Project Selection Guidelines

• General Guidelines for Project Selection

– Any project should have identifiable process inputs and
outputs.
– A good six sigma project should never have a pre-
determined solution.
– If you already know the answer, then just go fix it!
– For projects that have operator or operator training as
an input, focus on ways to reduce operator variation,
thereby making your process more robust to different
or untrained operators.
– All projects need to be approached from the
perspective of understanding the variation in process
inputs, controlling them, and eliminating the defects.
 Typical Six Sigma Projects
• Project Selection Ideas By Function
Finance/Accounting Six Sigma Project Ideas
– Reduce the time it takes to close the accounting books (cycle
time)
– Improve the forecast accuracy
– Control spending over time
– Reduce balance sheet risk
– Eliminate unstable customers and associated risks
– Improve payment processing to vendors/suppliers
– Improve Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) — the average time
taken by a company to collect payment from its customers
– Reduce payroll process cycle time
– Improve cash management processes
– Improve payment/collection processes
– Reduce electronic financial transaction costs
– Reduce the cycle time of reconciliation
– Reduce the procure to pay cycle
– Standardize the accrual and deferral processes
Typical Six Sigma Projects
• Sales Six Sigma Project Ideas
– Improve cross-sell opportunities
– Reduce time required to enter sales orders
– Reduce errors and rework associated with sales orders
– Reduce customer credit worthiness cycle time
– Reduce the number of "bad deals" that are processed
– Improve the cycle time of the entire sales order to cash
process
– Increase repeat orders/customers
• Shipping/Receiving Six Sigma Project Ideas
– Improve on-time delivery of products to customers
– Improve on-time delivery of goods to our facility from vendors
– Improve documentation accuracy
– Reduce line downtime due to shipping/receiving
– Improve inventory control/rotation
– Improve inspection processes
 Typical Six Sigma Projects
• Human Resources Six Sigma Project Ideas
– Reduce the time required to hire an employee
– Reduce the time to process an insurance claim
– Improve employee on-boarding and orientation processes
– Reduce expenditures for recruiting firms
– Improve timeliness and the value of employee performance reviews
– Reduce absenteeism
– Improve training efficiency
– Improve employee satisfaction
– Identify and correct retention issues
• Information Technology
– Reduce network/server/application downtime
– Improve process of logging-in to network from remote locations
– Improve system reliability/uptime
– Standardize computer loads for configuration and support
productivity improvement
Typical Six Sigma Projects

• Product/Service Design Six Sigma Project Ideas

– Reduce time required to design a product or service
– Reduce errors in design
– Reduce production time
– Reduce testing time
• Call Center Six Sigma Project Ideas
– Increase/decrease (depending on your business needs) average
talk time
– Reduce abandon calls
– Improve employee knowledge
– Reduce number of times customer is put on hold
 Typical Six Sigma Projects
•External Defects
•Audits (customer, regulatory or internal) discovering non-compliance
issues
•Any out of specification (customer, regulatory or internal) output
•inspection process in your organization
•Anything you cover for by having a guy in the customer's plant, office
or facility
•Internal Defects
•Any scrap produced by your processes
•Any item reworked in a process (sales contracts, invoices, surgeries,
software, etc.)
•Any process with high variation in the product output
•Any process with high variation in the material consumption
•Any process with many "hand-offs" between individuals or business
groups
Typical Six Sigma Projects
• Efficiency/Capacity Issues
– Processes producing less than expected
– Processes requiring overtime not requested by a customer
– Processes requiring cycle times in excess of expectations
– Processes with computer/machine downtime
– Processes requiring expedited shipping and associated costs
due to delayed output production
– Any process that has added labor to make the required cycle
• General Six Sigma Project Ideas
– Reduce expenses at...
– Reduce scrap...
– Reduce downtimes... or increase uptimes...
– Reduce rework...
– Increase throughput at...
– Reduce quality defects...