene ts from lean, managers must be
able to determine what speci c lean tools and
techniques will be effective in their particular business.
And to make that determination, they must clearly
understand what lean is designed to accomplish (its
primary objectives) and what core principles lean is
based on. With this understanding, managers can decide
which lean tools will work well in their business, which
lean tools will need to be modi ed or adapted to work
well, and which tools are simply not appropriate.
What, then, are the major objectives and core principles
of lean? Despite the arguments and debates that often
surround attempts to de ne and describe lean, it is clear
that the ultimate objective of lean is the avoidance of
muda, or wasteful activity, in all business operations.
Muda comprises seven deadly wastes. In the lean world,
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waste means any activity or condition that consumes
resources but creates no value for customers. Therefore,
waste includes the production of defective products
that must be remade or xed, the production of more
products than the market will buy, excessive work-in-
process inventories, overprocessing (processing steps
that aren’t really needed or that add no value),
unnecessary movement of people or products, and
unnecessary waiting by employees.
Elimination of Waste Is the
Soul of Lean
Muda is a Japanese term for activity that is wasteful and
doesn’t add value. It is also a key concept in lean control.
Waste reduction is an effective way to increase
pro tability. Here are the seven deadly wastes, along
with their de nitions:
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1. Defects prevent the customer from accepting the
product produced. The effort to create these defects is
wasted. New waste management processes must be
added in an effort to reclaim some value for the
otherwise scrap product.
2. Overproduction is the production or acquisition of
items before they are actually required. It is the most
dangerous waste of the company because it hides the
production problems. Overproduction must be stored,
managed, and protected.
3. Transportation is a cost with no added value. In
addition, each time a product is moved it stands the risk
of being damaged, lost, and delayed. Transportation
does not transform the product in any way that the
consumer is willing to pay for.
4. Waiting refers to both the time spent by the workers
waiting for resources to arrive, the queue for their
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products to empty as well as the capital sunk in goods
and services that are not yet delivered to the customer.
It is often the case that there are processes to manage
this waiting.
5. Inventory in the form of raw materials, work-in-
progress, or nished goods represents a capital outlay
that has not yet produced an income either by the
producer or for the consumer. Any of these three items
not being actively processed to add value is waste.
6. Motion refers to the actions performed by the
producer, worker, or equipment. Motion has signi cance
to damage, wear, and safety. It also includes the xed
assets and expenses incurred in the production process.
7. Overprocessing is de ned as using a more expensive
or otherwise valuable resource than is needed for the
task or adding features that are designed for but
unneeded by the customer. There is a particular problem
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 with this item regarding people. People may need to In their best-selling book, Lean Thinking, James Womack
perform tasks that they are overquali ed for to maintain and Daniel Jones identi ed ve core principles of
their competency. This training cost can be used to lean.Womack, J. P., & Jones, D. T. (2003).
offset the waste associated with overprocessing.

Principle #1. De ine Value from the

The Five Core Principles of Customer’s Perspective
Lean The rst core principle in the Womack/Jones lean
framework is that value must be de ned and speci ed
Lean methodologies are lean because they enable a
from the customer’s perspective. While this seems
business to do more with less. A lean organization uses
simple enough, it requires much more than high-
less human effort, less equipment, less facilities space,
sounding, generic statements. To be meaningful, value
less time, and less capital—while always coming closer to
must be de ned in terms of speci c products. This
meeting customers’ exact needs. Therefore, lean is not
means that managers must understand how each
just another cost-cutting program of the kind we often
speci c product meets the needs of speci c customers
see in business organizations. Lean is much more about
at a speci c price and at a speci c time.
the conservation of valuable resources than it is about
cost cutting.

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 Principle #2. Describe the Value Principle #3. Create Flow in Each
Stream for Each Product or Value Stream
Service
The third essential principle of lean is embodied in the

The second core principle of lean is to describe the word ow. When a value stream has been completely

value stream for each product or service (or, in some described as unnecessary, non-value-adding activities

cases, for groups or families of similar products). The have been eliminated, the basic idea of ow is to

value stream is the set of activities that the business is arrange the remaining activities sequentially, so that

performing to bring a nished product to a customer. It products will move smoothly and continuously from one

includes both direct manufacturing activities and activity to the next. However, ow means more than

indirect activities such as order processing, purchasing, ease of movement. Flow is the lean principle that

and materials management. Developing a detailed directly challenges the traditional “batch-and-queue”

description or map of each value stream usually reveals model of manufacturing, where people and equipment

huge amounts of waste. It enables managers to identify are organized and located by function, and products

which value stream activities add value to the product, (and component parts) are manufactured in large

which activities add no value but cannot be immediately batches. Lean organizations strive to improve ow by

eliminated for various reasons, and which activities reducing the size of production batches, and in the

create no value and can be immediately eliminated (or at process, they increase exibility and lower costs.

least reduced substantially).

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 Principle #4. Produce at the Pace
(Pull) of Actual Customer Demand
Producing at the pace or pull of actual customer
demand is the fourth key principle of lean. One of the
greatest bene ts of moving from traditional batch-and-
queue manufacturing to continuous ow production is
that lead times fall dramatically. Reduced lead times and
increased exibility mean that lean organizations can
respond to actual customer demand rather than attempt
to predict in advance what that level of demand will be.
This allows lean organizations to substantially lower both
nished goods and work-in-process inventories.
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Principle #5. Strive to
Continuously Improve All
Business Operations
The fth core principle of lean is continuous
improvement, expressed in Japanese by the word
kaizen. Companies that implement lean adopt the mind-
set that it is always possible to improve any business
activity, and they regularly conduct kaizen events
throughout their organizations to improve speci c
processes or operations. Today, Toyota is recognized as
one of the most “lean” business enterprises in the world.
Even more daunting, and humbling, is the fact that
Toyota is still striving to improve.
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 Key Takeaway from Lean

Principles
Lean control, or simply lean, is the system of
non nancial controls used to improve product and
service quality and decrease waste. While popularized
through the dramatic successes of Toyota in auto
manufacturing, lean processes are used to improve
quality and decrease waste in most service and
manufacturing industries around the world. In this
section, you saw examples of the seven deadly wastes
(muda) and the ve core principles of lean which
culminate in continuous improvement, or kaizen.

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 nuanced interpretation, no delicate interpretive dance of
Eliminating Waste language to be had here, which is perhaps why the
application of these systems are so popular with CFOs
and operations management alike.
Lean: Sustainability’s blue- Underscoring some of their shared underpinnings, Lean

collar brother and Six Sigma share essentially the same de nitions of
waste:

In understanding operational ef ciency for many of the

world’s corporations, two systems of thought tend to
predominate: the Toyota Production System (TPS, more
broadly known as “Lean”) and Six Sigma. Although Lean
and Six Sigma are systems used to create, hone, and,
over time, optimize virtually any process or system, it is
important to note that a central concern of each is the
elimination of waste. While sustainability may deal with
the longer-term rami cations of overuse and waste, as
well as other wide-ranging implications, this expression
of sustainability on the plant oor is as elegant and
brutally ef cient in intent as it is in execution: waste
costs measurable amounts of money. Period. There is no

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 In consideration of what is a shared prescription of two

of the dominant ef ciency systems in the world, let’s
consider the sustainable underpinnings of the eight
wastes and the types of aspects related to each waste.

Type of Sustainability Aspects Related to Eight Wastes

Lean Waste Examples of Related Sustainability Aspects

• Oversizing of warehouse and production areas, increased energy usage (Planet)

Inventory Waste • Unnecessary frustration of moving excess inventory to reach needed bays (People)
• Inef cient use of capital and resources (Pro t)

• Decreased employee satisfaction and engagement (People)

Talent Waste
• Inef cient use of one of the organization’s most valuable assets (Pro t)

• Energy waste from idled or below-capacity use of machinery and buildings (Planet)
Waiting Waste
• Increased labor cost; Inef cient use of capital and resources (Pro t)

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 • Excess motion likely means unnecessary energy and fuel consumption for machinery (ie
conveyors, forklifts, etc) (Planet)
• Potential for increased injuries; Excess “round trips” on site likely unrewarding; Increased
Motion Waste physical requirements for the same job; Position may no longer be appropriate for older or
less-conditioned employees (People)
• Increased labor cost; Increased injuries; Increased cost of energy; Decreased machine life
(Pro t)

• Increase in disposed packaging and product; Increase of in-line waste; Additional materials/
processes/energy needed to rework (Planet)
Defects Waste
• Increased frustration and decreased morale in employees (People)
• Decreased pro tability from writeoffs and increased waste (Pro t)

• Increased Scope 3 energy use and emissions; Increased use of related chemicals and solvents
Transportation (Planet)
Waste • Need for transport support potentially reducing opportunities in other positions (People)
• Decreased pro tability (Pro t)

• Unnecessary use of resources, energy, or materials which are not adding value (Planet)
Overprocessing
• Unnecessary work and potential for injury; Decreased morale in doing “busywork” (People)
Waste
• Decreased pro tability (Pro t)

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 • Excessive energy use and emissions; Wasteful use of materials (Planet)

Overproduction • Unpredictable shift loads; Potential for temporary disruptions or layoffs; Decreased morale
Waste (People)
• Decreased pro tability; Increased overhead (Pro t)

Especially in regard to sustainability’s ef ciency
imperatives, we may nd that the Lean/Six Sigma waste
principles as practiced today are far more advanced and
prescriptive than any GRI report or sustainability
management system when it comes to the overall
consideration of all types of waste. Where GRI may be
far more focused on the de ned wastes and setting
indicators, Lean/Six Sigma takes a more holistic view in
opening the facility to see the less obvious, but equally
erosive, wastes.
Furthermore, and of key interest for our efforts in
creating sustainability-driven innovation, is that the last
30 years of heavy worldwide adoption of these
management systems present us with ample numbers of
cognitive “hooks and anchors” from which we may build
a platform. For anything from beginning a sustainability
initiative internally to creating a B2B offering, the
philosophies of sustainability may already be deeply
embedded in the organization already: they call them
Lean/Six Sigma.
As we will cover in coming Lessons, our goal then is not
to unnecessarily create new ideas (which is dif cult, and
frankly, expensive), but to build on and extend the
thoughts, feelings, and frames that already exist in the in
the minds of customers.

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Caterpillar’s use of Six Sigma
in supply chain sustainability
Caterpillar is arguably one of the foremost adherents to
this ef ciency thinking, applying Six Sigma at very high
levels throughout not only its organization, but the
organizations within its supply chain. In a sense, this
push functioned as a very proactive effort on the part of
Caterpillar to drive ef ciency and waste reduction in its
suppliers and to allow its suppliers to work together to
nd ways to become more ef cient. A few highlights
from a Gillett, Fink, and Bevington piece in Strategic
Finance about Caterpillar’s use of Six Sigma:
In addition to its own use of 6 Sigma, the company has
taught its suppliers and dealers about the bene ts of
using the technique to re ne the entire sales model.
Caterpillar has introduced 850 suppliers worldwide to 6
Sigma, which has created more than 1,000 supplier
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Black Belts to help run the projects. One supplier that
said it was interested in the Caterpillar 6 Sigma
methodology allowed Cat to consult and transform the
business. When implementing 6 Sigma, Caterpillar used
facts and data to show the results the supplier could
expect, so it didn’t take long for the supplier to totally
buy in to the methodology.
Dealers have also taken on the 6 Sigma commitment.
More than 165 dealerships have produced more than
1,000 Black Belts to help with projects. Dealers nd it
amazing that they can share their projects with one
another on a Caterpillar website that depicts best
practices among the dealers. Even though each
dealership is run as a separate business, 6 Sigma has
helped give all of them a common feel across the world.
Not only are dealerships learning about projects that
need to be done in their business, but they’re following
the steps of the process and learning which projects to
do rst. Just as Caterpillar embraced the methodology,
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 dealers have also accepted the idea of making 6 Sigma a

top-down methodology that pushes the training and
Critical Success Factors
concept down to the workers at the lowest level.
Culture: Create a culture of sustainability in all our
business units and in all our daily work.
While Caterpillar’s Six Sigma push started in 2001, a full
four years before it would issue even its rst
Progress: We promote our employees’ awareness and
sustainability report, the links between the two efforts
understanding of sustainability. We continue to foster a
are readily evident: In both the CAT approach to Six
corporate culture of transparency, disclosure and
Sigma ef ciency and its sustainability efforts, the drive
engagement.
for waste reduction and ef ciency is coming from a very
directed and structured approach, one which has its
Operations: Champion our sustainability principles and
roots in operations.
contribute to 2020 aspirational sustainable development
goals.
The intermingling between Six Sigma, operations,
production, and sustainability at Caterpillar becomes
Progress: The Caterpillar Production System provides
even more evident when examining the Critical Success
the recipe for ef ciency and excellence in our facilities.
Factors statement of its Sustainability Vision, Mission,
We actively encourage employees to conserve resources
Strategy:
and be more ef cient. Operating in a more ef cient and
sustainable manner will reduce impacts on people and

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 the environment, and help us and our customers save organization-wide sustainability, it can be very dif cult, if
money. not impossible, to determine where “sustainability” ends
and “operations” begins.
Business Opportunities: Identify and pursue business
g row t h o p p o r t u n i t i e s c r e a te d by s u s t a i n a b l e
development.

Progress: We are actively embedding sustainability

throughout our Caterpillar brand portfolio, our new
product development process and our technologies.
Our business leaders continue to drive growth in sales of
products, services and solutions that help customers
meet their sustainability challenges. We utilize 6 Sigma
methodologies to focus our work and drive measurable
bene ts.

For one of the world’s foremost manufacturers, it would

appear a signi cant portion of Six Sigma enables its
sustainability goals, and vice versa. In these types of
operations, operating from a place of infused,

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Continuous
Improvement
Core Competencies of Organizations: With a Culture of
Continuous Improvement:
• Our organization measures outcomes (changes in
participant condition, behavior or knowledge), not just
efforts (quanti able activities or services delivered).
• Our organization can identify which indicators are
appropriate for measuring how we work.
• Our organization has clarity about what we want to
accomplish in the short term (e.g., one to
and what success will look like.
• Our organization ensures that staff have the
information and skills they need to successfully
engage with data for program improvement (e.g.,
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access to resources and training)
• Our organization has staff who are experienced in
data collection, data use, and different stakeholders’
information needs.
• Our organization has staff who know how to analyze
data and interpret what the data mean.
• Our organization values learning. This is demonstrated
by staff actively asking questions, gathering
information, and thinking critically about how to
improve their work.
• Leaders in our organization support data use to
identify areas of improvement. Our organization is
capable of effectively communicating about data and
results (both positive and negative) within and outside
the organization.
ve years) • Our organization promotes and facilitates internal
staff members’ learning and re ection in meaningful
ways regarding data use, planning, implementation
and discussion of ndings (“learning by doing”).
• Our organization modi es its course of action based
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 on ndings from program data.
• Managers look at program data as an important input
to help them improve staff performance and manage
for results.
• Findings from program data are integrated into
decision-making when deciding which policy options
and strategies to pursue.
falls to the bottom of the to-do list. Alternatively,
there may bean emphasis on collecting more data
than is necessary, but no one relates it to decision
making. There is not a re ection process for analyzing
success or failure for future use.

Cultural Indicators
Hallmarks of a culture of continuous improvement are:

• Dormant: At this stage, the organization does not

know where to start. Data collection may occur from
time to time, but there is no formal reporting. There
are no data systems in place, such as dashboards or
simple collec tion metho ds. Staf f are of ten
overwhelmed by the thought of measurement and it

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 • Testing and Coordinating: At this stage, the
organization is regularly collecting data, but it is
stored across different spreadsheets and collected by
different people or departments. Data are not linked
to organizational results or mission-driven goals
across programs. Discussions on how to improve
results are rarely part of staff meetings. Scaling and
Institutionalization: At this stage, there is an
organization-wide system and dashboard for
collecting data that are shared with different
departments. There are different views or levels of
detail for senior leaders, line staff, or other
stakeholders. There are periodic (e.g., weekly,
biweekly, monthly, or quarterly) check-ins to evaluate
what is working and what is not. The organization
provides training and professional development for
staff to learn how to use measurement tools.
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• Empowering: At this stage, performance indicators
a r e u s e d a c r o s s p r o g ra m s t h r o u g h o u t t h e
organization. There is a staff position responsible for
setting the overall agenda for data collection and
reporting, helping staff understand data, and assuring
that systems and timelines are successful. All staff,
however, are empowered and expected to check,
apply, and interpret their own data. In addition to
periodic check-ins, the organizational dashboard
includes goal-oriented performance metrics. The
organizational dashboard I hared across departments
and there is a process for analyzing, discussing, and
applying results. Data visualization techniques are
used not only to report the data analysis but also to
re ect on best practices culled from the data.
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JIT (Just-in-time)
Pull Systems
Just-in-time (JIT) is a management philosophy that
originated in the 1970s. Taiichi Ohno is credited with
developing JIT and perfected it for Toyota’s
manufacturing plants in Japan. The main goal of JIT is to
eliminate anything that does not add value from the
customer’s perspective. Non-value-added activities are
referred to as “waste” in JIT. Examples of waste include:
• overproduction beyond what is needed to satisfy
immediate demand
• waiting time (work-in-process, customer waiting)
• unnecessary transportation (material handling,
customer travel through a facility, etc.)
• processing waste (yield rates, start-up costs)
• inventory storage waste (space, deterioration,
obsolescence, etc.)
• unnecessary motion and activity (waste in work
techniques, etc.)
• waste from product and service defects (rework,
scrap, warranty, etc.)
There are three essential elements that contribute to
the successful practice of JIT:
• JIT manufacturing principles
• Total Quality Management (TQM)
• employee empowerment
JIT manufacturing principles
In a manufacturing setting, there are six major ways to
pursue JIT goals: inventory reduction to expose waste,
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use of a “demand-pull” production system, quick setups in meeting customer needs.

to reduce lot sizes, uniform plant loading, exible
resources, and cellular ow layouts.

Demand-pull production system

Inventory reduction to expose The traditional approach to manufacturing management
promotes a strong focus on machine and labor
waste
utilization. The view was that if managers make sure that

Inventory covers up a lot of wasteful practices (poor workers and machines are always busy, then surely the

equipment, weak vendors, bad quality, long setup times, factory will be productive and ef cient. This approach is

etc.). By gradually lowering inventory, the weaknesses of called the “push” system of manufacturing, where raw

the production system can be revealed and addressed material and work-in-process is continuously pushed

one by one. Machines can be replaced or better through the factory in the pursuit of high utilization. The

maintained, vendors quality and delivery can be problem with this approach is that it usually produces

improved, machine setup pro cedures can b e high levels of inventories, long lead times, overtime

streamlined, quality practices can be implemented, and costs, high levels of potential rework, and workers who

labor and equipment can be laid out more ef ciently. are competing with one another rather than working
These improvements permit the organization to operate cooperatively.

with less inventory, less costs, and faster response times

In contrast to the push system, JIT espouses a “demand-

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 pull” system that operates on the rule that work should
ow to a work center only if that work center needs
more work. If a work center is already occupied with
work activity, the upstream work center should stop
production until the downstream work center
communicates a need for more material. The emphasis
on maintaining high utilization is removed in a JIT
environment. The focus of a JIT environment is on
addressing the challenges that affect the overall
effectiveness of the factory (setup time reduction,
quality improvement, enhanced production techniques,
waste elimination, etc.) in meeting its strategic goals,
rather than allowing excess inventory to cover up
inef ciencies that reduce the factory’s competitiveness.
Quick setups to reduce lot sizes
The longer it takes, and the more expensive it is to setup
equipment and labor to produce an item, the greater
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the quantity of items that have to be produced in a
g i ve n p ro d u c t i o n r u n . Tra d i t i o n a l p ro d u c t i o n
management philosophy promoted the notion that long
production runs of the same item were the key to
driving down unit costs. The problem was that large
production runs created large quantities of WIP and
nished goods inventory that far exceeded the demand.
These items would consequently cause high levels of
inventory costs, long lead times, high potential rework,
low exibility in responding to customer needs, etc.
Driving down setup costs and setup times are key to
dramatically improving factory competitiveness in a JIT
environment. In the 1980s, the 3M company converted a
factory that made a few adhesive products in long
production runs into a factory that made over 500
adhesive products in small production runs. To keep unit
production costs under control, 3M studied the setups
on its coating machines. Since the cost of chemical
waste disposal was a major part of the cost of changing
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 over a coating machine to make another product, 3M
shortened the length of hoses that needed purging and
redesigned the shape of the adhesive solution holding
pan on the coating machine to be shallower. 3M also
used quick-connect devices, disposable lters, and work
teams to speed up setups. The result was that 3M could
maintain low unit costs on its coating machines while
producing small lots of hundreds of products to meet
market demand quickly.
Uniform plant loading
The successful practice of JIT means having the right
quantities of the right products in the right place at the
right time. Driving down setup times enables the
company to produce the product mix and quantities that
are demanded in the present time period.
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Flexible resources
The enemy of JIT is uncertainty. A JIT environment
thrives on predictability in customer demand,
production processes, suppliers, and workers. Of course,
uncertainty cannot be completely eliminated in most
organizational environments.
The defense against uncertainty that cannot be driven
out is to implement exible resources that can adapt
easily to changing circumstances. General-purpose,
moveable equipment that can ful ll a wide variety of
production requirements is one way to improve
exibility. For example, drilling machines with quick-
change bits which can be wheeled into position to form
new work cells allows the factory to maximize ef ciency
while producing exactly what is needed to satisfy
immediate demand. Another example is Toyota’s use of
paint canisters that attach to paint sprayers. Any car can
be painted any color without having to purge hoses in
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 switching from one color to another.
Multifunctional workers are another way to bring
exibility to the work environment. At Honeywell’s
heating and cooling controls plant, workers are trained
to operate all the machines on their work line. The
exibility that comes from multifunctional workers
changes the nature of how work gets done. Instead of
workers being trained on one machine and working
independently of one another, multifunctional workers
have a “big picture” view of the production line, where
every worker understands all aspects of the line and how
to work together to meet quality and schedule goals
regardless of the circumstances.
Line/cellular flow layouts
Earlier in this chapter, we described the ef ciencies that
repetitive process layouts provide. Repetitive process
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layouts are perfectly suited for driving out non-value-
added activities and transitioning to a JIT environment.
Intermittent layouts feature dozens or even hundreds of
different paths through the facility. They are lled with
complexity, uncertainty, and low visibility. Workers tend
to have specialized skills, work independently of other
departments, and have little sense of “ownership” of the
products they work on.
In contrast, cell layouts promote JIT goals by featuring
unidirectional product ows, high visibility, and fast
throughput times. Workers with multifunctional skills are
assigned to individual cells and have responsibility and
control of the products they produce. Workers in a cell
environment tend to have a greater sense of ownership
and pride in their work because they have a “big picture”
view of the product as it is converted from raw material
to a nished good. This deeper understanding of the
production process increases the opportunities for
workers to contribute ideas for process improvements.
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Total Quality Management
TQM was discussed in detail earlier. TQM goes hand in
hand with the JIT philosophy because quality is a major
source of uncertainty and non-value-added activities in
an organization with poor quality practices. TQM
promotes continuous improvement, doing it right the
rst time, designing quality into products and processes,
and establishing an overall focus on prevention as the
primary quality activity.
Employee empowerment
Front-line employees play a critical role in successful JIT
practice. They work in partnership with management and
each other in the continuous pursuit of excellence.
There are several ways in which front-line employees
contribute to JIT success:
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• Employees work together in problem-solving teams to
gather data and build consensus on how to improve
work processes.
• Employees are responsible for understanding the
quality measures of their work and what they need to
do to meet the needs of internal and external
customers.
• Each employee is empowered to take action to
correct problems.
• Employees have cross-functional skill sets that allow
them to be assigned to areas which need help, and to
help them adopt a broader (“big picture”) view of the
production process.
• Unlike a traditional “push” environment where line
workers are relatively independent of one another in
their work activities, JIT employees are connected by
the “demand pull” discipline, where work is not
produced unless the downstream work center needs
it. Demand-pull promotes the inter-connectedness of
workers.
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• Front-line employees are responsible for the basic
maintenance of their machines. This helps employees
have a better understanding of the condition of their
equipment and its ability to meet quality and
production requirements.
Management works with employees by being coaches
and facilitators rather than authoritative supervisors.
Managers are charged with hiring employees who can
work in a proactive team environment, and provide the
training and incentives to build a work culture that is
focused on continuous improvement.
Conclusion: The evolution of
JIT into “lean operations”
The JIT philosophy has evolved from a manufacturing-
focused management approach to a set of management
principles that can be applied to any organization. “Lean
operations” is a term that is replacing JIT, especially in
service environments. “Lean operations” captures the
true essence and power of how a culture built around
continuous improvement and the pursuit of value-added
activities leads directly to competitive advantage in the
marketplace. Lean operations is a management
philosophy for any organization to achieve higher quality,
increased productivity, improved delivery speed, greater
responsiveness to changing markets, and increased
customer satisfaction.
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 satisfaction with employee satisfaction, and that offers

Lean Thinking innovative products or services pro tably while
minimizing unnecessary over-costs to customers,
suppliers and the environment. The basic insight of lean
Lean thinking is a business methodology that aims to
thinking is that if you train every person to identify
provide a new way to think about how to organize
wasted time and effort in their own job and to better
human activities to deliver more bene ts to society and
work together to improve processes by eliminating such
value to individuals while eliminating waste. The term
waste, the resulting enterprise will deliver more value at
“lean thinking” was coined by James P. Womack and
less expense while developing every employee's
Daniel T. Jones to capture the essence of their in-depth
con dence, competence and ability to work with others.
study of Toyota's fabled Toyota Production System. Lean
thinking is a way of thinking about an activity and seeing
The idea of lean thinking gained popularity in the
the waste inadvertently generated by the way the
business world and has evolved in two different
process is organized. It uses the concepts of:
directions:

1. Value
1. Lean thinking converts who keep seeking to
2. Value streams
understand how to seek dynamic gains rather than
3. Flow
static ef ciencies. For this group of thinkers, lean
thinking continuously evolves as they seek to better
The aim of lean thinking is to create a lean enterprise,
understand the possibilities of the way opened up by
one that sustains growth by aligning customer

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 Toyota and have grasped the fact that the aim of

continuous improvement is continuous improvement.
Overview
Lean thinking as such is a movement of practitioners
Lean thinking was born out of studying the rise of
and writers who experiment and learn in different
Toyota Motor Company from a bankrupt Japanese
industries and conditions, to lean think any new
automaker in the early 1950s to today's dominant global
activity.
player. At every stage of its expansion, Toyota remained
a puzzle by capturing new markets with products
2. Lean manufacturing adepts who have interpreted the
deemed relatively unattractive and with systematically
term “lean” as a form of operational excellence and
lower costs while not following any of the usual
have turned to company programs aimed at taking
management dictates. In studying the company rsthand
costs out of processes. Lean activities are used to
it appeared that it had a unique group of elders (sensei)
improve processes without ever challenging the
and coordinators (trainers from Japan) dedicated to
underlying thinking, with powerful low-hanging fruit
help managers think differently. Contrarily to every other
results but little hope of transforming the enterprise
large company, Toyota's training in its formative years
as a whole. This “corporate lean” approach is
was focused on developing people's reasoning abilities
fundamentally opposed to the ideals of lean thinking,
rather than pushing them to execute specialist-derived
but has been taken up by a great number of large
systems.
businesses seeking to cut their costs without
challenging their fundamental management
These “sensei”, or masters in lean thinking would
assumptions.

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 challenge line managers to look differently at their own
jobs by focusing on:
• The workplace: Going and seeing rsthand work
conditions in practice, right now, and nding out the
facts for oneself rather than relying on reports and
boardroom meeting. The workplace is also where real
people make real value and going to see is a mark of
respect and the opportunity to support employees to
add value through their ideas and initiative more than
merely make value through prescribed work. The
management revolution brought by lean thinking can
be summed up by describing jobs in terms of Job =
Work + Kaizen
• Value through built-in quality: Understanding that
customer satisfaction is paramount and is built-in at
every step of the enterprise's process, from building
in satisfying features (such as peace of mind) to
correctly building in quality at every production step.
Built-in quality means to stop at every doubtful part
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and to train yourself and others not to pass on
defective work, not to do defective work and not to
accept defective work by stopping the process and
reacting immediately whenever things go wrong.
• Value streams through understanding "takt" time: By
calculating the ratio of open production time to
averaged customer demand one can have a clear idea
of the capacity needed to offer a steady ow of
products. This “takt” rhythm, be it a minute for cars,
two months for software projects or two years for a
new book leads to creating stable value streams
where stable teams work on a stable set of products
with stable equipment rather than optimize the use of
speci c machines or processes. Takt time thinking
leads to completely different capacity reasoning than
traditional costing and is the key to far more frugal
processes.
• Flow through reducing batch sizes: Every traditional
business, whether in production or services, is
addicted to batch. The idea is that once work is set up
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 one way, we'd better get on and quickly make as many
pieces of work as we can to keep the unit cost down.
Lean thinking looks at this differently in trying to
optimize the ow of work in order to satisfy real
demand now, not imaginary demand next month. By
working strenuously on reducing change-over time
and dif culty, it is possible to approach the lean
thinking ideal of single piece ow. In doing so, one
reduces dramatically the general cost of the business
by eliminating the need for warehouses, transports,
systems, subcontractor use and so on.
• Pull to visualize takt time through the ow: pulling
work from upstream at takt time through visual
devices such as Kanban cards is the essential piece
that enables lean thinkers to visualize the gaps
between the ideal and the actual at the workplace at
any time. Pull is what creates a creative tension in the
workplace by both edging closer to single-piece-work
and by highlighting problems one at a time as they
occur so complex situations can be resolved
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piecemeal. Pull is the basic technique to “lean” the
company and, by and large, without pull there is no
lean thinking.
• Seeking perfection through kaizen: The old time
sensei used to teach that the aim of lean thinking was
not to apply lean tools to every process, but to
develop the kaizen spirit in every employee.
Perfection is not sought through better, more clever
systems or go-it-alone heroes but through a
commitment to improve things together step-by-
small-step. Kaizen literally means change for the
better and Kaizen spirit is about seeking a hundred
1% improvements from ever yone ever y day
everywhere rather than one 100% leap forward. The
practice of kaizen is what anchors deep lean thinking
in people's minds and which, ultimately, leads to
complete transformation. Practising kaizen together
builds self-con dence and the collective con dence
that we can face our larger challenges and solve our
problems together.
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 ideas about it – to adopt a leaner way of thinking.
Lean thinking practices 3. Joining lean self-study groups by practising kaizen
with others and identifying which role models one
Experience shows that adopting lean thinking requires
would like to follow. The lean community is now a
abandoning deeply engrained mainstream management
generation strong and has many great examples to
thought routines, and this is never easy. The three main
offer to any lean learner, whether beginner or
ways to adopt lean thinking are, unsurprisingly:
experienced. Workplace visits with experienced lean
thinkers remain one of the most effective ways to
1. "Aha!" moments by seeing someone behave in a
grasp their meaning.
striking way, or hitting upon a new idea by reading a
book, visiting a workplace, or being beaten over the
In the lean thinking tradition, the teacher should not
head by an old time sensei. Aha! moments are
explain but demonstrate – learning is the full
powerful, but unfortunately rare, and need the right
responsibility of the learner. However, to create the
conditions to occur.
proper conditions for learning the lean tradition has
2. Everyday practice by the daily use of "lean" practices.
adopted a number of practices from Toyota's own
These practices mainly originate from Toyota and are
learning curve. The aim of these practices is not to
essentially "think with your hand" exercises. Their
improve processes per se but to create an environment
purpose is not to implement new processes (as they
for teachable and learnable moments.
are too often interpreted) but practical activities to
lead one to see the situation differently and have new
• K a i ze n a c t i v i t i e s : W h et h e r c ro s s - f u n c t i o n a l

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 workshops, team quality circles, individual
suggestions, and many other exercises, kaizen
activities are about scheduled moments to improve
the work within the normal working day. The point of
kaizen is that improvement is a normal part of the job,
not something to be done "when there is time left
after having done everything else". Kaizen is
scheduled, planned, and controlled by a teacher who
makes sure Deming's plan–do–check–act is followed
rigorously.
• Kanban: Kanban is the foundational practice of lean
thinking (the Toyota Production System used to be
rst known as the Kanban system). Any process will
have different output. For instance, nowadays, a writer
will produce books, keynote speeches, blog posts,
tweets and answer e-mails. The question is, at the
present time right now, how can the person using the
process know whether they are doing what is needed
for customers right now or whether they are working
ahead on something not that important and lagging
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behind on something critical. In project management,
this creates segments ahead and segments late, and
end of project panic. In production, this creates entire
warehouses of inventories to compensate for the
inability to produce right now what is needed. Kanban
is a simple technique using cards or post-it notes to
visualize "leveled" (i.e. averaged to avoid peaks and
troughs) activity at the process. The writer will start a
new book when she's delivered one. She will worry
about the new conference when it's time to. She will
write a new blog post at a steady rhythm rather than
publish ve in a rush and then one and so on. In
production, Kanban cards make sure employees are
working on what is needed right now and not
overproducing parts which will then linger in inventory
whilst others will be unavailable. Kanban is the main
practice to reveal all mis ts between today's activities
and how the market behaves. Kanban teaches one
lean thinking by constantly challenging assumptions
about market behaviour and our own exibility.
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• Autonomation: In any contemporary setting, everyone
uses either machines or software to do any work. Yet,
this automated work still requires speci c human
judgments to be done right. As a result, many
machines can't be left alone to work because they're
likely to go wrong if someone doesn't watch them all
t h e t i m e. Au to n o m a t i o n i s t h e p ra c t i c e o f
progressively imparting human judgement to a system
so that it self-monitors and stops and calls a human
when it feels it went wrong, just as a desktop
computer will ag a virus alert if it feels under attack.
Autonomation is essential to separate people from
machines and not have humans doing machine work
and vice versa. Automation teaches lean thinking by
revealing new ways of designing lighter, smarter
machines with less capital expenditure.
• Andon: Calling out when something feels out of kilt
and to visualize that call on central board so that help
can come quickly. Lean thinking is thinking together
and no employee should be left alone with a problem.
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Andon is a critical system to be able to train
employees in the details of their jobs within their own
operations. Andon teaches lean thinking in
highlighting the immediate barriers to the lean goal of
zero defect at every step of the process at all time.
Through andon it is possible to think better about
training people and improving their work conditions to
take all dif culties away.
• SMED: Originally known as single-minute exchange of
die (changing tools under 10 minutes), SMED is a key
lean thinking practice to focus directly on exibility.
Flexibility is central to ow and always a problem,
even for an engineer's mind – how exible is the
group to move from one topic to the next? Flexibility
doesn't mean changing everything all the time, but
the ability to switch quickly from one known activity to
the next. SMED teaches lean thinking in always
seeking to improve exibility until one reaches true
single-piece- ow in the right sequence to respond to
instant customer demand.
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• Standardized work: Lean thinking is about seeking was planned and what actually happened and can
the smoothest ow in any work, in order to see seek both immediate countermeasures and root
problems one by one and resolve them one by one, causes. Visualization teaches lean thinking by getting
thus improving both the ow of work and the people to work together on their own problems and
autonomy of the person. Standardized work is the develop their responsibility to reaching objectives
graphic description of this smooth ow of work at takt without overburden.
time with zero or one piece of work-in-process and
clear location for everything and steps. Tricky quality
points are also identi ed clearly, to make sure the
person visualizes rst, what is important for the
It’s about people rst
customer, how to distinguish OK from not OK at every
Lean thinking departs markedly from mainstream
step and have to move con dently from one step to
management:
the next. Standardized work teaches lean thinking by
visualizing every obstacle to smooth work each
1. Individual customers rather than market segments:
person encounters and highlighting topics for kaizen.
Without denying the need to think in terms of
• Visualization: Most lean thinking techniques are about
segments, lean thinking is about taking seriously every
visualization in some form or other so that people can
single customer complaint and opinion of the product
see together, know together and thus learn together.
or service, as a fact. The ability to service every
Visual control is the essential trigger to creative
customer speci cally is only limited by the exibility of
problem solving as all can see the gap between what

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 the company's process and lean thinking is about improve as exibility reduces the need for inventories or
seeking a way to reach the ideal of serving each backlogs, because costs reduce through identifying
individual's preferences. costly policies that create waste at value-adding level,
and because capital expenditure is less needed as
2. Teaching employees how to learn rather than telling people themselves invent smarter, leaner processes to
them what to do: Lean thinking's aim is to develop ow work continuously at takt time without waste.
each person's autonomy in problem solving by
supporting them in their continuous improvement
activities. This is a radical break from Taylorism where
a group of specialists will devise the “one-best-way”
and line management will be tasked to enforce it. By
contrast, lean thinking is taught to managers so that
they help their own direct reports to think lean and
reduce overburden, unneeded variation and activity
waste by working more closely with their teams and
across functional boundaries.

Lean thinking at senior level creates leaner enterprises

because sales increase through customer satisfaction
with higher quality products or services, because cash

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Lean
Manufacruring
After learning this session, you should be able to:
• Apply 5S in any Machine shop.
• Describe Kaizen Concept.
• Describe Implementing Lean Manufacturing.
Lean 5S
“5S” is a method of workplace organization that consists
of ve words: Sort, Set in order, Shine, Standardize, and
Sustain. All of these words begin with the letter S. These
ve components describe how to store items and
maintain the new order. When making decisions,
employees discuss standardization, which will make the
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work process clear among the workers. By doing this,
each employee will feel ownership of the process.
Phase 0: Safety
It is often assumed that a properly executed 5S program
will improve workplace safety, but this is false. Safety is
not an option; it’s a priority.
Phase 1: Sort
Review all items in the workplace, keeping only what is
needed.
Phase 2: Straighten
Everything should have a place and be in place. Items
should be divided and labeled. Everything should be
arranged thoughtfully. Employees should not have to
bend over repetitively. Place equipment near where it is
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 used. This step is a part of why lean 5s is not considered
“standardized cleanup”.
Phase 3: Shine
Make sure that the workplace is clean and neat. By doing
this, it will be easier to be aware of where things are and
where they should be. After working, clean the
workspace and return everything to its former position.
Keeping the workplace clean should be integrated into
the daily routine.
Phase 4: Standardize
Standardize work procedures and make them
consistent. Every worker should be aware of what their
responsibilities are when following the rst three steps.
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Phase 5: Sustain
Assess and maintain the standards. The aforementioned
steps should become the new norm in operation. Do not
gradually revert to the old ways. When taking part of the
new procedure, think of ways to improve. Review the
rst four steps when new tools or output requirements
are presented.
Kaizen
While the lean 5S process focuses on the removal of
waste, Kaizen focuses on the practice of continuous
improvement. Like lean 5S, Kaizen identi es three main
aspects of the workplace: Muda (wastes), Mura
(inconsistencies) and Muri (strain on people &
machines). However, the Kaizen step-by-step process is
more extensive that the lean 5S process. The Kaizen
process overview:
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 1. Identify a problem.

2. Form a team.

3. Gather information from internal and external

customers, and determine goals for the project.

4. Review the current situation or process.

5. Brainstorm and consider seven possible alternatives.

6. Decide the three best alternatives of the seven.

7. Simulate and evaluate these alternatives before

implementation.

8. Present the idea and suggestions to managers.

9. Physically implement the Kaizen results and take

account of the effects.

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 Lean manufacturing improves as time goes one, so it is Lean production responds to proven customer demand.
important to continue education about maintaining Pull processing – the customer pulls production. In a
standards. It is crucial to change the standards and train mass system the producer pushes product onto the
workers when presented with new equipment or rules. market, push processing.

Building a long-term culture that focuses on

improvement.
Lean
Respect for workers better trained and educated, more
Think of a maintenance department as serving internal
exible
customers: the various departments and workers in the
company.
Lean is a philosophy that focuses on the following:

Lean is different from the traditional western, mass

1. Meeting customer needs
production model that relies on economies of scale to
2. Continuous, gradual improvement
create pro ts. The more you make the cheaper the
3. Making continuously better products
product will become, the greater the potential pro t
4. Valuing the input of workers
margin. It is based on predictions of customer needs, or
5. Taking the long term view
creating customer needs. It has dif culty dealing with
6. Eliminating mistakes
unusual changes in demand.
7. Eliminating waste

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 Wastes: using too many resources (materials, time, The goal is that production would ow smoothly
energy, space, money, human resources, poor avoiding costly starts and stops.
instructions)
The idea is called just in time “produce only what is
needed, when it is needed, and only in the quantity
needed.” Production process must be exible and fast.
Wastes
1. Overproduction Inventory = just what you need

2. Defects
3. Unnecessary processing In mass production = just in case. Extra supplies and

4. Waiting (wasting time) products are stored just in case they are needed.

5. Wasting human time and talent

6. Too many steps or moving around
7. Excessive transportation Terminology
8. Excessive inventory
• Process simpli cation: a process outside of the ow
Lean production includes working with suppliers, sub of production
contractors, and sellers to stream line the whole
process. • Defects: the mass production system does inspection
at the end of production to catch defects before they

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 are shipped. The problem is that the resources have
already been “spent” to make the waste product” Try
to prevent problems immediately, as they happen,
then prevent them. Inspection during production, at
each stage of production.
Informative inspections – analyzing data from
inspections during the process
Source inspections – inspection before the process
begins to prevent errors.

• Safety: hurt time is waste time

• Information: need the right information at the right

time (too much, too little, too late)
Principles
Poka-yoke – mistake proof determining the cause of
problems and then removing the cause to prevent
further errors
Mean Lean
One of the terms applied to a simply cost cutting, job
cutting interpretation of Lean is Mean Lean. Often
modern manager think they are doing lean without
understanding the importance of workers and long term
relationships.

Judgment errors – nding problems after the process

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Reliability Centered
Maintenance (RCM)
Reliability centered maintenance is a system for
designing a cost effective maintenance program. It can
be a detailed complex, computer, statistically driven, but
at its basics it is fairly simple. Its ideas can be applied to
designing and operating a PM system, and can also
g u i d e yo u r l e a r n i n g a s yo u d o m a i n te n a n c e,
troubleshooting, repair and energy work.
These are core principles of RCM. These nine
fundamental concepts are:
• Failures happen.
• Not all failures have the same probability
• Not all failures have the same consequences
• Simple components wear out, complex systems break
down
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• Good maintenance provides required functionality for
lowest practicable cost
• Maintenance can only achieve inherent design
reliability of the equipment
• Unnecessary maintenance takes resources away from
necessary maintenance
• Good maintenance programs undergo continuous
improvement.
Maintenance consists of all actions taken to ensure that
components, equipment, and systems provide their
intended functions when required.
An RCM system is based on answering the following
questions:
1. What are the functions and desired standards of
performance of the equipment?
2. In what ways can it fail to ful l its functions? (Which
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 are the most likely failures? How likely is each type of
failure? Will the failures be obvious? Can it be a partial
failure?)
3. What causes each failure?
4. What happens when each failure occurs? (What is the
risk, danger etc.?)
5. In what way does each failure matter? What are the
consequences of a full or partial failure?
6. What can be done to predict or prevent each failure?
What will it cost to predict or prevent each failure?
7. What should be done if a suitable proactive task
cannot be found (default actions) (no task might be
available, or it might be too costly for the risk)?
Equipment is studied in the context of where when and
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how it is being used
All maintenance actions can be classi ed into one of the
following categories:
• Corrective Maintenance – Restore lost or degraded
function
• Preventive Maintenance – Minimizes opportunity for
function to fail
• Alterative Maintenance – Eliminate unsatisfactory
condition by changing system design or use
Within the category of preventive maintenance all tasks
accomplished can be described as belonging to one of
ve (5) major task types:
• Condition Directed – Renew life based on measured
condition compared to a standard
• Time Directed – Renew life regardless of condition
• Failure Finding – Determine whether failure has
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 occurred
• Servicing – Add/replenish consumables
• Lubrication – Oil, grease or otherwise lubricate
We do maintenance because we believe that hardware
reliability degrades with age, but that we can do
something to restore or maintain the original reliability
that pays for itself.
RCM is reliability-centered. Its objective is to maintain
the inherent reliability of the system or equipment
design, recognizing that changes in inherent reliability
may be achieved only through design changes. We must
understand that the equipment or system must be
studied in the situation in which it is working.
Implementing Lean
Manufacturing
Analyze each step in the original process before making
change
Lean manufacturing main focuses is on cost reduction
and increases in turnover and eliminating activities that
do not add value to the manufacturing process. Basically
what lean manufacturing does is help companies to
achieve targeted production, as well as other things, by
introducing tools and techniques that are easy to apply
and maintain. What these tools and techniques are doing
is reducing and eliminating waste, things that are not
needed in the manufacturing process.
Manufacturing engineers set out to use the six-sigma
DMAIC (Design, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control)
methodology—in conjunction with lean manufacturing—
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 to meet customer requirements related to the 1. They try to understand the original state process,
production of tubes. identify the problem area, unnecessary step and non
value added.
Manufacturing engineers were charged with designing a
new process layout of the tube production line. The 2. After mapping the process, the lean team collected
objectives for project were including: data from the Material Review Board (MRB) bench to
measure and analyze major types of defects . To
• Improved quality better understand the process, the team also did a
• Decreased scrap time study for 20 days period production run.
• Delivery to the point of use
• Smaller lot sizes In the original state, the tube line consisted of one
• Implementation of a pull system operator and four operations, separated into two
• Better feedback stations by a large table using a push system. The table
• Increased production acted as a separator between the second and third
• Individual Responsibility operation.
• Decreased WIP
• Dine exibility The rst problem discovered was the line’s unbalanced .
The rst station was used about 70% of the time.
Before making changes, the team analyze each step in Operators at the second station were spending a lot of
the original layout of the tube production line process. their time waiting between cycle times. By combining

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stations one and two, room for improvement became
evident with respect to individual responsibility, control
of inventory by the operator, and immediate feedback
when a problem occurred. The time study and the
department layout re ect these ndings.
A second problem was recognized. Because of the
process ow, the production rate did not allow the
production schedule to be met with two stations.
Because operators lost track of machine cycles,
machines were waiting for operator attention. Operators
also tried to push parts through the rst station—the
bottleneck operation in the process—and then
continued to manufacture the parts at the last two
operations. Typically, long runs of WIP built up, and
quality problems were not caught until a lot number of
defective pieces were produced.
The original state data were taken from the last 20 days
before the change. The teams analyze each step in the
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original and making changes. The ndings of the time
study on the original process provided the basis for
reducing cycle time, balancing the line, designing the
using Just In Time kanbans and scheduling, improve
quality, decrease lot size and WIP , and improve ow.
The new process data were taken starting one month
after implementation. This delay gave the machine
operators an opportunity to train and get to with the
new process layout system.
With the U shaped cell design; The parts meet all the
customer requirement. Table in the original process was
removed ,almost eliminating WIP. With the reducing WIP
and increasing production.
Some of the concepts used to improve the process
included total employee involvement (TEI), smaller lot
sizes, scheduling, point of use inventory, and improved
layout. All employees and supervisors in the department
were involved in all phases of the project. Their ideas
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 and suggestions were incorporated in the planning and
implementation process to gain wider acceptance of the
changes to the process. Smaller lot sizes were
introduced to minimize the number of parts produced
before defects were detected. Kanbans were introduced
(in the form of material handling racks) to control WIP
and to implement a pull system. And the cell layout
decreased travel between operations.
Operators were authorized to stop the line when
problems arose. In the original-state , the operators were
still continue running parts when a operation was down.
With kanban
control, the layout eliminated the ability to store WIP,
requiring the operator to shut down the entire line. The
cell layout provides excellent opportunities for
improving communication between operators about
problems and adjustments, to achieve better quality.
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Day-to-day inspection of the original-state process the
operators spent a lot of time either waiting for material-
handling person, or performing as a material handling.
With the U-shaped cell, delivery to the point of use is
more better for the operator. The operator places boxes
of raw material on six moveable roller carts, where it’s
easily to get. The six boxes are enough to last a 24-hr
period.
To reduce setup times, tools needed for machine repair
and adjustments are located in the cell. The screws are
not standardized; tools are set up in order of increasing
size to quickly identify the proper tool.
For three months the process was monitored to verify
that it was in control. Comparison of time studies from
the original-state and the implemented layout
demonstrated an increase in production from 300 to
514 nished products per shift. The new layout
eliminated double handling between the second and
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 third operations, as well as at the packing step. It also
reduced throughout time by making it easier to cycle all
four operations in a pull-system order. Customer
demand was met by two shifts, which reduced the labor
cost.
The results of the redesign are as follows:
• WIP decreased by 97%
• Production increased 72%
• Scrap was reduced by 43%
• Machine utilization increased by 50%
• Labor utilization increased by 25%
• Labor costs were reduced by 33%
• Sigma level increased from 2.6 to 2.8
This project yielded reduced labor and scrap costs, and
allowed the organization to do a better job of making
deliveries on time, while allowing a smaller nished-
goods inventory. Daily production numbers and single-
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part cycle time served as a benchmark for monitoring
progress towards the goal. Although the sigma level
increase , the 43% reduction in defects, 97% reduction
in WIP, and production increase of 72% contributed to
the project objective.
Implementing lean is a never ending process; this is what
continuous improvement is all about. When you get one
aspect of lean implemented, it can always be improved.
Don’t get hung up on it, but don’t let things slip back to
the starting point. There will always be time to go back
and re ne some of the processes.
Before Lean Manufacturing was implemented at Nypro
Oregon Inc., we would operate using traditional
manufacturing. Traditional manufacturing consists of
producing all of a given product for the marketplace so
as to never let the equipment idle. These goods them
need to be warehoused or shipped out to a customer
who may not be ready for them. If more is produced
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than can be sold, the products will be sold at a deep
discount (often a loss) or simply scrapped. This can add
up to an enormous amount waste. After implementing
Lean Manufacturing concepts, our company uses just in
time. Just in time refers to producing and delivering
good in the amount required when the customer
requires it and not before. In lean Manufacturing, the
manufacture only produces what the customer wants,
when they want it. This often a much more cost effective
way of manufacturing when compared to high priced,
high volume equipment.

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Architecting Lean
Enterprises
What Is Lean Enterprise?
Lean enterprise refers to a production principle stating
that any component of a business enterprise that fails to
directly bene t a nal product is super uous. Lean
enterprise focuses on value creation while eliminating
waste and non-essential processes. The most valuable
elements of a product or a service are largely decided
by consumers, based on the discretionary income they
are willing to pay for an item.
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Understanding Lean Enterprise
Lean enterprise is sometimes simply referred to as
"lean." Although both terms came into popular usage in
the 1990s, the concept itself was devised by Toyota
Motor Corporation when it introduced the Toyota
Production System (TPS).
Developed by Eiji Toyoda and Taiichi Ohno, the Toyota
Production System (TPS) integrated socio-technical
management philosophy and was practiced between
1948 and 1975. The lean enterprise philosophy was also
inspired by telecommunications giant Motorola, which
implemented a manufacturing principle known as Lean
Six Sigma in 1986.
This quality-control methodology uses a data-driven
review to limit mistakes and defects in the production
process. At its core, a company that adopts lean
enterprise combines these two disciplines in order to
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 maximize value for customers while slashing the money
and resources spent on creating the products and
services in question.
Lean Enterprise Principles
creating customer value.
• Pull: This is a directive stating that nothing should be
produced until there is clear demand or of cial
purchase orders from customers.
• Perfection: This ethos states that any element of the

According to Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create process that results in inferior product quality shall be

Wealth in Your Corporation, co-written by economists excised from the manufacturing process.

James Womack and Daniel T. Jones, lean enterprise is

characterized by the following ve chief tenets:

What Does It Take To

• Value: This pertains to the manner in which end
customers value a certain product or service as it
relates to their wants or needs.
• Value stream: This breaks down the life cycle of a
product or service, including the acquisition of raw
materials, the manufacturing of goods, the sale and
delivery of inventory, and the ultimate consumption of
items by end-users.
• Flow: If any iteration of the value stream is stagnant or
inef cient, it is considered wasteful and antithetical to
Become A Lean Enterprise?
In our experience, there are three keys to successful
implementation of Lean: Leadership Commitment,
Employee Involvement and Execution. These form the
foundation that will allow Lean to take root and drive
results.

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Leadership Commitment
A true Lean Enterprise is only achieved if it is rooted in
the culture of a company. It becomes part of the DNA of
how the company operates; how employees view and
handle challenges as well as opportunities. Leaders
need to provide encouragement, reinforcement and
most of all, lead by example. Often, employees see Lean
as a ―fad or like mentioned above, a manufacturing
initiative. Only when they see that leadership is
practicing Lean day in and day out will the employees
fully believe in its power and commit 100%. They can
develop the drive for continuous assessment and
improvement that makes a Lean Enterprise a sustainable
entity.
Employee Involvement
Employee involvement is a key to success for two
reasons. First, it builds ownership of change. People are
more likely to adopt change they helped design rather
than change thrust upon them. Second, the people
doing the work are in the best position to understand
how the work gets done and are better suited to solve
any issues that may arise. For that reason, involving the
employees in the Lean Enterprise transformation is a key
factor. There are numerous practices and tools that can
be used depending on your unique situation, but from
our experience there are 3 practices that ensure
employee involvement and empowerment to drive the
sustainable change and imbed it in the culture.
• Continuous improvement – through proven Lean
tools and practices, employees are empowered to
always look to eliminate waste and improve their work
streams
• Communication process – employee suggestions and
transparency encourages continuous communication
of changes, ideas and issues throughout the
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 transformation and after its implementation

• Effective change management – in a transformation,
employee resistance to change can be detrimental to
meeting the goals if not properly managed
• When all employees – regardless of position or
function – are immersed in Lean thinking, a powerful
Lean culture is created. The core of a Lean Enterprise
is made up of a culture that is always consciously and
subconsciously thinking Lean.

Execution
Effective execution requires a focused direction and
detailed plan to address near-term and longer-term
A generic representation of entrepreneurial lean
needs that build the business capabilities to support
thinking to architect lean enterprises
uctuating business climates. Without a structured plan,
direction becomes foggy, leadership will not fully grasp
the bene ts of the implementation and employees will
lose faith in the process.

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The plan should strive to be in the same form as the
desired results: streamlined with a clear view ahead. The
focus should be based on:
• A comprehensive company-wide plan
• Staying disciplined throughout the transformation and
throughout the organization
• Clearly de ning accountability for not only leadership,
but for all employees
• Effective communication of accountability and
progress throughout the transformation
Organisational Culture and
Change Leadership
In the context of organisational change we look for
methods that will support sustainability, that is,
obtaining enduring bene ts. The decision to implement
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lean is typically a decision of senior management, that is,
a top-down change initiative. While there are many
models of the change management process, the process
is not always as successful as intended.
As change management shows, abrupt changes result in
resistance. At the deeper level lean is a culture, that is, a
set of organisational attitudes, rather than a mere use of
tools. The sustainability depends on organisational
culture and the collective response to the change.
Furthermore, many of the lean tools are sophisticated in
their requirement for a particular type of culture,
including strong intrinsic motivation at the shop- oor
level for the processes (e.g., kaizen, 5S, quality circles,
work cells, and six sigma). Thus implementing lean
requires a change management process that fosters the
outcomes, hence change leadership through coaching
as opposed to merely directive top-down change.
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 In a lean system the respect for humans principle is
equally important as the elimination of waste. Lean is
commonly associated with the latter and the respect for
humans component is largely neglected. True lean
involves a focus on the people of an organisation,
creating a culture that empowers staff at all levels to
make innovative changes that improve productivity by
reducing wasteful action (muda). This creates dynamic
and exible learning organisations of emergent change.
Ef cient and effective communication processes enable
collaboration and consensus along with shared vision
and engagement.

In this way “respect for humans” works synergetically

Lean methods or tools: a selection of some (not all) of
lean methods indicating the importance of having a
selection criteria and prioritisation method for
implementation.
with and for “waste elimination.” Neglecting the human
component jeopardises the sustainability of the change
and makes it dif cult to reach the level of cultural
excellence for continuous improvement. A popular
representation of this is the iceberg model of Hines et
al., with the lean tools, processes, and techniques being

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the visible component above the waterline, with the
unseen supporting functions being strategy, leadership,
and employee behaviour and engagement.
This introduces a time dimension to the implementation,
since culture is not instant. Consequently it may be
necessary to build that culture. Speci cally, lean is
implemented in stages over time, by selecting tools that
are appropriate to the organisation at that point in time.
It may be wiser to rst implement simpler methods with
the view of engagement and acceptance of staff as
opposed to attempting to immediately introduce the
more complex lean tools.
These become small “wins” that build momentum and
staff con dence. Employees need to be engaged to
support a dif cult method (like JIT). Thus, even though
certain lean tools may hold the promise of high returns,
they may also be risky to implement. Failure could ruin
future chances of success and engagement.
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Implementation of lean is therefore an organisational
strategy regarding the changing of culture over time, by
the selective and progressive implementation of lean
tools that are situational relevant for that organisation at
that time, followed by further implementation later when
the culture has caught up. Practitioners typically
describe this deliberate temporal progression as the
lean journey. Thus the concept of continuous
improvement (CI) applies not only to the technical
operations but also the strategic implementation at
organisational level. The residual dif culty is that of
deciding which lean tools are relevant for the
organisation at that point in its journey. This is a question
to which we return, and in the next section we show how
consideration of organisational risk can lead to a
solution.
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Risk Management In Lean
Enterprises
All ventures that an organisation undertakes have risk,
that is, uncertain opportunity and threat. The risk
management (RM) methods encourage a deliberate and
integrated consideration of both these outcomes.
Various standards have de ned risk in the sense of both
negative and positive aspects. Other core concepts in
the RM method are the partitioning of the problem into
two variables, consequence and likelihood. Thus the
analysis task reduces to determining rst the magnitude
of the outcome, which may be positive or negative,
corresponding to opportunity or threat, respectively,
and then the likelihood of that outcome.
The magnitude of the outcome may be represented
quantitatively or qualitatively. Likewise the likelihood
may be quanti ed in a probability or expressed as a
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subject qualitative statement (very rare…almost certain).
These two variables are then combined to give an overall
score for the risk. If the variables are all quantitative then
a simple product operation is used, but qualitative
variables require a mapping process. The process is
repeated for several scenarios under consideration and
the RM method assists the decision making by
identifying the scenario with the highest risk (or lowest
as the case may be).
The risk management method is particularly effective for
quantitative variables and has therefore found
widespread adoption in engineering, nance
(particularly insurance), and project management
situations. Although the method as a whole claims to be
applicable to strategic decision making even at the
highest level of the organisation and examples of this
are available, this is not a particularly well-developed
capability of RM. In lean implementation we are
particularly focused on what is desirable in terms of lean
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 success and sustainability and undesirable in terms of
failure of the implementation.
Intersection between Lean
Implementation and Risk
Management
There has been some prior work at the intersection of
these two bodies of knowledge. One line of enquiry,
although perhaps not risk management per se, has been
to identify critical success factors for lean
implementation. Innovative frameworks and
m a n u fa c t u r i n g te c h n i q u e s , fo r exa m p l e, co re
c o m p e t e n c y b a s e d f ra m e w o r k a n d e m e r g e n t
manufacturing methods, have been applied to reduce
speci c “risks.” The two methodologies have been
compared and applications in lean itself have been used
to identify and treat uncertainties (risks) in construction
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projects. Processes including supply chain modelling
have been used to support mitigation of risks. The
applicability of RM in selecting lean six sigma projects
has been identi ed.
Regarding the speci c question of how to manage the
risks in the implementation of lean, there has been work
on matching of lean systems strategy to risk
identi cation, using a systems engineering approach,
and use of project management methods. It has been
suggested to merge lean thinking and “high reliability” to
balance the nonbuffered, “fragile” nature of lean. There
is lack of methods to improve the reliability of lean
implementation. In summary, reviewing the literature we
found little to no application of a standardised risk
assessment to a lean implementation project.
Two other methodologies have some relevance. These
are Agile manufacturing and Theory of Constraints.
However neither of these have shown any major
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 integration with risk management, though some
movement has been made in that direction.
While the lean and risk management practices each have
well-established literature, there is currently no
integration between the two. This is despite the fact
that the implementation of lean is full of risks: both the
opportunities that the managers seek to capture, and
the threats and failed implementations that too
frequently result.
The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodology
for assessing the risks—both the threats and the
opportunities—of the lean methods. The particular area
of interest is contextual decision-making: we wish to be
able to better identify the lean tools that are relevant to
speci c situations. The area under examination is SME
manufacturing rms, because lean is particularly dif cult
to implement in such organisations. This is worth
attempting, for the potential to avoid failed lean
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implementation, the attendant wasted organisational
effort, resistance against future attempts.
Key Takeaways from Lean
Enterprises
• Lean enterprise is a business term describing the
practice of reducing or eliminating inef ciencies in
the production process.
• The underlying principles behind lean enterprise were
originated by Toyota Motor Corporation's Toyota
Production System (TPS) and by Motorola's Lean Six
Sigma program, both of which stress removing
wasteful production elements.
• The main goal is to recognize and increase the value
of products or services for customers, whose
perspectives and consumer habits ultimately dictate
lean enterprise directives.
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Lean Project
Management
Lean Project Management is a concept for planning and
controlling projects. Lean Project Management
combines the instruments and methods of project
management with the ideas of lean management . The
range of approaches extends from the verbatim transfer
of the methods and / or principles of the Toyota
production system to project management to freer,
contextual interpretations. If one follows the
interpretation of the "Lean idea" by James P. Womack
and Daniel Roos This is how the "Lean concept" can be
summarized in ve principles that can be transferred to
project management. Some of these principles have to
be implemented in time-limited, novel projects with the
help of other methods than in permanent, repetitive
production processes.
Principles
Specify the optimal bene it / cost
ratio from the customer's point of
view
The rst problem that “Lean Project Management” has
to solve is that both external and internal projects are
started without any clear bene t for de ned customers.
This is important for the “lean” idea insofar as it makes
little sense to make the management of a project “lean”
if the project as such is “waste”. The task of working out
the bene ts of a project before the start of the project
is the task of the initiation phase in all standards for
project management. In this phase, the rst step
towards "Lean Project Management" can be achieved

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 through methods for specifying and validating the standards in organizations.
project bene t as well as for project selection.

Establish clear responsibilities,

De ine the minimum value-adding tasks and competencies at the
work packages and work processes lowest possible organizational
A second problem that "Lean Project Management" level
addresses is the increasing bureaucratisation of project
A third problem to which "Lean Project Management"
management, which often means that customers,
has to provide answers is the unclear assignment of
project results and value-adding activities are neglected.
responsibilities between project and line (client) on the
In this situation, “Lean Project Management” has the
one hand and between project manager and project
task of identifying the minimum value-adding work
staff on the other. In both cases, these ambiguities
packages and work processes that lead to the optimal
usually arise in conjunction with questions about the
bene t-cost ratio for the customer and making them as
distribution of power. The demands of "Lean Project
clear, simple and transparent as possible. This can be
Management" at this point are, rstly, to establish clear
achieved through a result-oriented design of project
responsibilities, tasks and competencies between the
management activities and / or through a systematic
individual roles and, secondly, to place them as low as
reduction of bureaucracy in project management
possible in the hierarchy. This can be achieved with the

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help of classical methods of organizational theory (role
design or "job design" and coordination mechanisms)
and leadership theory (delegation and control).
The product, or result, of a project is created,
maintained, adapted, updated, and demolished/retired
by various projects during its life
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Ensure a continuous flow of
results by limiting work in
progress
A fourth problem with which "Lean Project
Management" is confronted consists of long lead times,
continuous interruptions, chronic quantitative and
qualitative overloading of project employees and the
associated risks for the adherence to deadlines, budgets
and quality of projects. The main reason for this is to be
found in too much work in progress or in progress
("work in progress") in an organization or in a project. In
this situation, “Lean Project Management” has the task
of signi cantly reducing the amount of open work in a
project-oriented organization and in the projects
themselves in order to enable a largely uninterrupted
and continuous ow of results at a “sustainable speed”.
Critical chain project management, can be achieved with
the help of "work in progress" limits (Kanban) or "time
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 boxing" (Scrum). are required to identify these in projects at an early

stage and either to eliminate them or to solve them
sustainably. Methods for this can be found in the "Daily
Identify errors immediately and
Scrum" (Scrum) and in the service operation of ITIL .
eliminate them sustainably
The principles show, rst, that "Lean Project
A fth problem area to which “Lean Project
Management" is not a new or different project
Management” approaches are expected is the
management, but seeks to free established standards
optimization of measures for quality assurance of
and practices of project management from reactive
projects. Analytical measures, such as "lessons learned",
power (a type of waste). Secondly, it becomes clear that
are in part either not carried out, do not analyze the
in "Lean Project" management already established
bene ts of the project for the project customers and /
methods from project management, from agile
or are not used as a basis for the design of further
approaches as well as from organizational and leadership
projects. Constructive measures of quality planning,
theory are used, which makes it unnecessary to reinvent
assurance and control have positive effects on project
or relabel existing methods. Thirdly, the principles of
planning and tracking, but not veri able and repeatable
"Lean Management" can be applied to both "classic" and
on the realization of bene ts for the customer. Firstly,
"agile" or "hybrid" approaches, which makes the
this requires methods to identify "errors" in projects,
approach independent of the process model chosen.
since "project errors" are not synonymous with
speci cation deviations in production. Second, methods

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Project types
The core ideas of Lean Project Management have
already been used in different domains:

Lean Construction
In construction projects in particular, the integration of
lean principles into project management has been
considered for some time .
Each life cycle stage raises new questions about the
success of the initial, making-stage project
Lean Product / Lean Software
Development
Lean Innovation / Lean Startup
Since the 1980s, there have been a number of
approaches to "lean product development" and "lean In more recent times and inspired by the spread of agile
software development", the importance of which has approaches in product development, there is also
increased signi cantly due to the increasing proportion increasing talk of "lean innovation" and "lean startups"
of software in products.

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and approaches to lean and agile innovation
management are proposed.
How Does Lean Project
Management Work?
The introduction of Lean Project Management in the
company or in the project world is not an easy task. In
contrast to standardized project management, the
following factors represent a hurdle during
implementation:
Lean Project Management is not a project management
tool that can be standardized in such a way that it can
be used in all types of projects without adaptation. Lean
Project Management cannot be designed according to
the “one size ts all” principle . The characteristics of
Lean Project Management in the sample products Lean
Product Development and Scrum make this clear:
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Anyone who expects Lean Project Management
checklists and prede ned tools has not understood
Lean Management . These “tools” are only a means to an
end and are tailored to the respective task as required.
What is essential is the Lean philosophy, which is the
real value of Lean Project Management. The core
elements are dealing with problems and errors, the
focus on the value of the project result, avoiding the
waste of resources and time through activities that do
not add value, the exible reaction to changes in the
project environment during the project period and a
convincing project vision.
Establishing a Lean Project Management culture is a
task that takes on a period of time that can span several
years and only makes sense where project teams work
together with the appropriate continuity. This is typically
the case in corporate product development and
software development.
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Product life cycle can ultimately include recycling portions of the product

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A tailored change management (For this task, change
management ) required.
If these hurdles are successfully overcome, projects can
be carried out more successfully in terms of project
budget, duration and quality of results.
Agile: Fast Feedback in Living
Order
Lean was originally developed in the world of
manufacturing but has been adopted in many industries.
In the world of software development, a related
approach, Agile, has become increasingly popular. Agile
software development projects typically involve small,
self-organizing teams who work collaboratively in short
iterative cycles to produce working product increments.
When you hear people talking about Agile, they may be
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referring generally to a set of values and principles
intended to guide project teams in “achieving agility” by
continuously adapting and improving the way they work.
However, people often use the term Agile to refer to
one of the many speci c software development
frameworks based on those values and principles,
including the following.
The many flavors of Agile include
• Scrum: Designed for completing complex projects
using small, cross-functional, self-organizing teams,
Scrum is the most widely used form of Agile. When
people refer to “Agile software development,” they are
usually talking about Scrum practices, and we often
do the same in this ebook.
• Kanban: Based on Lean principles, Kanban focuses on
incremental change and continuous process
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 improvement. Central to this simple framework is the
Kanban board, which is a visual display of all the
project work in progress, the work waiting to be
started, and the work already completed.
• Extreme Programming (XP): Emphasizing short
development cycles with frequent releases of
software for evaluation, XP is based on a set of
software development best practices.
• Crystal, Dynamic Systems Development Method
(DSDM), and Feature-Driven Development (FDD):
These are some of the other more popular Agile
frameworks.
Most Agile approaches emphasize an iterative approach
to product development, with the project speci cations
evolving along with the customer’s notion of the
software requirements. According to project manager
Steve Caseley, in a Microsoft Growth Center article,
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projects using these iterative development approaches
“plan, develop, and implement project functionality in
small chunks (or iterations). The key to successful
iterative delivery is that each small chunk effectively
operates as a smaller mini-project under the umbrella of
the total project” (Caseley 2019).
A Scrum project starts with a conversation between the
development team and the product owner about what
the customer wants the software to do. In Scrum
terminology, the customer is the product owner, and the
features that the product owner wants included in the
software are known as user stories, which may be
expressed in simple, nontechnical language from the
perspective of the person who wants that feature—for
example, “As a car owner, I want to schedule my service
appointment online so that I don’t have to spend time
on the phone calling my mechanic.” Often, the person is
a ctional persona representing a type of user or
stakeholder.
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 The product owner prioritizes the user stories, which are
collectively referred to as the product backlog, and in
each development cycle, the team creates pieces of
software that address one or more user stories. After a
one- to two-week cycle of development (known in
Scrum as a sprint) the team presents the new software
to the product owner in a sprint review meeting so she
can try it out and make suggestions for improvement.
The team then begins another sprint, incorporating
those suggestions into a new iteration and beginning
work on new user stories, depending on their capacity.
After every sprint, the product owner has the chance to
redirect the team to new user stories, or to revise the
team’s understanding of an existing user story. Through
these repeated interactions, which provide fast, focused
feedback, the team and the product owner zero in on a
software application that does what the product owner
needs it to do. If time and money are tight, as they often
are, the product owner has regular opportunities to
make choices about which user stories are the most
important, and which can be dispensed with if
necessary.
Agile development is essentially a learning process
through which the development team and the product
owner create a shared understanding of how many
features they can create, given the allotted time and
money. It’s very much a living order approach to project
management, in that the early stages involve some
ambiguity and many unknowns. According to Robert
Merrill, a Senior Business Analyst at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, and an Agile coach, “Agile is a way to
manage projects in the face of unpredictability and
constraints—often very rigid time and budget
constraints. The fast feedback allows the team to create
the best possible software within the given constraints”
(2017).
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 Although Agile had its roots in software development,
companies have also expanded its use into a variety of
project types, including manufacturing, product
development, capital projects, and service projects. For
one perspective on how an iterative, Agile approach can
help manufacturing companies take advantage of new
technologies.
Some companies use a combination of Agile frameworks
(often called hybrid Agile) or a combination of some
predictive, plan-driven processes with elements of an
Agile framework (also called a hybrid development
approach). A hybrid Agile project might include classic
Scrum elements such as a product owner and
development sprints as well as a Kanban board that is
used to pull work based on capacity. A hybrid
development approach could involve predictive project
planning along with more exible Agile development
cycles. Decisions about which approach to use—
whether it is a strictly Agile approach, such as Scrum, or
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a hybrid approach—should be based on the needs of the
project as well as the organizational environment in
which the project will unfold.
Paul Dandurdan, CEO of PieMatrix, a company whose
products include a visual project management software
platform, argues that there is value in both Agile and
predictive, or waterfall, approaches. He propose a hybrid
Agile/waterfall manifesto in a blog post that also
highlights what he sees as the limitations of the original
Agile Manifesto: “Hybrid Agile Manifesto and Spider
Man.”
Hackathons: Fostering an Agile
Culture
Hackathons, another type of Agile experience, are
typically multiday events in which software developers
work on a solution to a speci c problem with the goal of
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generating a number of innovative ideas and/or
prototypes.

Hackathons are similar to Agile sprints, but typically

involve more intensive collaboration, with participants
gathering in one place and dividing up into teams.
Originating as a way for anyone to get involved in
creating open-source software, hackathons are now
common on college campuses and in the corporate
world. For a glimpse into how Mastercard uses
hackathons to generate new product ideas and foster an
Agile culture within its organization.

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 What is Six Sigma?

Six Sigma is a de ned and disciplined business
methodology to increase customer satisfaction and
pro tability by streamlining operations, improving quality
and eliminating defects in every organization-wide
process.

What is Six Sigma?

Six Sigma is:

• A Business Strategy: Using Six Sigma Methodology, a

business can strategize its plan of action and drive
revenue increase, cost reduction and process
Six Sigma and DMAIC Methodology Overview improvements in all parts of the organization.

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• A Vision: Six Sigma Methodology helps the Senior
Management create a vision to provide defect free,
positive environment to the organization.
• A Benchmark: Six Sigma Methodology helps in
improving process metrics. Once the improved
process metrics achieve stability; we can use Six
Sigma methodology again to improve the newly
stabilized process metrics. For example: The Cycle
Time of Pizza Delivery is improved from 60 minutes to
45 minutes in a Pizza Delivery process by using Six
Sigma methodology. Once the Pizza Delivery process
stabilizes at 45 minutes, we could carry out another
Six Sigma project to improve its cycle time from 45
minutes to 30 minutes. Thus, it is a benchmark.
• A Goal: Using Six Sigma methodology, organizations
can keep a stringent goal for themselves and work
towards achieving them during the course of the year.
Right use of the methodology often leads these
organizations to achieve these goals.
• A Statistical Measure: Six Sigma is a data driven
methodology. Statistical Analysis is used to identify
root-causes of the problem. Additionally, Six Sigma
methodology calculates the process performance
using its own unit known as Sigma unit.
• A Robust Methodology: Six Sigma is the only
methodology available in the market today which is a
documented methodology for problem solving. If
used in the right manner, Six Sigma improvements are
bullet-proof and they give high yielding returns.
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 consistent solution to the customer at the very rst
What is Quality? attempt”.

Different individuals and organizations have given • ISO: "Degree to which a set of inherent
different de nitions for Quality. Let’s study some of characteristics, of a product or service, ful ll
those de nitions: requirements”.

• Deming: "Quality is de ned from the customer’s point

of view as anything that enhances their satisfaction".
• Juran: "Fitness for use. Those product features which
meet the needs of customers and thereby provide
product satisfaction. Freedom from de ciencies".
• ASQC: "The totality of features and characteristics of
a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy
stated or implied needs".
• COPC: "Quality is de ned as knowledge of agents
that would enable them to provide accurate and
Simply stated, quality comes from meeting customer
expectations. This occurs as a result of four activities:
• Understanding customer requirements.
• Designing products and services that satisfy those
requirements.
• Developing processes that are capable of producing
those products and services.
• Controlling and managing those processes so they
consistently deliver to their capabilities.

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 Six Sigma works effectively to identify the hidden

What is the Hidden factory situations, questions the status quo, removes it
and thus it improves business pro ts and reduces

Factory? wastes.

The Hidden Factory is the set of activity (or activities) in

the process that result in reduction of quality or
ef ciency of a business process or manufacturing
department, and is not known to managers or others
seeking to improve the process. Six Sigma focuses on
identifying "hidden factory" activities to eliminate the
root-causes.

One of the examples of Hidden Factory will be creating

multiple versions of a status update presentation by the
Project Management team because all of the requested
information was not received by the due date from all
the departments.

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 Key Subject Matter Experts (SME’s).
Six Sigma Process • Helps to understand the current state of the process
and also to measure the performance of the future

Excellence state of the project.

Disciplines
Process Excellence/Process Documentation:
Process Excellence and Process Documentation helps
the project team to de ne, measure and control the
business processes. Six Sigma and Lean tools are used
for both Process Excellence and Process
Documentation.

Process Excellence and Process Documentation

ensures:
• Standardization across different processes in the
same organization/department. Six Sigma Process Excellence Disciplines
• Allows business continuity in case of non-availability of

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Process Improvement (DMAIC): Process Improvement (Lean):

Process Improvement is an effort to identify high priority
problems in business processes and to train teams to
tackle those problems. The methodology used is called
DMAIC. It is an acronym for De ne-Measure-Analyze-
Improve-Control.
In the De ne phase, the project is de ned. In Measure
phase, data is collected, Measurement System is
validated and current performance is identi ed. In
Analyze phase, root causes are identi ed. In Improve,
solutions are created and implemented and in Control
phase, new performance is sustained).
Lean tools such as Value Stream Map (VSM), Pull and
Kaizen are leveraged too.
"Lean" is the set of management practices based on the
Toyota Production System (TPS). This methodology is
deployed in selected processes to identify and eliminate
Non-value added activities and hence increase the
operational ef ciency. Lean is quick and avoids rigorous
data analysis.
There are two critical factors of Lean – Value Added and
Non-Value Added. Value is what the customer cares for.
It is doing the right things the rst time. When we say
Value Added, our product or service should add value to
the process. Similarly, we should focus on removing non-
value added activities from the process.

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 Throughout its history and evolution, Six Sigma turned
History of Six into a business driven, multi-dimensional structured
approach to reinforce Business Strategies into various

Sigma aspects such as:

1. Improving Processes
• Developed by Mikel Harry and Bill Smith, Motorola. 2. Lowering Defects
• Motorola was amongst the rst recipients of the 3. Reducing Process Variability
Malcolm Baldrige Award. 4. Reducing Costs
• National Quality Award in 1988. 5. Increasing Customer Satisfaction
6. Increasing Pro t

Six Sigma History

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 Identify Statistical Problem

How does Six Root causes for the business problems are identi ed.
Those root causes are converted into statistical

Sigma work? problems using Hypothesis testing methods.

Trivial Many Causes: These are all the possible causes of

Identify Business Problem
At the beginning of a Six Sigma project, the Business
Problem is de ned. Questions such as What, When,
Where are addressed in a problem statement.
Magnitude and Consequence of the problem is also
discussed. Project Scope is identi ed.
the given problem. They may cause impact to the
problem.
Vital Few Causes: These are the few critical causes
which cause maximum impact over the problem.

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 Identify Statistical Solution Identify Business Solution
Identi cation of only 3-4 vital root causes using These statistical solutions are then converted to
statistical analysis is achieved. These root causes are implementable practical solutions. Implementation of
vital because they have maximum impact on the these business solutions is carried out in the process.
problem. Any given problem follows a Pareto principle Improvements are observed and sustained.
which states that 80% of the problems are caused due
to 20% of the root-causes. Solutions to these root
causes are studied and an optimal value for each
solution is identi ed.

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 better than 1σ, 2σ, 3σ, 4σ, 5σ processes.

What is Sigma and Obviously 7 or more σ processes are even better than a

Why is it Six 6σ (Six Sigma) process, and yet throughout the

evaluation and history of Six Sigma process, the

Sigma? practitioners gained the belief that a 6σ process is good

Mean is the arithmetic average of a process data set.
Central tendency is the tendency of data to be around
this mean.
Standard Deviation (also known as Sigma or σ)
determines the spread around this mean/central
tendency.
The more number of standard deviations between
process average and acceptable process limits
less likely that the process performs beyond the
acceptable process limits, and it causes a defect. This is
the reason why a 6σ (Six Sigma) process performs
enough to be reliable in almost all major situations
except some systems whose defects can cause
unrepairable consequences.
LSL and USL stand for “Lower Speci cation Limit” and
“Upper Speci cation Limit” respectively. Speci cation
Limits are derived from the customer requirements, and
they specify the minimum and maximum acceptable
limits of a process.
ts, the

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 meter. To reach a 6σ quality level in such a process, the

standard deviation of car door length must be at most
0.00001 meter around the mean length.

Sigma is also the capability of the process to produce

defect free work. Higher the capability, lower the
defects.

Six Sigma stands for 6 standard deviations (6σ)

between average and acceptable limits

Processes in various Sigma Levels

For instance in a car manufacturing system the desired
average length (Mean length) of car door can be 1.37185
meter. In order to smoothly assemble the door into the
In the above gure, the red curve indicates a 2σ level of
car, LSL can be 1.37179 meter, and USL can be 1.37191

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 performance where we observe that its peak is very low Defects is as low as 3.4 in one million opportunities. The
(fewer outputs are around the desired average) and the 2σ performance level will have more defects than a
variation is from extreme left to extreme right of the system in 6σ performance level as the standard
gure. If the process improves from 2σ to 3σ (green deviation for a 2σ process is much larger than the
curve), you will observe that the process variation standard deviation for a 6σ process.
reduces and the process has a larger peak (more
outputs are around the desired average, but a different
average than red curve). As the process performance
increases from 3σ to 6σ (blue curve), the process
becomes centered between the upper and lower
speci cation limits and does not have much variation.
Here with blue curve the majority of process outputs are
around the desired average. This is why it is good and it
causes less defects beyond the lower and upper
Sigma Level vs DPMO Defects per Million
speci cation limits.
Opportunities

In the above table, you will observe that as the Sigma

Can we have any process which has 6σ level of
level increase the Defects decrease. For example, for a
performance?
2σ process the Defects are as high as 308,537 in one
The answer is yes. Pharmaceutical Companies, Airline
million opportunities. Similarly, for a 6σ process the

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 Manufacturing Organizations, Automobile
Manufacturers, among others are bound to work at a
sigma level which is either 6σ or more than that. If they
are not able to perform at this ef ciency, the
organization cannot exist. Think about it, you are in the
air, 5000 feet above the ground, ying in a Boeing 777
Aircraft and suddenly a nut-bolt in the wing of the plane
loosens (probably due to manufacturing defect) making
it dif cult for the pilot to steer the ight! This is the only
reason why defects are not welcome and organizations
try to achieve higher Sigma levels.
Six Sigma vs DPMO Examples
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In the above examples,
• Sigma indicates the Sigma level.
• Spelling indicates the total spelling errors.
• Money indicates the amount of ne/indebtedness that
can occur due to the misspellings.
• Time indicates the total time it takes to correct those
misspellings.
• DPMO indicates the total Defects in One Million
Opportunities.
We can clearly observe that as the Sigma Level increase,
the defects (misspellings) decrease, the indebtedness
reduce and the time for rework also reduces, thus it
reduces the DPMO-Defects per Million Opportunities.
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 create the outcome.
What is the Focus In other words, the input variable(s) are transformed by

of Six Sigma? a function (or process) and combined with error to form
the output. The Y results from, or is a function of the Xs.
To determine a desired outcome, you apply a
transformation process or function, f, on the inputs.

For example, the formation of a thin sheet of iron

Focus of Six Sigma
undergoes several processes. The input variables are
Iron Ore (Wrought Iron), charcoal, other chemicals and a
furnace. This wrought iron is transformed through use of
• Y is outcome(s) or result(s) you desire and need from
all of the input raw materials in the right proportion and
a process. This is a dependent factor and it depends
heating in the furnace into a desired outcome. The raw
on the X’s.
materials and furnace is the X’s, the mixing of raw
• X represents the input factors that could result in Y.
materials and heating are the transformation process
There could be multiple X’s. These are independent
function f, and the resulting Iron sheet is the Y. Ɛ can be
factors.
the varying degree of temperature throughout the
• Ɛ represents the presence of error, or uncertainty
furnace resulting in non-uniform sheet of metal (errors in
surrounding how accurately the X’s are transformed to
the process).

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In the Pizza delivery example, some of the reasons for

not meeting the pizza delivery time of 30 minutes could
be Heavy Traf c, Delivery Driver did not know the
delivery address, Pizza was not prepared in-time, among
others. Thus, in this example, Delivery time of Pizza is
“Y” and the reasons for not delivering the pizza on-time
are “X’s”.

After understanding the two examples described above,

in order to get results, should we focus on “Y” or “X”?

Focus the Causes (X) and NOT the Result (Y):

Whenever you do a Six Sigma project, the focus of the
project team needs to be on identifying of causes and
mitigating them. The Result will automatically improve if
the causes are dealt correctly. In the above example,
formation of an iron sheet is the result and all the input
materials are the causes. Thus, focus on the Causes and
NOT the Result.

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 “Hit List” where the root causes (X’s) are reduced to just
How does Six 10 – 15. In Analyze phase, we screen the available list
and reduce the root causes to 8 – 10. In Improve phase,

Sigma DMAIC we identify just 4 – 8 critical X’s and in Control phase, we

are controlling only 3 – 6 root causes (X’s). Thus, by

Process work? controlling just 3 – 6 root causes we are able to

positively impact the project Y.

Let us now understand how the DMAIC process works.

DMAIC is an acronym for its ve phases – De ne,
Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control. DMAIC is a Six
Sigma methodology which helps in achieving process
improvements by reducing variation. Each phase of has
its own signi cance and we will understand how DMAIC
process reduces many root causes to only a few vital
root causes. Let’s look at the below diagram.

As we see above, the De ne phase looks at all the X’s

Six Sigma DMAIC Process
(here X is an independent variable as discussed in the
previous section). In the Measure phase, we get the 1st

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Characteristics of a successful project:
• Should be related to your day to day work
• Should be manageable in terms of time-frame
• Should be aligned with business goals and results
• Should preferably address only one CTQ (Critical To
Quality) parameter
• Should address issues which are important to the
customer
• The improvements that you do should be locally
actionable
In the above characteristics, we have a CTQ parameter.
Here, CTQ stands for Critical To Quality. In layman’s
language, CTQ is nothing but a metric that helps in
measuring the extent of performance. CTQ can be of
various types such as CTD (Critical to Delivery), CTP
(Critical to Process), among others. Some of the
examples of CTQ’s are Cycle Time in a process, Quality
Scores, Yield%, among others.
Projects must be tightly bound and must not focus on
solving broad issue such as global warming or world’s
pollution.
When a Six Sigma project is initiated, it generally
happens that we do not scope the project appropriately.
During the course of the project, we keep adding
additional parts to the project and the team has to
manage these additional items which were not
considered earlier. This phenomenon of including
additions to the project is termed as “scope creep” and
leads to challenges in project execution at a later stage.
Projects which lead to scope creep are termed as
projects which are trying to solve “global warming”. In
order for the projects to achieve the desired results,
they must be tightly bound and must not focus on
solving broad issues.
A process-focused business constantly realigns
processes to remain capable of meeting changing
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 market demands. Only by gaining predictability can an Process Baseline:

enterprise truly maintain capable processes to changing
customer demands.
Here, we should focus on getting the Voice of Process
to understand the real nuances that it may face during
the course of its operations. Voice of Process helps in
understanding the metrics and the inherent uctuations
of these metrics. Three key terms that help us de ne
process capability are:
• Process Baseline
• Process Entitlement
• Process Benchmark
Six Sigma facilitates in understanding variation in our
business processes!
Let’s understand the three key terms:
Process baseline is the average long-term performance
level of a process when all the input variables in the
process are running in an unconstrained fashion. Long
term performance is the performance of the process
over a period of time.
Process Entitlement:
Process entitlement is the best case short-term
performance level of a process when all the input
variables in the process are centered and in control.
Short term performance is the performance of the
process at any given point of time.
Process Benchmark:
Process benchmark is the performance level of the
process deemed by comparison to the best process
possible. It takes us to the best that anyone has ever
done. In practical terms this means researching and
nding the best that has ever been done in the industry.

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 4. Six Sigma Black Belt (BB)
Six Sigma Roles 5. Six Sigma Green Belt (GB)
6. Six Sigma Yellow Belt (YB)

and 7. Six Sigma Coach

8. Six Sigma Trainer

Responsibilities Let’s look at how Six Sigma roles are bifurcated into the
required segments:
Six Sigma roles are primarily divided into two
segments:

1. Initiative Leadership
2. Project Leadership

Apart from the above two segments, the overall Six

Sigma methodology require the following roles: Six Sigma Project Roles

1. Six Sigma Deployment Leader Six Sigma Deployment Leader:

2. Six Sigma Champion As a group, business leaders must own and drive Six
3. Six Sigma Master Black Belt (MBB) Sigma by doing the following:

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 • Establish business objectives and the role of Six
Sigma to achieve those goals.
• Create an environment which enables success
including goals, measures, coaching, and
communication, among others.
• Actively participate in Six Sigma activities and
projects.
Success of the effort is very highly correlated to the
interest and time invested by business leaders.
Deliverables of a Six Sigma Deployment Leader:
• Six sigma strategy and roll-out plan for the overall
organization
• Hire team of Master Black Belt, Black Belts, among
others
• Work with MBB to identify organization vision and
mission
• Provide a goal for the organization to drive Six Sigma
at all levels
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Bene ts of being a Six Sigma Deployment Leader for
Organization and for self-career:
• Six Sigma Deployment Leader helps the organization
to develop the Six Sigma culture and helps nurture a
culture of continuous process improvement.
• Driving Six Sigma in the organization allows the
deployment leader to run the company to its full
potential, thus, leveraging him/her the additional
budget for taking more initiatives.
Six Sigma Champion:
Project Champions (Sponsors) are the managers of the
business, function, or value stream which has been
identi ed as high priority for a Six Sigma team. They play
a pivotal role in that they own the processes of the
business and, therefore, must ensure process
improvements are captured and sustained.
They typically also manage Six Sigma Green Belts (GB’s)
and must understand the challenges faced by GB
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associates (for example, removing roadblocks). They also
must work with BB’s and MBB’s to ensure that their
business area has developed, and is implementing, a
long-term vision of a Six Sigma operating environment
across the entire operative base.
Some more details and associated deliverables on the
role of Six Sigma Champion (Sponsor):
• Training: Sponsors must participate in available Six
Sigma trainings.
• Support: Provide visible support for Six Sigma MBB,
BB and GB’s and provide access to resources needed
to conduct the project.
• Scope: Set very clear scope for all Six Sigma projects.
Ensure that the project is clearly de ned, has a scope
which can be managed within 4-6 months, and which
has high likelihood of success. Watch the project as it
progresses to ensure that the scope stays strictly
within the bounds originally set.
• Expectations: Set high expectations on the value of
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the results. Ensure the goals are not sub-optimized.
The Six Sigma process has proven in many cases to
deliver value far beyond initial estimates. Less-than-
aggressive goals will yield less-than-aggressive results.
• Facts: Challenge Experts on their Knowledge of facts
and the basis of their conclusions.
• Involvement: Sponsors are expected to interact with
project teams on a regular basis to participate in
problem solving, make decisions, and allocate
resources. Plan to spend at least 2 hours every other
week with the project team.
• Hand-over: Sponsors will be responsible for ensuring
t h a t t h e b u s i n e s s t a ke s o w n e r s h i p o f t h e
implementation and delivers the value indicated in the
Control phase. This requires a speci c individual who
will own the delivery of the project metrics.
• Results: Sponsors, as well as 6sigma mentors and
business controllers, are responsible for ensuring that
project results hit the bottom line of the organization.
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 Bene ts of being a Six Sigma Champion (Sponsor) for g e n e ra l a s s o c i ate b a s e. M B B ’s h ave u l t i m ate
Organization and for self-career: responsibility to ensure the quality, value, and
sustainability of Six Sigma projects under their guidance.
• Champions set the direction of process improvements
in the organization. They link the bene ts of the
project to organizational priorities.
• Champions can create a portfolio of projects which
could range from projects in Customer Satisfaction,
Service, Cost and Quality. It provides the Champions
the visibility in the process and also showcases his
abilities to top-management to manage varied
portfolio of projects.

Six Sigma Master Black Belt(MBB):

These individuals are responsible for translating the high
level business goals into a Six Sigma strategy for the
division and the supporting tactics. They work with the Six Sigma Interacting Roles
deployment leader to achieve the former. They also lead
the development of the Six Sigma skills in the MBB’s are responsible, together, for the success of the
organization, for Black Belts, Green Belts, and the overall Division’s Six Sigma effort. They coordinate and

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 lead activity on key cross-division value streams (e.g. statistical skills of MBB.
Customer Service, Cycle Time, Research, etc). They also • MBB can grow up the ladder and become the Chief
ensure that a culture that values openness, creativity Quality Of cer as he gains experience and expertise
and challenging the status quo develops in the in the eld of Six Sigma.
organization.
Six Sigma Black Belt (BB):
Deliverables of a Master Black Belt: Six Sigma BB’s are full-time/part time project leaders
• Six sigma strategy and roll-out plan in the and mentors of the business, including Green Belts and
organization/function other associates. They have tactical responsibility for
• Manage Project of the function executing speci c projects and ensuring that the results
• Mentor Teams are captured, the changes are owned by the Champions
• Achieve Lean Six Sigma Results (Sponsors), and the changes are sustained. They will also
• Cross-Functional Leadership lead Six Sigma knowledge transfer to both full- and part-
• Project Execution and Removing Roadblocks time participants.

Bene ts of being a Master Black Belt for Organization
and for self-career:
• MBB helps to set the culture of Six Sigma right from
the grass-root level in the organization.
• Black Belts are bene ted due to the mentoring and
BB’s are expected to create an environment of open,
honest debate of facts. They challenge the status quo
where appropriate and share (and seek) ideas across
boundaries.

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 Deliverables of a Black Belt: Six Sigma Green Belt (GB):

• Six sigma strategy and roll-out plan for the given
process/area
• Execute Projects
• Help and guide Project Resources/ Help remove
project level Barriers
• Team and Project Structuring
• 6 sigma Project Results
• Mentor Green Belts
• Share Best Practices
Bene ts of being a Black Belt for Organization and for
self-career:
• BB’s are responsible for taking the process
improvements to the next level in the organization.
• BB’s are highly trained on improving results for the
organization using statistical analysis and Six Sigma
tools. Hence, they have a very lucrative career path
ra n g i n g f ro m B u s i n e s s A n a l ys t s to P ro ce s s
Improvement experts.
Six Sigma Green Belts are the engine of Six Sigma
projects. Black Belt’s support the efforts of the broader
business teams to identify and implement change. The
GB’s are part-time Six Sigma Project Leaders. They are
responsible for scoping the projects, leading the project
team, calling for help when needed, managing interfaces
with business leaders, and ensuring sustainable results.
The goal of GB’s is to translate the value of Six Sigma to
the speci c work environment and problems.
Deliverables of a Green Belt:
• Project Execution
• Team and Project Structuring
• Six Sigma Project Results
• Share Best Practices

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 Bene ts of being a Green Belt for Organization and for
self-career:
• GB’s have authority in their respective processes and
can get the work done effectively. This is a very
critical aspect for the organization as it builds its
process improvement structure within each process.
• For self-career, GB’s receive exposure to senior
management directly by virtue of the projects and get
the opportunity to make a difference in the
organization.
Six Sigma Yellow Belt (YB):
These are the project-speci c, full-or part-time
resources that provide process and cross-functional
knowledge, as well as help to sustain the gains. They
have co-ownership of the project with the Six Sigma
Experts and are responsible for the quality of the work
and results.
This team also plays the critical role of translating the
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process gains from Six Sigma to other areas of the
business after the speci c project has been completed.
This is the true leverage of Six Sigma methodology!
Deliverables of a Yellow Belt:
• A Yellow Belt has basic knowledge of Six Sigma
• They do not lead projects on their own, as does a
Green Belt or Black Belt.
• YB participates as a core team member or subject
matter expert (SME) on DMAIC project or projects.
Supports Green Belt or Black Belt in developing
process maps, helping with data capture, facilitating
simulation, and improvements.
• YBs may often be responsible for driving smaller
process improvement projects using Lean tools or
best practice sharing in their processes.
Bene ts of being a Yellow Belt for Organization and for
self-career:
• For any project, Yellow Belts are those individuals who
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 are the Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) of their projects.

respective processes and also have the basic know-
how of Six Sigma. They are the spokes of a wheel and
can help drive any Six Sigma process to closure by
using their process expertise. Organizations can
greatly bene t by choosing the right YB’s for the right
• For self-career, YB’s get exposure of channelizing
their Subject knowledge to process improvement
opportunities yielding tremendous bene ts for self
understanding.

Functional Roles vs Six Sigma Roles

(Example of a Mobile Phone factory which intends to transition to Six Sigma methodology in a mobile phone factory)

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 • Go to the bank during banking operation hours
Six Sigma vs • Fill in the withdrawal requisition slip
• Submit the slip and receive a token number

Business Process • Wait until our token number is announced by the Cash
Teller

Reengineering • Then receive the money

The above process had a lot of drawbacks. We could go

(BPR) - A to the bank only during their operational hours. Certain

banks did not have many branches and thus, we had to

Comparison go to the location of the bank. We had to ll the

What is Business Process Reengineering (BPR)?
BPR is process of streamlining the processes by
challenging the each step of the current process. The
classic example of BPR is from the banking industry. In
the late 1980’s and late 1990’s, if we wanted to withdraw
money from our bank account, following steps were
involved:
withdrawal requisition slip. We had to wait in a queue
where others are also waiting to withdraw money and so
on.
What did the banking industry do? They radically
changed the entire process and in the early 2000’s got
in the ATM machines. Do we now need to go to our
banks? Do we have to wait in queues? Do we need to ll
any withdrawal slips? Everything’s changed. This kind of

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a process improvement is called as Business Process
Reengineering.
In contrast to BPR, Six Sigma is an approach which
focuses on variation (or uncertainty) reduction in
processes. It is the only methodology available which is a
documented process improvement methodology. Unlike
BPR, Six Sigma uses a ve step method to identify root
causes and provide world-class solutions. Six Sigma does
not involve a complete overhaul of the process like BPR.
However, it requires out-of-the-box thinking and
questioning status-quo to identify and implement
solutions. An example of a banking process will be as
follows:
Consider that you are applying for an account opening
process in a bank. You will need to go through the
following steps:
• Meet the banks representative and
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Opening Form
• Provide KYC (Know Your Customer) details and
submit identi cation proofs
• Telephonic veri cation takes place
• Physical Home Address veri cation takes place
• Account is created and check book and ATM card is
sent to customer address
The above process may have an Account Opening
timeline target of 48 hours and the mean performance
of the process may be 40 hours, however, the variation
may be as high as 8 days. There may be multiple
instances where the account opening took place as late
as 8 days. That’s a long time which is good enough to
have angry customer!. And the customer does not look
at the mean performance but looks at this speci c
variation just happened to him.
When a Six Sigma project is applied to above process,
ll out Account it focuses on reducing this variation and streamlining
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the processes to achieve customer satisfaction. It may
not necessarily change the entire process ow like it
takes place in BPR. This is the key difference between
Six Sigma and BPR.

Below is a brief comparison of BPR and Six Sigma:

Six Sigma vs Business Process Reengineering - A

Comparison

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 mean survey performance may be 82%, however, the

What is Statistics? variation within the survey questions is very high i.e.
there are many customers who may have rated low on
the survey questions (speci cally for the product) and
In today’s world, we are constantly being bombarded
would have also not liked the product. Thus, even if you
with statistics and statistical information.
considered 82% as an achieved score for customer
For example: Customer Surveys, Transactional Data,
satisfaction, your product may not likely survive in the
Marketing Information, Personal Information, among
market for long.
others.

Thus, knowing only some arbitrary measurements within

Key questions to answer are:
or outside Speci cation Limits doesn’t prove much
• How can we make sense out of all this data?
about the real performance and quality. However, only
• How do we differentiate valid from awed claims?
statistics can reveal here the performance and quality
and this is why Six Sigma is great, powerful and better
Let’s take a scenario where you are working with a
than other gut-feeling oriented improvement
computer manufacturing organization and want to
methodologies.
measure customer’s satisfaction score for the purchased
product. You have kept the target for satisfaction as
So, what is statistics then? Statistics is a way to get
80%, and the result of the rst thousand surveys is 82%.
reliable information from data.
Have you really achieve customer satisfaction with this
result? On doing statistical analysis, you may nd your

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 What is Statistics?

Statistics is a tool for creating new understanding from a

set of numbers. Statistics can be better understood
under two branches:

1. Descriptive Statistics
2. Inferential Statistics

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 MEASURES OF CENTRAL TENDENCY

What is Descriptive MEAN (Arithmetic Average):
Mean is the arithmetic average computed by summing all

Statistics? the values in the dataset and dividing the sum by the
number of data values. For a nite set of dataset with
measurement values X1, X2, …., Xn (a set of n numbers),
Descriptive Statistics is a method of organizing, it is de ned by the formula:
summarizing, and presenting data in a convenient and
informative way.

The actual method used depends on what information

we would like to extract.
Mean Formula

The sample mean is represented by x-bar.

The population mean is represented by Greek letter µ.

For a given data set: 12, 14, 11, 12, 12, 12, 15, 17, 22, 15,
12
Sum of data points =
Areas of Interest for Descriptive Statistics

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 (12+14+11+12+12+12+15+17+22+15+12) = 154
Number of data points = (take a total count of
observations) = 11
Mean = (Divide sum of data points into total number of
data points) = 154/11 = 14
MEDIAN:
The middle number in the data set (n/2), when arranged
in ascending order (small to large). If there are odd
numbers of observations then median is the (n+1)/2th
ordered value. If there are even numbers of observations
then median is average of the two middle values.
For a given data set: 12, 14, 11, 12, 12, 12, 15, 17, 22, 15,
12
Ascending Order: 11, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 14, 15, 15, 17, 22
Thus, the middle number in the data set Median = 12
MODE:
Mode is the data point having the highest frequency
(maximum occurrences).
For a given data set: 12, 14, 11, 12, 12, 12, 15, 17, 22, 15,
12
Maximum occurring data point, Mode = 12
QUARTILES:
A quartile is any of the three values which divide the
sorted data set into four equal parts, so that each part
represents one fourth of the sampled population.
• First quartile (designated Q1) = lower quartile = cuts
off lowest 25% of data = 25th percentile
• Second quartile (designated Q2) = median = cuts data
set in half = 50th percentile
• Third quartile (designated Q3) = upper quartile = cuts
off highest 25% of data, or lowest 75% = 75th
percentile
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• The difference between the upper and lower quartiles
is called the interquartile range.
MEASURES OF CENTRAL DISPERSION/VARIATION
STANDARD DEVIATION:
It can be interpreted as the average distance of the
individual observations from the mean. Standard
deviation of the population is represented as "σ".
Standard deviation of the sample is represented as "s".
Standard Deviation Formula
In the above formula,
Sx stands for standard deviation of the sample.
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xi is the value of each variable in the data set.
x bar represents the mean.
n is the total sample size.
And Σ stands for summation i.e. it says that we need to
take the sum of “xi – x bar” for all values of x.
VARIANCE:
Variance is de ned as the square of standard deviation.
Variance of the population is represented as σ times σ.
Variance for the sample is represented as "s times s".
Variance Formula
In the above formula,
Sx stands for standard deviation of the sample.
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xi is the value of each variable in the data set. Range: 13 – 11 = 2

x bar represents the mean. Mean: (12+13+11+12+12) / 5 = 12
n is the total sample size. Variance: Sum of [(X – mean) times (X – mean)] / (n – 1)
And Σ stands for summation i.e. it says that we need to = [0+1+1+0+0] / (5 – 1) = 2 / 4 = 0.50
take the sum of “xi – x bar” for all values of x. Standard Deviation: Square Root of 0.50 = 0.7071

RANGE:
Range is de ned as the difference between largest value
in a data set and the smallest value in a data set.

Range Formula

ValueMax stands for the highest (maximum) value in the

data set and ValueMin stands for the lowest (minimum)
value in the data set.

In a given data-set like 12, 13, 11, 12, 12

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What is Inferential
Statistics?
Inferential statistics is also a set of methods used to
draw conclusions or inferences about characteristics of
populations based on data from a sample.
µ – The mean calculated for a population
σ – The standard deviation calculated for a population
Inferential Statistics
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Population : A complete set of data “N”
Samples : A subset of data representing the population
“n”
We do Sampling all the time. Whenever we execute a
project, it has to be managed under many constraints
such as time, cost, resources, among others. Thus, it may
not be always feasible for the project to study 100% of
the population to derive its inferences. For example, if
we a re i m p rov i n g t h e q u a l i t y of a m m u n i t i o n
manufactured in an ammunition factory, we may not be
able to do quality test of 100% of the products. This is
mainly because the product will get destroyed after
testing. Thus, sampling is used in these cases where only
a sample of products is taken in for quality testing and
inferences are made for the population basis the result
of this sampling.
Some other examples of sampling include manufacturing
of cars in speci c lots i.e. a car manufacturing company
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manufactures its cars in lots. If it is a lot of 400 cars,

they will only test 10 – 15 cars and make an inference of
whether to accept the lot or reject it.

Sampling helps in managing the project by utilizing

lesser resources and is still effective in getting results.
Sampling by and large is done by all of the organizations
and thus, it is an important topic for our discussion.

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Accuracy vs
Precision
Processes may have a problem of Low Accuracy and/or
Low Precision. The processes and their associated
measurements need to have High Precision and High
Accuracy vs Precision
Accuracy in order produce the expected business
outcomes.
Similarly, the picture on the top-right corner indicates
that all the darts are around the internal blue line of the
As we see in the picture on the top-left corner, all the
dart-board but are not exactly on target. This is an
darts are concentrated in one corner of the board
example of a situation with High Accuracy and Low
instead of being concentrated at the center of the dart
Precision. Processes with High Accuracy and Low
board. This is an example of High Precision and Low
Precision need to focus on improving their precision so
Accuracy. Processes which have high precision and low
that they start achieving the target.
accuracy need to work towards improving their accuracy
so that they start achieving the target.

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 Step 2: Project Storyboarding and Team Charting.

Six Sigma DMAIC • Create a business case.
• Problem and Goal Statement.

Process - • Scoping the Project.

• Project Milestone.

Introduction to • Resource Plan – Roles and Responsibility.

Step 3: SIPOC and As-Is Process Mapping.

De ne Phase
De ne Phase of Six Sigma DMAIC Process consists of
following activities:
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - De ne Phase

Step 1: Validating Business Opportunity and Project

CTQ (Critical To Quality) Identi cation.
• Capturing Voice of Customer (VOC).
• Translating VOC into Y’s.
• Selecting key Y(s) for the project.
• Initiate Project Charter for each “Y”.

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 • Review R&R (Repeatability & Reproducibility) to

Six Sigma DMAIC validate the Measurement system.
• Improve R&R if variation is high.

Process - Step 6: Determine Process Capability.

Introduction to • Evaluate the capability of y (Calculate present Z value

for y).
• Review Baseline Performance with set target and

Measure Phase revise Targets if required.

• Update project charter and obtain Management
approval.
Measure Phase of Six Sigma DMAIC Process consists of
following activities:

Step 4: Identify Possible Project Y's and Data

Collection Strategy.
• Collect data on performance of y.
• Collect data on y for stability.

Step 5: Validate Measurement System.

• Study the Measurement System of y.

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 • Identify the vital x’s from the potential x’s.

Six Sigma DMAIC • Validate the vital x’s.

Process -
Introduction to Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Analyze Phase

Analyze Phase
Analyze Phase of Six Sigma DMAIC Process consists of
following activities:

Step 7: Identify Vital Project X’s and statistically

validate them.
• Develop a Detailed business process map.
• Analyze the process map to identify variation sources.
• Determine the x’s (the potential causes).
• Prioritize and collect data on x’s.
• Quantify the relationship [Y = f(x)].

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 Step 9: Validate Pilot Solution(s).

Six Sigma DMAIC • Develop a pilot plan to validate selected solution.
• Conduct pilot run to con rm the performance results

Process - of y with set targets [New Z value].

• Study the in uence of solution on the other measures

Introduction to (y’s) and on overall measure (Y).

• Evaluate nancial gains.
• Finalize the modi ed process ow.

Improve Phase
Step 10: Process Control and Risk Analysis.
Improve Phase of Six Sigma DMAIC Process consists of
Develop risk mitigation plan and Process Control
following activities:
Systems.
Develop roll out plan and Implement solution.
Step 8: Generate Potential Solution and Assess their
Failure Mode.
• Develop “Feasible solutions’ to improve y.
• Determine operating limits of X’s.
• Analyze cost-bene ts aspects of the feasible
Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Improve Phase
solutions.

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Develop feasibility solutions to improve performance of

Y and implement selected solutions are two key
actionables of Improve Phase.

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 Step 12: Communicate to Business Results and sign off
Six Sigma DMAIC to close the Six Sigma Project.

Process -
Introduction to
Control Phase
Control Phase of Six Sigma DMAIC Process consists of
following activities:

S t e p 1 1 : E xe c u t e c o n t r o l P l a n a n d F i n a l i z e
Documentation.
• Monitor post implementation process performance to
ensure expected improvement in project y has
occurred.
• Ensure ongoing process monitoring system is in place.

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Six Sigma DMAIC Process - A Real World

Example

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 Customer Identi cation:
Six Sigma DMAIC Customer is the one who buys or uses your products/
services and he/she is the one who receives the process

Process - De ne output. We broadly classify customers into two

categories:

Phase - Capturing • Internal Customers: Internal Customers are the ones

who are internal to the organization. They are
Management, Employee(s) or Any Functional

Voice of Customer Department in your organization.

• External Customers: External Customers are not a

(VOC)
What is Voice of Customer?
Voice of Customer is the customer’s voice, expectations,
preferences, comments, of a product or service in
discussion. It is the statement made by the customer on
a particular product or service.
part of the organization. They are either the ones who
use our product(s) or service(s) or have vested
interest in the organization. For e.g. Clients, End-
Customers, Shareholders, among others.
Customer Needs and Requirements:
Need is a desire or an expectation of a customer from a
given product or service. Customers may have many
stated needs which are often vague and generally are
“wants” from a product/service.

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 For example Customer requires an Air-Conditioner for its
use in his/her bed-room. The real need of the customer
is cool temperature in the bedroom. Similarly, the real
want from the Air-Conditioner is it has to be quite, cost-
effective and maintenance free. When the customer
states his/her requirements, we will often get to hear
that the need is “Cool Temperature, Less Noise (quite),
Cost Effective and Free of Maintenance”. However, “Cool
Temperature” is the need and the rest are just wants. It
is important for the project team to understand the
stated needs of the customer and separate them from
wants.
The main reason that we separate needs and wants are:
Needs are important critical features and Wants are
expectations of the product or service over and beyond
the needs. If the product/service is not able to ful ll
“Wants” of the customer, the customer may only be
highly displeased / dissatis ed. However, if the product/
service is not able to ful ll “Needs” of the customer, he/
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she will not use the product/service and there is a high
likelihood that he/she will switch to competitors
product/service. Organizations reputation may also be
at stake if “Needs” are not met.
Requirement is an attribute of the product or service
which ful ls the needs of a customer. Customer de nes
these requirements and are the “musts” of a product or
service.
For example in the above example of an air-conditioner,
customer’s requirement is “Cool Temperature” and the
rest are “Good to Have” features. Customer will not buy
the Air-Conditioner if all of “Good to Have” features are
present but the “Requirement(s)” are not ful lled.
However, customer may buy the product/service if the
“Requirement” is ful lled and “Good to Have” features
are present or not present.
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Translating Voices to Needs: measuring our CTPs (Critical To Process) and CTQs
Voice of Customer (VOC) methodology can be used to (Critical To Quality)
capture the customer needs – both current (stated
needs) and latent (unstated needs). VOC methodology
helps capture the needs of customer through stated
verbatim comments (customer voices). It helps translate
verbatim comments (customer voices) into customer
needs to product/service output characteristics
(customer requirements).
Six Sigma - Voice of AICP (Associate, Customer,
Investor and Process)
Distinct Categories of VOC:
At an organization level we broadly classify VOC into
Voice of Customer (VOC) Methods:
four distinct categories (AICP):
• Surveys: Surveys are a designed set of questionnaire
• Voice of Associate: The feedback that we get from
which is sent out to potential or existing customers.
our Employees
Surveys are cost effective, however, have very low
• Voice of Investor: The feedback that we get from our
response rate.
Management and Shareholders
• Interviews: Interviews are individual meetings with
• Voice of Customer: The feedback that we get from
potential or existing customers where a set of
our Clients and End-customers
questions are asked and answers are discussed to
• Voice of Process: The feedback that we get from

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 understand customer voices. Interviews can tackle

Complex Issues, however, requires Trained Resources.
• Focus Group: A group of people are called together in
one conference room and a discussion is held on
speci c topics that need to be addressed. These
focus groups are excellent for identifying the CTQ
(Critical to Quality), however, are dif cult to
Six Sigma - Translating Voice of Customer into
generalize.
Requirements
• Suggestions: Client/Customer/Employee feedback is
received and treated as suggestion to improve
product or service. Suggestions provide good
improvement opportunities, however, does not look at
overall process.
• Observations: During the course of the process,
individuals can have observations and can provide
feedback to the process which does act as a Voice of
Customer.

Below is a sample of Voice of Customer that is translated

into a Requirement:

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 Six Sigma DMAIC

Process - De ne
Phase - KANO
Analysis
KANO Analysis is about prioritizing customer Six Sigma - KANO Analysis
requirements once they are established. Requirements
are prioritized as: Let’s look at each of these Requirements in detail:

• Basic Requirements Basic Requirements:

• Performance Requirements Basic Requirements are “must-be’s”. They are the most
• Delighter Requirements important needs of customers. They are required and
• Indifferent Requirements expected to be there. These are the needs the customer
• Reverse Requirements assumes will be met. When these requirements are
unful lled, the customer is greatly dissatis ed and when

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 ful lled, the customer is neutral (i.e., they do not
produce additional satisfaction).
Performance Requirements:
A direct positive correlation exists between satisfaction
levels and the degree of presence of these performance
requirements. The more performance requirement
elements needs are met, the better it is for the product
or service.
Indifferent Requirements:
Indifferent elements are needs that result in neither
satisfaction nor dissatisfaction whether they are
present / met or not.
Reverse Requirements:
Reverse elements are needs that result in: 1)
Dissatisfaction when they are ful lled and Satisfaction
even when they are not ful lled. They may indicate that
the perception of that question in the marketplace is the
opposite of the perception of the survey's creator.
Delighter Requirements:
Delighter Requirements are “attracters”. Their presence
in a product/process is unexpected and ful ll the latent
needs of a customer. They lead to great satisfaction if
found present. When delighters are absent, the
customer still is neutral (& not dissatis ed).
Below is an example of a KANO Analysis for a Software
Application.

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Six Sigma - KANO Analysis Example for a Software Application

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Six Sigma DMAIC

Process - De ne
Phase - CTQ
Drilldown Tree Six Sigma - CTQ (Critical to Quality) Drilldown Tree for
Data Entry Application
CTQ (Critical to Quality) drilldown tree is a tool that can
be used to effectively convert customer’s needs and
r e q u i r e m e n t s t o m e a s u ra b l e p r o d u c t / s e r v i c e
characteristics, to establish linkage between Project “Y”
& Business “Y” and to bound the project or to make the
project manageable.

Below is an example of CTQ Drilldown Tree and their

Six Sigma - CTQ (Critical to Quality) Drilldown Tree for
associated measurements for two different processes:
Pizza Delivery Process

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 Business Case:
Six Sigma DMAIC Business case helps to understand how the project is
linked with the overall business objectives. Business case

Process - De ne explains why there is a need for the organization to

undertake the project and how it will support

Phase - Six Sigma organizational objectives.

The business case should be able to answer the

Project Charter following questions:

• Why is the project worth doing? Justify the resources
necessary to engage in the project.
Project Charter is a document that provides a
• Why is it important to customers?
framework and objective for a Six Sigma Process
• Why is it important to the business?
Improvement and/or Problem-solving Project.
• Why is it important to employees?
• Why is it important to do it now?
• What are the consequences of not doing the project
now?
• How does it t with the operational initiatives and
Six Sigma Project Charter targets?

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 Business Case Example:
“By reducing the average transaction length, the queue
would be able to enhance the Speed of Resolution and
assist the end-users in fastest possible manner. This will
not only help in achieving client targets but also increase
end-user satisfaction score by offering lesser turn-
around time.”
Problem Statement:
Problem statement should quantitatively describe the
pain in the current process
• What is the pain ?
• Where is it hurting?
• When – is it current? How long it has been?
• What is the extent of the pain?
What a Problem Statement should not do is Assign a
Cause or Blame and Include a Solution.
Problem Statement Example:
“In the last 3 months (when), 12% of our customers are
late, by over 45 days in paying their bills (what) . This
represents 20% (magnitude) of our outstanding
receivables & negatively affects our operating cash ow
(consequence) .”
Goal Statement:
De nes the improvement the team is seeking to
accomplish. It starts with a verb. It Should not presume a
cause or include a solution. It has a deadline. It is
actionable and sets the focus. It should be SMART
(Speci c, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time
Bound).
Goal Statement Example: To reduce the percentage of
late payments to 15% in next 3 months, and give
tangible savings of 500KUSD/ year.
Project Scope:
Project Scope helps us to understand the start and end
point for the process and also gives an insight on project

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 constraints and dimensions. It’s an attempt to de ne
what will be covered in the project deliverables. Scoping
sharpens the focus of the project team & sets the
expectations right. There are two types of scoping:
• Longitudinal Scoping
• Lateral Scoping
Absence of proper scoping may result in the team losing
interest in the project. Project becomes dif cult to
implement. Even after implementation, the desired
bene ts are not seen. Team focuses on trivial pain areas,
and missing out the real ones. Process selected is too
broad to handle.
Longitudinal Scoping: Longitudinal scoping is done on
the length of the process
e.g. – From the receipt of PO till the delivery at the
distributor's go-down
e.g. – From the time of customer reporting the
complaint till nal satisfaction con rmation
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Mostly the ‘start’ & ‘end’ points are xed. A macro as-is
process map must be prepared to facilitate longitudinal
scoping.
Lateral Scoping is done on the breadth of the process
e.g. – All despatches from North & South regions
e.g. – Calls received during general shift
By using Longitudinal and Lateral Scoping methods, we
know what all kinds of units the process will cover, in
what situations the process is valid, what are the
quali ers for the transactions, what functional domains
does the process cover and in what geographical areas
the process is valid.
Scoping Example:
Longitudinal Scope: The time when the Sourcing team
receives the resume of a referral or the time when a
candidate walks in to organization premises for an
interview and joins the organization.
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 Lateral Scope: Candidates interviewed till Senior Speci cation Limits:

Manager level across the organization, all locations. A speci cation is a customer-de ned tolerance for the
output unit characteristics. There may be two-sided
Project Milestones: speci cations – Upper Speci cation Limit (USL) and
Project milestone in a charter speci es timelines for Lower Speci cation Limit (LSL). Any data point above
completion of each phases with signed tollgates. It is a the USL and below LSL is termed as defect.
preliminary, high level project plan with dates, which is S p e c i c a t i o n s f o r m t h e b a s i s o f a ny d e f e c t
tied to phases of DMAIC process. It should be measurement exercise on continuous data.
aggressive (don’t miss “Window of Opportunity”) yet
should be realistic (don’t force yourselves into “Band-
aid” solution). The project milestones to further include
a detailed project plan (Gantt chart) along with a
documented communication plan.

Six Sigma Process Speci cation Limits

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 Speci cation limits should follow the RUMBA acronym.
RUMBA stands for Reasonable, Understandable,
Measurable, Believable and Attainable.
Reasonable: The speci cation based on a realistic
assessment of customer’s actual needs. We need to
check if the speci cation relate directly to the
performance of the characteristic.
Understandable: The speci cation is clearly stated and
de ned so that no one can misinterpret it.
Attainable or Achievable: We should be able to reach
the level and range of the speci cation.
Resources and Team Roles:
Ultimately executive leadership team together with Six
Sigma Deployment Leader and Six Sigma Champion
need to ensure that a trained Six Sigma Team and
associated hardware and software resources are in place
to successfully implement the Six Sigma project and
deliver great results and customer value!

Measurable: We should be able to measure the

characteristic’s performance against the speci cation. If
not, a lot of debate will ensue between you and your
customer as to whether the speci cation has been met.

Believable: We should have b ought into the

speci cation setting. That is, we and our teams should
strive to meet the speci cation.

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Six Sigma DMAIC

Process - De ne
Phase - Change
Acceleration
Six Sigma Change Acceleration Process (CAP)

CAP depends on Leading Change, Creating a Shared

Process (CAP) Need, Shaping a Vision, Mobilizing Commitment

(Getting buy-in from Stakeholders), Making the Change
Last and Monitoring Progress. All implementation
Change Acceleration Process (CAP) is the process of
projects require a Champion who sponsors the change if
moving the Current State of the Process/Service/
they are to be successful (Leading Change). The reason
Product to an Improved State by catalyzing (speeding
to change, whether driven by threat or opportunity, is
up) the Transition State.
instilled within the organization and widely shared
through data, demonstration, demand, or diagnosis. The
need for change must exceed the resistance to change
(Creating a Shared Need). The desired outcome of

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 change is clear, legitimate, widely understood, and • A - Approval of team decisions

shared (Shaping a Vision).
There is a strong commitment from key constituents to
invest in the change, make it work, and demand and
receive management attention (Mobilizing
Commitment). Once change is started, it endures and
ourishes and learnings are transferred throughout the
organization (Making the Change Last). Progress is real;
benchmarks are set and realized; indicators are
established to guarantee accountability (Monitoring
Progress). Management practices are used to
complement and reinforce change (Changing Systems
and Structures).
• R - Resource of the team, one whose expertise/ skills
may be needed
• M - Member of team, with the authorities and
boundaries of the charter
• I - Interested Party, one who will need to keep
informed on direction and ndings
ARMI helps in de ning the role of each individual within
the project team. It helps in clarifying any ambiguity
related to the roles and responsibilities of these
individuals. Let’s look at an example of ARMI:

ARMI (Approver, Resource, Member, Interested Party):

ARMI model is a CAP tool used to assess each person’s

role in the project during various phases of the project.
ARMI is an acronym of

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 Six Sigma Effectiveness Equation

The above equation states that in order to achieve 100%

Six Sigma ARMI (Approver, Resource, Member,
Interested Party) Example
Project Acceptability:
Project Acceptability is based on the below equation:
Effectiveness of a solution = Quality of a solution *
Acceptability of the solution.
Effectiveness, our Quality and Acceptability of the
Solution contribute to the tune of 20% and 80%
respectively.
Improvements bring about change and it is a commonly
known fact that change is always resisted. It is important
to for all of us to realize that just nding a solution to
the problem is not good enough. The identi ed solution
should be understood and implemented.

It is important to create a “shared-need” as early as

possible in your project journey as it helps in. Then, it is
important to continue building the momentum for the

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 change initiative. Finally, it’s important to prepare your
people/organization for the change by answering the
most critical human need – “WIIFM!” (What’s In It For
Me).
The Key Bene ts of Project Acceptability is that it
enables projects to be started and completed more
quickly. It helps ensure that project solutions are
supported. It helps ensure that customers and suppliers
are getting involved appropriately. Team involvement
ensures change sustenance. It reinforce change that is
consistent, visible and tangible. It ensure a “baked-in”
change – not just something on the surface that will be
the rst thing to be dropped in a pinch. And it helps
drive change on a global/strategic basis.
Three commonly used CAP tools to help create a shared
need are:
• Critical Success Factors
• Stakeholder Analysis
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Critical Success Factors:
These are factors that are critical for the success of the
project and needs to be considered and tracked. Some
of these factors are Appropriate Metric, Data Availability,
Resource Availability, Proximity to Champion/
Stakeholders, Degree of Dif culty, Scalability, Bene ts.
All of the Critical Success Factors need to be articulated
well to ensure stakeholder buy-in.
Stakeholder Analysis:
This tool helps the team answer questions like:
• Who are the key stakeholders?
• Where do they currently stand on the issues
associated with this change initiative?
• Where do we need them to be in terms of their level
of support?
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Six Sigma Stakeholder Analysis Example

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 • Input – The product or data that a process does

Six Sigma DMAIC something to or with to deliver the required output
• Process – The activities you must perform to satisfy

Process - De ne your customer’s requirements and deliver the output

• Output – The product or data that results from the

Phase - Process successful operation of a process

• Customer – Whoever receives the output of your
process

Mapping / SIPOC
SIPOC is an acronym of Suppliers, Inputs, Processes,
Outputs and Customer. SIPOC as a tool displays a cross-
functional set of activities in a single and simple diagram
which helps us identify process inputs (Xs) and outputs
(Ys), identify process owner, customers & suppliers and Six Sigma SIPOC (Supplier, Input, Process, Output and
identify & establish boundaries for the process. The ve Customer) Example
key elements of SIPOC are:

• Supplier – Whoever provides the input to your

process

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 persons associated with the process. It’s is a team effort

Six Sigma DMAIC and is documented by everyone who contributes to the
process and/or is a part of the process.

Process - De ne Process maps help characterize the functional

Phase - Process relationships between various inputs and outputs. Three

commonly used process mapping tools to create
detailed process maps are:

Mapping / Flow • Process Flowchart

• Deployment Flowchart

Charting • Alternate Path Flowchart

Process mapping is the graphic display of steps, events Process Flowchart:

and operations that constitute a process. It’s a pictorial Process Flowchart is a simple step by step process of
illustration which identi es the steps, inputs and activities carried out in the process.
outputs, and other related details of a process by
providing a step-by-step picture of the process “as-is”.
It’s a graphics technique for dissecting a process by
capturing and integrating the combined knowledge of all

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 Alternate Path Flowchart:

Alternate Path Flowchart is a step-by-step owchart
which provides alternate paths for most of its steps. This
is unlike the swimlane (deployment) or regular ow-
charts.
Six Sigma Process Flowchart

Deployment Flowchart:
A deployment owchart is also referred to as Swimlane
ow chart or cross-functional owchart describing the
roles of different departments/stakeholders involved in
the process.

Six Sigma Alternate Path Flowchart

Six Sigma Deployment Flowchart

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 Consideration during evaluating measurements for Y’s:

Six Sigma DMAIC Measures always have the customer perspective and are

Process - Measure linked to the business goal. Measurement system is

understood in terms of its accuracy, repeatability,

Phase - Identify reproducibility. Bene ts of capturing the measure

outweigh the cost. Measure is relevant to the process. It
has the process been mapped, identifying the key

Possible Project Y's measurable outputs and inputs per step. And the
measure is not ambiguous.

Measurement Types to identify possible project Y's:

• Effective measures: Effective measures is how well a
process meets the requirements. For example: Did I
give the correct answer to an incoming call?
• Ef ciency measures: Ef ciency measures is how well
resources are allocated to execute the process. For
example: Cost per transaction.

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Six Sigma DMAIC

Process - Measure
Phase - Types of
Data Six Sigma - Data Types

There are two types of Data – Qualitative and

Quantitative.

Qualitative data is subjective in nature and cannot be

measured objectively. It can be ranked or ordered.
Quantitative data is objective in nature and can be
measured. Qualitative data is further bifurcated as
Nominal, Ordinal and Binary whereas Quantitative data is
either Discrete or Continuous. Example are described in
the below diagram.

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 applied? (value of transaction).

Six Sigma DMAIC Some example of Discrete and Continuous data are as

Process - Measure follows:

• Response Time for an Email: Continuous

Phase - Variation / • Customer Satisfaction Score: Discrete (as it falls on an

ordered scale)
• Talk Time: Continuous

Discrete vs • Fatal Accuracy: Continuous

• Survey Rating: Discrete

Continuous • Number of Calls: Discrete

• Number of Agents: Discrete

Thinking Characteristics of Data:

Quantitative data can be measured using Central
Discrete Thinking – For instance; Payment posted on Tendency and Spread/Variation.
time? (Yes/No) Is the Payment amount correct? (Yes/
No).
Continuous Thinking – For instance; When was payment
posted? (number of hours); How much payment was

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Quantitative Data Characteristics

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 • We sample when the process involves destructive

Six Sigma DMAIC testing, e.g. taste tests, car crash tests, etc.
• We sample when there are constraints of time and

Process - Measure costs

• We sample when the populations cannot be easily

Phase - Data captured

Sampling is NOT done in situations like:

Collection Strategy • We cannot sample when the events and products are
unique and cannot be replicable

- Sampling Sampling can be done by following methods:

Probability Sampling:
Sampling is the process of selecting a small number of • Simple Random Sampling
elements from a larger de ned target group of • Strati ed Random Sampling
elements. Population is the total group of elements we • Systematic Sampling
want to study. Sample is the subgroup of the population • Cluster Sampling
we actually study. Sample would mean a group of ‘n’
employees chosen randomly from organization of Non Probability Sampling:
population "N". Sampling is done in situations like: • Convenience Sampling

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 • Judgment Sampling
• Quota Sampling
• Snowball Sampling

Simple Random Sampling:

Simple random sampling is a method of sampling in
which every unit has equal chance of being selected. Six Sigma Strati ed Random Sampling

Systematic Sampling:
Systematic sampling is a method of sampling in which
every nth unit is selected from the population.

Six Sigma Simple Random Sampling

Strati ed Random Sampling:

Strati ed random sampling is a method of sampling in
which stratum/groups are created and then units are Six Sigma Systematic Sampling
picked randomly.

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 Cluster Sampling: characteristics.

Cluster sampling is a method of sampling in which Snowball sampling relies upon respondent referrals of
clusters are sampled every Tth time. others with like characteristics.

Sampling Bias:
Bias occurs when systematic differences are introduced
into the sample as a result of the selection process. A
sample that is biased will not be representative of the
population. A sample that is biased will lead to incorrect
conclusions about the population. The types of sampling
bias are as follows:
Six Sigma Cluster Sampling • Convenience sampling selection bias: Occurs when
the sample is drawn only from the part of the
population that is easily accessible
Non-Probability Sampling: • Systematic sampling selection bias: Can introduce a
Convenience sampling relies upon convenience and bias if the procedure matches an underlying structure
access. • Environmental bias: Introduced when environmental
Judgment sampling relies upon belief that participants conditions have changes from the time the sample
t characteristics. was drawn to the time the sample is used to draw
Quota sampling emphasizes representation of speci c conclusions about the population

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 • Non-response bias: Initiated by respondents. Only a
subset of the population responds to the survey

Sample Size Formula:

In order to determine the sample size, we need to
identify if the data type is continuous or discrete,
whether we have standard deviation or proportion
defectives and the con dence level.
Six Sigma Sample Size Formula – Discrete Data
Where, P – is the proportion defective that we are
estimating (expressed in %) and
Δ – is the precision or the level of uncertainty in your
estimate that you are willing to accept (expressed in %).

Let us solve a few questions to understand the formula

better.
Six Sigma Sample Size Formula – Continuous Data

Given a sample size of 100, how precisely can we

Here, n = Sample Size, σ = is the estimated standard
estimate a proportion defective estimated as P = 20%?
deviation of our population and
Here, P = 20% and n = 100, we need to nd Δ.
Δ – is the precision or the level of uncertainty in your
Using the formula for Sample Size – Discrete Data,
estimate that you are willing to accept (expressed in %).
Δ2 = (n)/ (1.96)2 * P(1 – P)

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 Δ2 = 100 / (3.8416) * 0.16 n = (1.96*8/2)2

Δ2 = 162.681 n = 61.47
Δ = 12.75

Given an estimated proportion defective guessed to be

somewhere in the range of 5% to 15%, how many
observations should we take to estimate the proportion
defective within 2%?
Here, P = (15% - 5%) = 10% = 0.10, Δ = 0.02
Using the formula for Sample Size – Discrete Data,
n = (1.96/0.02)2 * (0.10)*(1-0.10)
n = 9604 * 0.09
n = 864.36

We want to estimate the average cycle time within 2

days. A preliminary estimate of the population standard
deviation is 8 days. How many observations should we
take?
Here, Δ = 2 and σ = 8 days
Using the formula for Sample Size – Continuous Data,

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 Measurement System Analysis (MSA) for Data Types: For

Six Sigma DMAIC continuous data type the Gage Repeatability and
Reproducibility (R&R) studies are done and we check for

Process - Measure • % Tolerance

• % Contribution

Phase - • Number of Distinct Categories

For discrete data the Discrete Data Analysis (DDA) is

Measurement done
• Accuracy

System • Repeatability
• Reproducibility

The Objective of this section is to identify and
understand the components of variation arising out of
the measurement system and to be able to use the
appropriate tool for analysis depending on the data
type.
All of the above values are derived out of any statistical
software. We will see a few thumb of rules after
understanding the Measurement System in more detail.

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 instrument/gate) and Variation from Gage i.e. Variation

due to the instrument itself. Variation from gage can be
further classi ed into Accuracy, Stability, Repeatability,
Reproducibility and Linearity.

Variation (observed) = Variation (Actual) + Variation

(Measurement)

The above equation indicates that the Observed

Variation in a process is due to Actual Variation and the
Six Sigma Components of Variation
variation due to the Measurement System.

The variation in process can result due to the Actual

Process Variation and the Variation from Measurement
System. The Actual Process Variation is resulted because
of Controllable Factors and/or Uncontrollable Factors.

Variation from Measurement System is not advisable.

This variation is due to Variation from Appraiser (due to
the operator – individual who operates the tool/
Six Sigma Process Variation

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 same measuring gage (or tool)

• Stability - Variation in measurement when the same
person measures the same unit using the same
measuring gage (or tool) over an extended period of
time.
• Linearity – The consistency of the measurement
Six Sigma Observed Variation vs True Variation across the entire range of the measuring gage.

In the above example, LSL – Lower Speci cation Limit

and USL – Upper Speci cation Limit. Acceptable Level of Measurement System Variation
(Thumb of rules):
Measurement System Analysis:
Measurement system errors can be due to
• Accuracy – The difference between the average of
observed values and the standard
• Repeatability – Variation in measurement when a
person measures the same unit repeatedly with the
Six Sigma Gage R&R Thumb Rule – Continuous Data
same measuring gage (or tool)
• Reproducibility - Variation in measurement when two
or more persons measure the same unit using the

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Six Sigma Attribute R&R Thumb Rule – Discrete Data
Process Variation:
Process Variation is generally due to two causes:
Common Causes and Special Causes. Common cause is
also called as Noise. Variation is inherent in the system. It
results in a stable – IN CONTROL – process because the
variation is predictable and it is evident in the system.
Whereas Special causes are also called as Signals. They
are unexpected occurrences due to unforeseen
circumstances. It results in an unstable – OUT OF
CONTROL – process because the variation is not
predictable.
Data Interpretation:
Data is interpreted using factors such as Stability,
Normality, Shape, Spread and Centering.
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Let’s take a look at the rst factor – Stability. Run chart
is an important tool for understanding data stability. Run
charts are simple time ordered plots of process data. On
run chart plots one can perform tests for certain
patterns in the data to understand data stability and
presence of these patterns indicate special causes of
variation.
Special cause variation in a run chart can be understood
by the following patterns: Same Value Plot, Clustering or
Too Few Runs Plot, Mixtures or Too Many Runs Plot,
Oscillations Plot, Trends Plot, Shifts Plot.
Run Chart – Same Value Plot:
A run chart having seven or more points with same value
in a sequence indicates bias in the process.
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 Six Sigma Run Chart – Same Value Plot
Run Chart – Clustering Plot:
Such a plot has lot of data points next to each other on
one side of the median and the same way on the side of
the median over time and indicates a periodic shift in
process average due to lot-to-lot or setup variability;
Also known as too few runs plot.
Six Sigma Run Chart – Clustering Plot
Run Chart – Mixtures Plot:
Such a plot has and absence of points near the center
line with a sequence of fourteen or more points in a row
alternating up and down; indicates a bias or systematic
sampling from different sources or processes; Also
known as cycle or too many runs plot.
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 Run Chart – Trend Plot:

Such a plot has a sequence of seven or more data points
continuously increasing or decreasing and indicates a
gradual increase or decrease trend in the data
measurement methods.

Six Sigma Run Chart – Mixtures Plot

Run Chart – Oscillation Plot:

Such a plot, has data points constantly uctuating up
and down rapidly around the median and indicates that
the process is not steady or stable.

Six Sigma Run Chart – Trend Plot

Run Chart – Shift Plot:

Such a plot has a sequence of eight or more points on
the same side of the median and indicates a gradual
shift in the process.
Six Sigma Run Chart – Oscillation Plot

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 Six Sigma Run Chart – Shift Plot
Introduction to Normal Distribution:
Normal Distribution was developed by astronomer Karl
Gauss. It is a most prominently used distribution in
statistics. Its applicability is to many situations where
given the population knowledge, we need to predict the
sample behavior. It comes close to tting the actual
frequency distribution of many phenomena such as:
• Human characteristics such as weights, heights & IQ’s
• Physical process outputs such as yields
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Six Sigma Normal Distribution - 1
It’s a Probability Distribution, illustrated as N ( µ, σ ) i.e. it
is characterized by Mean and Standard Deviation. Simply
put, a probability distribution is a theoretical frequency
distribution. It has higher frequency of values around the
mean & lesser & lesser at values away from mean. It is
Continuous & Symmetrical. Its tails are asymptotic to X-
axis i.e. the tails will never touch the X-axis. It is Bell
shaped and the Total area under the Normal curve = 1.
For the data that does not follow normal distribution,
the data will not be bell shaped as above. It could be
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 stretched to the left or right or it can also have multiple
peaks or it may show some other pattern. We term such
data as non-normal data.
Six Sigma Normal Distribution - 2
As you will observe in the above diagram, a process with
1σ (one sigma), the performance of the process is at
68.26%. As the Sigma value increases (2 σ, 3 σ, 4 σ, etc),
the performance of the process also increases (95.46%,
99.73%, 99.9937%, etc). When the process achieves 6 σ
level, the performance of the process is as high as
99.999998%.
Now let us look at how we can determine Normality of
the data set. Anderson-Darling normality test is
performed on the data to understand its normality
characteristics. A data is considered to be normal if the
P-value is greater than .05, and the hypothesis test
states:
• H0 – Data is normal
• Ha – Data is not normal
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 Six Sigma Histogram Distribution Symmetrical Shape Six Sigma Histogram Distribution Positively Skewed
Shape

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 Six Sigma Histogram Distribution Negatively Skewed Six Sigma Histogram Distribution Long Tailed Shape
Shape

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 Six Sigma Histogram Distribution Bi-Modal Symmetrical Six Sigma Histogram Distribution Multi-Modal
Shape Negatively Skewed Shape

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What do I do when data is Non Normal?

When the data is non-normal, we transform the data
from non–normal to normal. We can transform the data
with the following possibilities:

• Take the Log (any Base) of your raw measurement.

• Raise your individual measurements to a power.
• Use the reciprocal (1/y) of your individual
measurements.

When we transform data, we should take following

caution:

• When you transform your data, you must also

transform your speci cation limits.
• You will use the transformed data throughout the
analysis of your data.
• Use transformation of data the last resort after
checking all other alternatives such as more data
collection, validating data consistency.

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 point in time. Calculated from data taken over a short

Six Sigma DMAIC period of time such that there is no external in uence
on the process (i.e. temperature change, shift change,

Process - Measure operator change etc.). Short term capability represents

the true process capability. Short term capability

Phase - Process indicates the technology of the process.

Long Term Capability:

Capability The actual performance of a process over a period of

time. Calculated from data taken over a period of time
long enough such that external factors can in uence the
The capability of a process is de ned as the inherent
process. Long term capability represents both the
variability of a process in the absence of any undesirable
Technological capability combined with the controls that
special causes and the variability is due to common
you exercise.
causes.

What is Process Sigma?

Process capability can be categorized under two
It is a measurement yardstick to evaluate the output of a
categories:
process against the set performance standard. Higher
the process sigma, better the process capability. Sigma
Short Term Capability:
measure gives us a common platform to compare
Potential performance of a process, under control at a

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 different process that is otherwise being measured DPMO (Defects Per Million Opportunity)
differently. DPMO = 1,000,000 * DPO = 1,000,000 * D/(O*U)

Process Sigma Calculation – Discrete Data:
• What is a Unit – An Item being processed
• What is a Defect – Failure to meet a customer
Requirement or a Performance standard
• What is an Opportunity – Any product / service
characteristics which is measured to a standard
• What is Defective – A unit that has s defect
• Defects Per Million Opportunity – Number of defects
that would arise given a million opportunity
For any Six Sigma process, the calculation will always
result the process to have only 3.4 per million
opportunities (DPMO). For example, if a process had
only 2 Defects, 18 Opportunity for Defects per Unit and
Total number of units to be 32500, the DPMO
calculation will be as follows:
DPO = 2 / (18*32500) = 0.0000034188
DPMO = DPO * 1000000 = 3.4

DPMO Calculation: Yield:

Defects Per Opportunity Different types of ful llment can impact the quality level
DPO = D / (O*U) we measure in our processes. Yield can be understood
D = Total No of defects as Classical Yield, First Pass Yield and Rolled
O = Opportunity for defects per unit Throughput Yield.
U = Total No of Units

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 Six Sigma Yield De nition and Example

Classic Yield (YC) – Units Passed / Final Units Tested =

65/70 = 0.93
First Time Yield (Yft) - Units Passed / Units input for
First time = 65/100 = 0.65
Rolled Throughput Yield (Ytp) – Yield 1* Yield 2* Yield
3* Yield 4 = (91/100)*(82/91)*(70/82)*(65/70) = 0.65 Six Sigma Normal Probability Plot

Process Sigma Calculation – Continuous Data:

Check if the data is Normally distributed. The Larger the
sample size, the higher the probability of having normal
data. In normality plot the Y axis represents the
cumulative percentage if the data points that fall below
the corresponding data value on the X axis.
Calculation of Z value:
Z is the unit of measure that is equivalent to the number
of Standard Deviation a value is away from the mean
value.

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 Calculation of Six Sigma Z Value

Y = Value of the data point we are concerned with

µ = Mean of the data points
σ = Standard Deviation of the data points
Normal Distribution Example
Z = Number of standard deviations between Y & the
mean (µ)

Let’s look at some examples:

It’s found that runs scored by England cricket team while
setting a score in one day internationals follow a normal
distribution with mean of 250 & standard deviation of Z Calculation Example
23. What is the probability that team will score more
than 300 runs in its next match?
Looking up Appendix below for Normal Distribution
Table, we nd that Z value of 2.17 covers an area of

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0.98499 under itself. Thus, the probability that the team Normal Distribution Example
may score between 0 & 300 is 98.5% & thus, chance of
team scoring more than 300 runs is 1.5%.

For the same data, what is the probability that team will
score between 216 & 273?

Z Calculation Example

From Appendix:
Total area covered by Z1 = 0.841344740
Total area covered by Z2 = 1 - 0.929219087 = 0.0707
Intercepted area between Z1 & Z2 = 0.7705
Thus, probability that the team may score between 216
& 273 runs in the next match is 77.05%.

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 Six Sigma Normal Distribution Table 1

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 Six Sigma Normal Distribution Table 2

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 the bottlenecks. It provides data collection points

Six Sigma DMAIC existing against those required. It also helps in
identifying the ef ciency of the process, as we capture

Process - Analyze the processing time for each activity.

Phase - As Is Example of Mapping the AS IS processes to the micro

level:

Process Map
As Is Process Map/Process Mapping is a graphical
representation of all the activities carried out to deliver
output for a process. It tells us all the activities being
carried out to obtain the output. It also discusses on
what all are the inputs going to deliver the output. It
suggests which inputs are controllable and which are not Six Sigma As Is Process Mapping
in our control. It gives a list of critical inputs. It shares
which of these activities are value added and which are
non value added, the various handoffs and the
opportunities to eliminate steps. It helps to determine

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 Variation Over Time can be de ned for discrete and

Six Sigma DMAIC continuous data types as:
• Discrete Data: Run Charts, Control Chart

Process - Analyze • Continuous Data: Run Chart, Control Chart

Phase - Data Door Bar Diagram:

A bar diagram is a graphical representation of attribute
data. It is constructed by placing the attribute values on

Analysis the horizontal axis of a graph and the counts on the

vertical axis.

Let us learn about a few Representation Tools that help

us in analyzing the data and also representing them
appropriately.

Process variation can be classi ed as Variation for a

period of Time and Variation Over Time. Variation for a
period of time can be de ned for discrete and
continuous data types as below:
• Discrete Data: Bar Diagram, Pie Chart, Pareto Chart Six Sigma Bar Diagram
• Continuous Data: Histogram, Box Plot

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Pie Chart:
A pie chart is a graphical representation of attribute
data. The “pieces” represent proportions of count
categories in the overall situation. Pie charts show the
relationship among quantities by dividing the whole pie
(100%) into wedges or smaller percentages.
Six Sigma Pie Chart
Cause and Effect Diagram / Fish Bone Diagram /
Ishikawa Diagram:
This is a visual tool used to brainstorm the probable
causes for a particular effect to occur. Effect or the
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problem is analogously captured as the head of the sh
and thus the name. The causes for this effect or
problem is generated through team brainstorming and
are captured along the bones of the sh. The causes
generated in the brainstorming exercises by the team
will depend on how closely the team is related to the
problem. Typically the causes are captured under
predetermined categories such as 6M’s or 5M’s and a P
as given below:
• Machine: This category groups root causes related to
tools used to execute the process.
• Material: This category groups root causes related to
information and forms needed to execute the
process.
• Nature: This category groups root causes related to
our work environment, market conditions, and
regulatory issues.
• Measure: This category groups root causes related to
the process measurement.
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 • Method: This category groups root causes related to Pareto Chart:
procedures, hand-offs, input-output issues. A data display tool for numerical data that breaks down
• People: This category groups root causes related discrete observations into separate categories for the
people and organizations. purpose of identifying the "vital few”.

Below is an example of a shbone diagram created for

capturing the root causes of High Turn Around Time
(TAT).

Six Sigma Pareto Chart

Six Sigma Cause and Effect Diagram / Fish Bone

Diagram / Ishikawa Diagram

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Histogram:
A histogram is a graphical representation of numerical
data. It is constructed by placing the class intervals on
the horizontal axis of a graph and the frequencies on the
vertical axis.

Six Sigma Histogram

Six Sigma Box Plot

Box Plot: The box plot can be interpreted as follows:

A box plot summarizes information about the shape, • Box – represents the middle 50% values of the
dispersion, center of process data and also helps spot process data.
outliers in the data. • Median – represents the point for which 50% of the
data points are above and 50% are below the line.

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• Q1, Q3 – Q1 represents the point for which 25% of Scatter Plot:

the data points are above and 75% are below the line; A scatter plot is often employed to identify potential
While, Q3 represents the point for which 75% of the associations between two variables, where one may be
data are above and 25% are below in the line. considered to be an explanatory variable (such as years
• Aestrix – represents an outlier and is a point which is of education) and another may be considered a
more than 1.5 times the inter-quartile range (Q3-Q1) response variable (such as annual income).
in the data.
• Lines – These vertical lines represent a whisker which
joins Q1 or Q3 with the farthest data-point but other
than an outlier.

Example: Below is an example of a call center process

where Average Handle Time (AHT) of the calls is
compared between Team Leads of the process.

You will observe that the variation is highest for TL1 and
for the rest it is much smaller. This indicates that the
associates working under TL1 need training or some
other help which will reduce the variation and bring the
overall AHT under control.
Six Sigma Box Plot Example
Scatter plots are similar to line graphs in that they use
horizontal and vertical axes to plot, large body of, data

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points. And, they have a very speci c purpose too:

• They show how much one variable is affected by
another variable and this relationship is called as their
correlation.
• The closer the data points come when plotted to
making a straight line, higher is the correlation
between variables.
• If the data points make a straight line going from the
origin out to high x- and y-values, then the variables
are said to have a +ve correlation.
• If the line goes from a high-value on y-axis down to a
high-value on x-axis, the variables have –ve Six Sigma Scatter Plot
correlation.
Scatter plots are similar to line graphs in that they use
Once after identifying the factors we need to horizontal and vertical axes to plot, large body of, data
• What is the extent of impact of the factors? points. And, they have a very speci c purpose too:
• Which one do you control? • They show how much one variable is affected by
another variable and this relationship is called as their
correlation.
• The closer the data points come when plotted to

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 making a straight line, higher is the correlation

between variables.
• If the data points make a straight line going from the
origin out to high x- and y-values, then the variables
are said to have a +ve correlation.
• If the line goes from a high-value on y-axis down to a
high-value on x-axis, the variables have –ve
correlation.

Once after identifying the factors we need to

• What is the extent of impact of the factors?
• Which one do you control?

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Six Sigma DMAIC

Process - Analyze
Phase - Control Six Sigma Control Impact Matrix

Impact Matrix We generate the factors/causes using the C&E (Cause

and Effect) matrix. Followed by veri cation of this
This is a prioritization tool that is used in conjunction
qualitative assessment of the factors/causes by seeking
with the C&E tool typically after the causes have been
data, which can then be prioritized using the control
captured using C&E. Prioritization is done based on
impact matrix or Pareto analysis. But are these the root
factors (causes) that are in your control and the impact
causes? Or do we need to drill down further?
(extent) of the factor on the problem or the effect.

How do we do it?
Ask Why ve times OR Ask why till a time when you do
not have an answer to the Why OR The nal answer that
you may get could be a root cause.

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 they were not clear.

Six Sigma DMAIC • Why were they not clear? Because the direction was
not clear.

Process - Analyze • Why were the direction not clear? Because many of
the customers never read them.

Phase - Why • Why did they not read them? Because the print was
too small.

Analysis
Why Analysis is explained through the below example:

• Why does the Home nance loan application process

take more than 10 working days to arrive at the
decision of “Credit Worthy”? Because many
application received especially by Post have elds that
are either not clear or left blank.
• Why do we have applications that have blank elds?
Because the customer did not ll out the details.
• Why did the customer not ll the details? Because

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 Six Sigma DMAIC

Process - Analyze
Phase - Hypothesis
Testing
In a process, we may face Problem with Centering and/
or Problem with Spread. Below diagram will allow us to
understand these two problems in detail.
Hypothesis testing tells us whether there exists
statistically signi cant difference between the data sets
for us to consider that they represent different
distributions.
Practical Six Sigma Problems that require Hypothesis
Testing
What is the difference that can be detected using
Hypothesis Testing?
For Continuous data, hypothesis testing can detect
Difference in Average and Difference in Variance. For
Discrete data, hypothesis testing can detect Difference
in Proportion Defective.

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 Steps in Hypothesis Testing: Similarly, in type II Error, we accept Null Hypothesis

• Step 1: Determine appropriate Hypothesis test when it is false. It is also called as Beta error or
• Step 2: State the Null Hypothesis Ho and Alternate Consumer’s Risk.
Hypothesis Ha
• Step 3: Calculate Test Statistics / P-value against
table value of test statistic
• Step 4: Interpret results – Accept or reject Ho

Mechanism:
• Ho = Null Hypothesis – There is No statistically
signi cant difference between the two groups
• Ha = Alternate Hypothesis – There is statistically
signi cant difference between the two groups
Six Sigma Hypothesis Testing Errors
Hypothesis Testing Errors:
Type I Error – P (Reject Ho when Ho is true) = α
In type I Error, we reject the Null Hypothesis when it is P Value – Also known as Probability value, it is a
true. It is also called as Alpha error or Producer’s Risk. statistical measure which indicates the probability of
making an α error. The value ranges between 0 and 1.
Type II Error - P (Accept Ho when Ho is false) = β We normally work with 5% alpha risk, a p value lower

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than 0.05 means that we reject the Null hypothesis and

accept alternate hypothesis.

Types of Hypothesis Testing:

We use the following grid to select the appropriate
hypothesis test depending on the data types:

Normal Continuous Y and Discrete X

Non-Normal Continuous Y and Discrete X

Types of Six Sigma Hypothesis Testing

Continuous Y and Continuous X

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 Discrete Y and Discrete X

Six Sigma Hypothesis Test – Null and Alternate

Summary

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 Six Sigma DMAIC

Process - Analyze
Phase - Analysis
Examples
Turn Around Time (in Mins)
1-sample t-Test Example:
De nition: A hypothesis test for comparing a population
mean against a given standard for any signi cant
differences.
Situation: You have 50 data points on the TAT for your
process and you want to check if the mean of your TAT is
worse than your competitors TAT of 4.5 minutes.
Analysis Result
Null: Mean TAT <= 4.5 minutes
Alternate: Mean TAT > 4.5 minutes

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 Result: A One-Sample t-test helps us compare the mean

of the sample to that of one value. In our example, we
wanted to identify if our TAT is better or worse than 4.5.
Using the results of the session window described
above, we observe that the P-value is less than 0.05
which indicates that we reject the null hypothesis. Thus,
our performance is worse than our competitors
performance.

2-sample t-Test Example:

De nition: A hypothesis test for comparing means of
two different populations for any signi cant differences. Morning Shift and Night Shift Data
Situation: You have two shifts in your process, morning
shift & evening shift and you want to nd out if there is a
signi cant difference in the average in TAT of morning
shift and night shift.

Null: Mean of (Morning shift = Evening shift)

Alternate: Mean of (Morning shift != Evening shift)

Analysis Result

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 Result: A Two-Sample t-test helps us compare the mean

of two samples. In our example, we wanted to identify if
morning shift performance is equal to evening shift
performance. Using the results of the session window
described above, we observe that the P-value is less
than 0.05 which indicates that we reject the null
hypothesis. Thus, performance of morning shift is not
equal to evening shift.

One-Way ANOVA Example:

De nition: A hypothesis test for comparing the means
of more than two populations for any signi cant
differences. Staff 1, Staff 2, Staff 3 and Staff 4 Data
Situation: You want to see if there is a signi cant
difference in the average TAT of your staff A, B, C, D.

Null: Mean of (Staff A = Staff B = Staff C = Staff D)

Alternate: Mean of (Staff A != Staff B != Staff C != Staff
D)

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 Staff 3 != Staff 4.

Mood's Median Test Example:

De nition: A hypothesis test for comparing the medians
of two or more than two populations for any signi cant
differences.
Situation: You want to see if there is a signi cant
difference in the TAT of your staff A, B, C, D.

Null: Median of (Staff A = Staff B = Staff C = Staff D)

Alternate: Median of (Staff A != Staff B != Staff C !=
Analysis Result
Staff D)

Result: A One-Way ANOVA helps us compare the mean

of more than two samples. In our example, we wanted to
check if the performance of the four staff is same or
different. Using the results of the session window
described above, we observe that the P-value is less
than 0.05 which indicates that we reject the null
hypothesis. Thus, performance of Staff 1 != Staff 2 !=

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 Analysis Result

Result: A Mood’s Median Test helps us compare the

medians of more than two samples. In our example, we
wanted to check if the median performance of the four
staff is same or different. Using the results of the
session window described above, we observe that the P-
Staff 1, Staff 2, Staff 3 and Staff 4 Data
value is less than 0.05 which indicates that we reject the
null hypothesis. Thus, median performance of Staff 1 !=
Staff 2 != Staff 3 != Staff 4.

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 Chi-SquareTest Example:
De nition: A hypothesis test for comparing output
counts from two or more sub-groups for any signi cant
differences.
Situation: You want to see if one set of defectives data
is signi cantly different from another set of defectives
data.

Null: No difference in the two sub-groups

Alternate: Difference exists in the two sub-groups
Analysis Result

Result: A Chi-Square Test helps us compare the count

Data for Chi-Square Test
data. In our example, we wanted to check if one set of
defectives data is signi cantly different from another set
of defectives data. Using the results of the session
window described above, we observe that the P-value is
greater than 0.05 which indicates that we fail to reject
the null hypothesis. Thus, No difference in the two sub-
groups.

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 while drafting a decision statement are:
Six Sigma DMAIC 1. How will you manage expectations of customer?
2. How will you establish boundaries on alternatives to

Process - Improve be considered to resolve the problem?

3. How will you re ect on prior decisions taken – “Level

Phase - Solution of Decision”?

The next thing to do is to Develop a Decision Statement

Parameter and generate a list of six to twelve criteria to solve the

problem. Consider desired results, restrictions being
faced and availability of resources.
To de ne and come up with solution parameters for
statistically validated X’s we need to:
Classify Solution Criteria:
• Develop Decision Statement
Once criteria have been listed, we have a clearer
• Develop Solution Criteria
statement of the objectives against which to judge the
• Classify Solution Criteria
various alternatives. In most situations, criteria vary in
• Re ne Solution Criteria
their degree of importance. We need to classify these
criteria to re ect their relative in uence on the solution
Develop Decision Statement:
choice. We divide criteria into two basic categories:
Solutions should be generated to clarify the purpose of
1. Absolute Requirements or “Musts” – Mandatory,
the decision to be made. Parameters to be considered

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 realistic and measurable requirements which help the • A – Adapt

project team to screen out unacceptable alternatives. • M – Modify Or Magnify
2. Comparison Criteria or “Wants” – Desirable • P – Put to other Uses
characteristics which provide a basis for comparison • E – Eliminate Or Minify
for criteria. • R – Reverse Or Rearrange

Re ne Solution Criteria Weighing the “Wants” – Weigh the ‘wants’ to re ect

We need to re ne the wants and musts criteria before upon the relative importance of each want criteria by
generating possible solutions. The solution criteria can using a Likert scale of 1-10.
be re ned by:
Clarifying Everyone’s Understanding - Clarify everyone’s
understanding about each criteria by discussing and
restating each criteria. Make use of the SCAMPER tool
to re ne or synthesize the solution criteria.

SCAMPER is a checklist of idea-spurring questions and

stands for:

• S – Substitute
• C – Combine

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 1. Brain-writing
Six Sigma DMAIC 2. Benchmarking
3. Assumption Busting

Process - Improve 4. Creative Brainstorming

5. Modi ed Brainstorming

Phase - Generate Idea Generation Technique - Brain-writing

Brain-writing is a technique used to generate many ideas

Possible Solution in a shor t period of time. Two key modi ed

brainstorming techniques used are Brain-writing 6-3-5
and Constrained Brain-writing.
Involve those who will be Affected: We need to make
sure we solicit the upfront involvement of People
Brain –writing 6-3-5 - The name brain-writing 6-3-5
affected by the problem or its solution and People with
comes from the process of having 6 people write 3
expertise in the subject matter. We should then Focus
ideas in 5 minutes on a pre-de ned parameter.
on the Root Causes i.e. Make the affected parties revisit
the signi cant root causes to get to a solution. Then,
Constrained Brain-writing: The name constrained brain-
pick on Idea Generation Technique.
writing comes the fact that on certain occasions the
team may want to have a set of constrained ideas around
Five key techniques used for idea generation and
a pre-determined focus, rather than ranging freely.
synthesis are:

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 Idea Generation Technique - Benchmarking
Process benchmarking is a technique of continually
searching for the best methods, practices and
processes, and either adopting or adapting their good
features and implementing them to become the “best of
the best”.
Idea Generation Techniques – Assumption Busting
Assumption busting as a technique is used to trace back
from the current performance problems to identify rules
and then surface underlying assumptions.
The key steps involved in assumption busting are:
• Revisit the current problem at hand.
• Identify the rule(s) responsible for the problem.
• Trace the rule(s) back to an assumption in the
process.
• Test to break the assumption – Is it wrong from the
start? Or, Can it be made untrue?
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For example: In a personal loan approval process the
problem is lengthy cycle time for approvals which is
leading to dissatisfaction. Investigation of the process
reveals that there is a rule existing in the process which
makes every vital task in processing the loan pass
through a specialist (legal expert, nancial expert, credit
expert) after it has been processed by an agent. The
reason for rule existing in the process is an assumption
which says that all loan deals are complex. On
investigation and data-collection it is found that only 5%
of deals are complex and thus the process assumption is
wrong.
Idea Generation Technique – Creative Brainstorming
Nominal Group Technique: The nominal group technique
is a structured method to narrow down & prioritize on a
list of choices. It is called “nominal” because during the
session the group doesn’t engage in the usual amount of
interaction typical of a team. Because of this relatively
low level of interaction, nominal group technique is an
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 effective tool when some group members are new to
each other, relatively low level of interaction is required,
issues are of highly controversial nature and a team is
stuck in disagreement.
Idea Generation Technique – Modi ed Brainstorming
Modi ed brainstorming technique makes some basic
and/or simple amendments to the “regular” creative
brainstorming in order to help expand the number and
quality of ideas. Three key modi ed brainstorming
techniques used are: Analogy Technique, Channeling
Technique and Anti-Solution Technique.
channels), as well as of quantity (as many ideas as
possible in each channel).
Anti-Solution Technique - We begin by brainstorming
around the opposite of the issue at hand. This is
probably the easiest of modi ed brainstorming
methods. For example, rather than brainstorming on
ways to ensure complete information on a personal loan
form we brainstorm on how to ensure we get no/
incomplete information on the personal loan form.

Analogy Technique - The ideas generated on the

“analogy” then get translated to the real situation (the
problem at hand). Channeling Technique - We begin by
listing “categories” of ideas for the issue at hand. Then,
as the team brainstorms, over a period of time it can
“change channels” when new ideas slow down. The
objective is to capture a broad range of ideas (several

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 must have complete information about all of the

Six Sigma DMAIC alternatives, so that we can make a reasonable
judgment.

Process - Improve
Phase - Screen
Against Musts and
Wants
Once possible solutions are listed, we can begin the
process of seeing how they perform against the solution
criteria. We base our assessment on the best available
information about each alternative. In addition to known
facts, this information may take the form of our best
projections or the opinion of experts. The criteria serve
as the guide for our data gathering. For each criteria we

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 production during switch from the old to new process),

Six Sigma DMAIC Operation costs (additional cost of running new process
compared to old process).

Process - Improve The steps involved in doing a cost-bene t analysis for

Phase - Conduct possible solutions are:

• Consider all costs associated with getting solution up
and running

Cost-Bene t • Quantify bene ts of a fully implemented solution

• Compare the real costs of solution against potential

Analysis bene ts

Does the identi ed solution have any risk?

Cost-bene t analysis weighs the real costs of a potential
solution under consideration against the potential
bene ts of the solution. Consider all costs associated
with getting the proposed solution up and running. Cost
examples would be: Capital investment needed,
Implementation costs (time of project team, process
improvement costs, etc), Start-up costs (training, lost
Risk can be mitigated for the proposed solution by
Identifying potential problem if any with the solution,
Ensuring that the solution attempts to reduce the
opportunity for error if not eliminated, Is it an “All
terrain” or a" Feather bed” solution – How robust is the
solution and Understanding the Failure Modes and
Effect Analysis.

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 Based on the above suitable action plans can be created

Six Sigma DMAIC to contain the risk. It is used as a living document and
could be a good foundation for building robustness.

Process - Improve De nition of Terms:

Phase - Failure • Failure Mode – The way in which a speci c process

input fails
• Effect – The impact the failure has on the Critical

Mode E ect Quality Parameter

• Cause – The source of variation that caused the

Analysis (FMEA) process to fail

FMEA identi es all the probable failure modes for the
product or process. It prioritizes the failure modes for
focused attention by using a scoring model based on
Severity (S), Occurrence (O) and Detect ability (D).
RPN = S*O*D
• Current controls – Systemized devices in place to
prevent or detect the failure
• Severity – Importance of an effect on critical quality
parameter (1-Not severe; 10 – very severe)
• Occurrence – Frequency with which a cause occurs (1-
Not likely; 10-Very likely)
• Detection – Ability of current control to detect the
cause before creating a failure mode (1-likely to
detect; 10-not likely to detect)

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• RPN is an acronym for Risk Priority Number. It is

calculated by multiplying the Severity, Occurrence
and Detectability.

Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA) - 2

Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA) - 1

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 to reverse.
Six Sigma DMAIC The key steps involved in conducting a pilot are strong

Process - Improve leadership from top management, select a steering

committee/pilot team, conduct brie ngs with the pilot

Phase - Pilot team, pilot planning for issueless execution, sell to

employees affected under pilot, employee training for
pilot execution, pilot implementation on the shop- oor,

Solution debrie ng after pilot implementation and extend to a

second area, if required.

Implementation
In general, there is a way to pilot all or some part of
every solution that you will want to implement. It is
almost always worth the extra effort to pilot. You
certainly need to pilot when the scope of the change is
large, the change could cause far-reaching unintended
consequences, implementing the change will be a costly
process and the change implemented would be dif cult

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Six Sigma DMAIC
Process - Improve
Phase - Validate
Measurement
System
For continuous data we use Gage R&R and we check for
% Tolerance, % Contribution and # of Distinct
Categories and for discrete data we use Attribute R&R
and we check for Accuracy, Repeatability and
Reproducibility.

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 the pilot, the current process baselining needs to be

Six Sigma DMAIC revisited. The new process capability achieved should be
made the basis of re-baselining exercise and we need to

Process - Improve set new internal team targets accordingly for the staff.

Phase - New With the desired results coming from the pilot, the new
improved process “should-be” needs to be mapped.
While mapping the new process, we should consider the

Process following work ow instructions:

• Establish a product orientation or customer

Capability / orientation
• Establish one-at-a-time processing

Mapping
• Balance ow through bottleneck
• Drive parallel processing
• Reduce handoffs
New Process Capability can be calculated using DPMO
Method or Z value method as discussed in the Measure
phase.

New Team Targets: With the desired results coming from

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Six Sigma DMAIC

Process - Control
Phase - Statistical
Process Control
SPC was developed by Walter Shewhart in 1924.
Traditionally SPC has been used to monitor and control
the output parameters of the process (Y’s).

SPC is used to analyze and control process

performance, proactively control processes, distinguish
between natural and assignable variation, identify and
prevent process from Special causes and involves the
use of Control Charts to determine if a process is
operating “in control”.

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 translates to a situation that only common cause

Six Sigma DMAIC variation is present, process is predictable and process
is stable.

Process - Control
Phase - What is a Control limit Vs Speci cation Limit

Control Limits: It is de ned based on process

Process Control? performance. It help determine if the process is “in

control”. It is plotted on control charts and it changes
when there is a veri ed, signi cant change to the
A control mechanism that ensures that the process
process.
performance be maintained are at level that satis es the
customer’s need and drive the ongoing improvement of
Speci cation Limits: It is provided by the customer part
process performance. The key elements that constitute
of SLA. It help determine if the process is producing
a process control system are
defects. It is not plotted on control charts and it
• Documentation of the process
changes when requirement comes from the customer.
• Develop process metrics
• Monitor the process based on the de ned metrics

When we talk of a process is operating "In-Control" it

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Six Sigma DMAIC
Process - Control
Phase - What are
Control Charts? Six Sigma Control Chart Zones

Control Chart is a graphical tool that helps determine if

Common Causes and Special Causes which result with
a process is “in control or not”. A control chart has three
Variations
zones and is graphically represented as:

Characteristics of Common Causes:

• Present all the time
• Have a small effect individually
• Result in random variation
• Effect can be tolerated

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Characteristics of Special Causes:

• Not always present
• Come from outside in uences
• Typically have bigger in uence than common causes
• Effect we want to hear about

Six Sigma Common Causes and Special Causes

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 beyond
Six Sigma DMAIC • Four data points, out of ve consecutive data points,
are on the same side of the average in zone B or

Process - Control beyond

• Fifteen consecutive data points are within zone C

Phase - SPC - Out (above and below the average)

of Control
A process is said to be out of control if:
• One or more data points fall outside the control limits
• Seven consecutive data points increasing or
decreasing
• Eight consecutive data points are on one side of
average
• Fourteen consecutive data points alternating up & Six Sigma Out of Control Charts-1
down
• Two data points, out of three consecutive data points,
are on the same side of the average in zone A or

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Six Sigma Out of Control Charts-2

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 process will produce a defect outside the lower control

Six Sigma DMAIC limit.

Process - Control Lagging indicator:

A lagging indicator is an outlier that is already outside

Phase - Leading the upper or lower control limit. This is a lagging

indicator that the defect has already occurred in the
process.

Indicator vs
La ging Indicator
While interpreting control charts we also talk of two
indicators:

Leading indicator:
A leading indicator shows the trend before the defect
occurs. For example, you may be able to see a trend of
six downward points. This is a leading indicator that the

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 sample size or not. In case if we are capturing data for

Six Sigma DMAIC defects then determine if the opportunity for the
defects are the same for each subgroup or not. Based

Process - Control on the above we need to select the appropriate chart.

Phase - Control
Chart Selection
Points to keep in mind while selecting a control charts:

Continuous Data: For continuous data we can measure

the average and the variation, thus X bar &R (Range) or
X bar and S (Standard deviation) can be used.

Attribute Data: For Attribute data we rst have to

determine what are we measuring – Defects or Six Sigma Control Chart Selection Guidelines
Defectives. In case we are capturing defective data then
determine if we are sampling for subgroup of equal

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Six Sigma Control Chart Selection – Continuous Y

Six Sigma Control Chart Selection – Discrete Y

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 of time. Two key techniques to assess risk and make sure

Six Sigma DMAIC that no possible failures occur post control phase are:

Process - Control • Failure Modes and Effects Analysis

• Mistake Proo ng (or Poke Yoke)

Phase - Risk Mistake Proo ng – Poke Yoke:

Mistake proo ng or poke yoke (derived from two

Assessment and Japanese words poka – inadvertent errors and yokeru –

to avoid) helps de-link the Y’s from the X’s. Mistake

Mistake proo ng - proo ng eliminates the potential for a problem to

happen.

Poka Yoke The key mistake proo ng techniques are:

Risk needs to be assessed on the “should-be” process to
make the implemented solution more robust. Risk
assessment of the new improved process makes sure
that any potential effects of the possible failure modes
do not result in loss of “holding of gains” over a period
• Shutdown – Shutdown or stop a process immediately
on occurrence of a failure
• Control – Eliminate the occurrence of failure in a
process
• Warning – Proactively notify the occurrence of failure
in a process before it occurs

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The three methods for prediction and detection

approach are:
• Contact method – Contact with the part in the
process highlights the errors
• Fixed-value method – Errors are detected in the
process through counting
• Motion-step method – Errors are detected by a
motion or lack of it in the process

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 Standardization:
Six Sigma DMAIC Standardization of the “should-be” process steps is
required to ensure all responsible for execution have the

Process - Control same understanding. Standardizing the should-be

process helps answer queries like:

Phase - Control and • What are the steps in the process?

• Who does these steps in the process and when?
• Where more detailed work instructions can be found?

Implementation Documentation:

Plans Documentation is a necessary step to insure that the

learning gained via improvement is institutionalized and
shared across the team by having it documented with
The four techniques used for process control plans are: proper work procedures. Often the live processes have
• Standardization a tendency to evolve in an ad-hoc manner. How to
• Documentation accomplish each process activity is usually left up to the
• Monitoring Plan individuals and thus, much of the organizational
• Response Plan knowledge resides only in the minds of all those
responsible for execution. Procedure: A procedure is the
documented sequence of steps & other instructions

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 necessary to carry out an activity for a process. occurrence with a timeframe for the action
• Who takes action based on the monitoring data
Monitoring Plan: • Where to nd trouble-shooting procedures to x
Monitoring: It helps detect changes as and when they problem
occur in the process and assure that improvements
continue to hold for us to be able to meet customer The key elements of a full scale implementation plan are:
requirements over a period of time. While observing a • Clear Objectives
process a monitoring plan helps de ne: • Pilot Learning's Incorporated
• Key process and output measures for ongoing • Implementation Milestones
measurement of the improved process • Resource Needs
• When data is to be collected and at how often • In uence Strategy
• De ne the method for gathering, recording, and • Implementation Budget
reporting data on the measures • Process Control Plan
• Process Documentation
Response Plan:
Response plan helps identify the next steps on what
needs to be done if one detects a change in the process
while monitoring. For each of the measure in the
monitoring plan, the response plan helps de ne:
• What actions will be taken for an out-of-control event

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 Project nancial scorecard signed by six sigma

Six Sigma DMAIC champion, black belt, deployment leader,
manager, process manager, and functional head. The
nance

Process - Control leadership team agrees with the stated bene ts.

Phase - Review and

Sign-o
The project gets closed when defect reduction is
demonstrated over a signi cant period of time. Black
belt and master black belt agrees on time period
needed to collect and analyze data. If improvement is
not con rmed, project will be reopened. The problem is
“turned off” with con rmation run (and “turned on”
when old process is used again).

The idea of “on-off” is key. We don’t want shift and drift

caused by other variables to lead to a wrong decision.

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 Next Steps For The Pursuit Of Growth
“ The Life You Want, The Marriage You Want... The
Family That You Want, Is Going To Be Fueled By The
Business You Build.”

— Russell Brunson, Author and CEO of ClickFunnels

How to Guarantee Your Position As A The economy most likely doesn't even know you exist;
up until now, you only operated as a small part of it, or
Successful Entrepreneur you're just getting started.

I feel that it's now my job to inspire you to actually
implement and execute what you have learned from this
program.
Let's face it: The big, vast economy is not going to
accommodate you with more opportunities and more
business without you taking some serious initial steps.
The government is not going to bail you out on your
dif cult days, and they certainly are not going to help
you to advance and conquer on your entrepreneurship
journey while you are setting yourself free.
Something tells me that you didn't pick up this program
because you are comfortable or satis ed with where

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 you're in your career and business. Chances are you
want to change or improve your career, build a side
h u s t l e , i n c r e a s e yo u r l eve l o f ex i b i l i t y a n d
independence, or you want to simply have much security
and more available options in life and business.
Otherwise, you wouldn't have nished this program.
Taking the time to pick up this program and study it
suggests that you truly do want to do something
different. For this, I acknowledge and congratulate you.
Well done to you on getting this program. I applaud you
for starting it and even more for nishing it. Now, if you
want the world to give you a standing ovation, put
lessons in it to work.
Interestingly, one of the most effective ways of
perfecting these disciplines is to help others attain
success and implement these actions themselves. When
people with common goals and motivations come
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together, they tend to learn faster and become a
support system for one another. So gather a group of
like-minded and highly driven people who refuse to live
by the norms of the mediocre. Assemble a group to
discuss this program and brainstorm it with you. Ask your
family, friends, and other like-minded entrepreneurs to
make this program as a team.
Then help one another apply and commit to using the
actions, hold one another accountable to these
commitments. This is the game, and it's the most fun
game that I've ever played. You now started getting the
skills you need to start building your empire or make it
bigger.
During this journey that we've been on together through
this program, we've covered a lot of things, but there
are still a lot I am going to provide you. Everything
you've learned in this program is literally the same thing
we would discuss and do with you if one of my SkillFront
238

 advisors or I had a chance to y to you and sit in your
of ce. You now have access to the skills that will unlock
the path of success in your business and ultimately in
you life.
You've just learned what took me a
decade to discover and master
Tony Robbins often talks about how reading a course is
like taking a decade of someone's life and compressing
it down to a day.
My entrepreneurial journey hasn't been all sunshine and
roses. There have been many ups and downs, and I
fought hard to learn all these skills in this program you
have in your hands, and all other programs we have
released, and we're going to release. It is my honor and
privilege to be able to share them with you.
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I still remember the excitement as I learned each of
these skills and used them for the business for the rst
time. Whenever I meet someone talking about our
programs and skills they are learning from SkillFront, I
get slightly jealous about how much fun it would be to
rediscover all these skills.
At this moment, you just of cially became our latest
SkillFront Entrepreneur. I hope that you had as much
fun learning as I did when I started my own journey.
We will end this program now, and we will be happy to
serve you again with another program.
If you want to get up-to-the-minute ideas, keep yourself
informed about other SkillFront Programs like this one,
follow our pages on LinkedIn, Facecourse, Twitter, and
Instagram.
P.S. Don’t forget, you’re just one skill away…
239
 Thanks For Learning
With The SkillFront
I want to thank you for taking the time with our program. We hope
you enjoyed studying this lecture as much as we had enjoyed while
we were creating it. It would be our greatest pleasure if we managed
to help you to learn a thing or two, which will guide you on your own
exciting entrepreneurship journey.

This program is a playcourse. Don’t just study it once and go on

with business as usual. Keep it handy and refer to it often. Having
these tactics and using them hand in hand will give you strategies to
grow your business and career geometrically.

And with that … Thank you so much once again, and I wish you all the
success you can dream of.
— Yeliz Obergfell, SkillFront

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