Math 737/837 Six Sigma

Chapter 6 Improving the Quality of Anodized Parts.

Control Phase

Companion Notes to Visual Six Sigma: Making Data Analysis Lean.

 Anodized Parts – Capability Assessment

The team also generated a Cpk table in the Capability Report

As noted on the plot all values are > 1.0.

The team also generated another 95% - 95% tolerance interval for L*
and this time the lower interval limit is sufficiently high to assure
good parts.

 2015 Philip J. Ramsey, Ph.D. 2

 Anodized Parts – Control Phase

At this point the team is convinced that they have a viable solution to
the anodize quality problem and they are ready to prepare for
implementation.
The later stages of the Improve phase and the early stage of the
Control phase require that the team put together a comprehensive
plan for implementation assuming viable solutions have been
found prior to this point in the project.
The file Improve Phase Activities covers some of the important
activities that need to be performed in order to assure a smooth
implementation and transition from the team to the process
owners. Long term someone else will run this process.
The team also performs an FMEA. We discuss the topic in the file
FMEA. The details of the team’s FMEA are omitted in this
discussion.
 2015 Philip J. Ramsey, Ph.D. 3
 Anodized Parts – Control Phase

Without going into detail we will assume that the team has completed
all necessary implementation details and the improved process is
ready to go “live”.
At this point we are firmly in the Utilize Knowledge phase (or
Control phase in the DMAIC process).
There are a number of important tasks to consider when entering the
Control phase.
Failure to properly implement and control the new process can and
will result in abject failure of the project.
Both technical and cultural issues can easily arise if not addressed
prior to “turning on” the new process.
This was one of the reasons to conduct a Force Field analysis prior to
actual implementation.
 2015 Philip J. Ramsey, Ph.D. 4
 Anodized Parts – Control Phase

The file Control Phase Activities contains a run down of the things
a team or person should consider in implementing a new or
improved process.
Part of the Control phase involves the implementation of Statistical
Process Control. In fact, the control plan will often directly
reference SPC.
We have briefly discussed SPC within the context of monitoring the
project KPI, however its uses are far broader.
At this point you may wish to review the SPC files: SPC Part 1 and
SPC Part 2.
SPC has been implemented by the team to monitor and control the
five process factors – we omit the details.

 2015 Philip J. Ramsey, Ph.D. 5

 Anodized Parts – Control Phase

A key use of SPC is to plot the KPI over time after the process
change has occurred and determine if the desired improvement has
been achieved.
Recall, in the Frame the Problem stage the team settled on Yield as
the KPI for the project and tracked the daily Yield on an
Individuals and Moving Range chart – an IR chart in JMP.
After a period of four months the team has collected Yield data and
the results are in the file BaselineYieldAll.JMP.
The file has a before and after column such that a phase control can
be used.
Also, remember the key objective of the project was to move the
process Yield from 19% to 90% and the control chart should
demonstrate whether or not the team has been successful in
reaching their goal.
 2015 Philip J. Ramsey, Ph.D. 6
 Anodized Parts – Utilizing Knowledge

Below is the phase Individuals Chart for the Yield

From the phase control chart the process improvement is striking and
the process KPI or Yield is clearly above 90%.

 2015 Philip J. Ramsey, Ph.D. 7

 Summary

As a result of the team success in improving the anodizing and

dyeing process, the customer determined that their company was
the best supplier of anodized parts and gave them a great deal of
additional business.
The company went from almost losing the business to gaining
additional business because of their high quality.
We have intentionally taken this project through all phases of the
DMAIC process and supplied quite a bit of detail.
However, this is an actual case study and hopefully the context of
the problem was helpful in understanding how statistical and
quality tools are used to solve real world problems.

 2015 Philip J. Ramsey, Ph.D. 8