Six Sigma - Which is the most important phase?

Six Sigma: An Introduction

Which is the most important phase in your Six Sigma project? Six sigma is a structured approach that can be applied to any industry or any problem where levels of variation are high, for example too many defects, too many late orders, not enough correct diagnosis. The structured approach takes all the possible potential causes and using a combination of logic and statistical tools, narrows them down to identify the input(s) that are preventing the process from performing. From here improvements can be made to reduce the level of variation. Thats six sigma in a nutshell. But which is the most important phase in your Six Sigma project?

Six Sigma: Define

The first phase of your project. Not even mentioned in my introduction above, but its absolutely critical to get it right. This is where you spell out what the problem is, and what you will be doing about it, by when. Here you pull a cross functional team together with a project leader (few successful six sigma projects get completed in isolation), and you identify and bring your stakeholders and sponsors on board. The output of the define phase should be a robust and approved project charter, which says what you won’t be doing just as clearly as what you will, to avoid scope creep later on in the project. It should be formally approved by all of the stakeholders, demonstrating their buy in and support. There are various tools to use at this point to really clarify and scope in everyones minds and I believe that this step can never be skipped, a well defined project has a much greater chance of success. In fact, there’s a good argument for saying that the ‘Define’ phase is the most important, although, of course, you have not actually done anything yet…

Six Sigma: Measure

In the measure phase you cast your net wide. Gather all of the potential inputs or root causes to your problem. At this stage its important to keep an open mind and not let anyones pre conceived ideas discount anything. You want to exit this stage with a clear picture of the current state, and to have identified as many potential causes as possible. This is achieved through process mapping to determine all the inputs (a great opportunity to team build too), plus lots of data mining. Data mining involves finding and analysing your existing data - what does it tell you? Is the problem better or worse than you expected during the define phase? Is there a particular material which causes more defects or a particular process which causes more complaints? The measure phase generally creates more questions than it answers, as you may have hundreds of inputs and only small amount of them narrowed down. But, you do leave measure understanding the problem you are dealing with, and how to detect it.

Six Sigma: Analyse

The analyse phase is the one that people imagine six sigma is all about. Its the one with all the geeky statistical tools and techniques. Here we experiment with our inputs to see which one are impacting the defined problem, we run trials and deriving conclusions. We actually start to get some answers. This is where the magic happens. Is this the most important part of six sigma? It might be the core but I don’t think it’s the most important. Depending on the project you can get away with a pretty light touch on analyse and without the support of the other phases, its just trials and experimentation. Important but it does not win the prize.

Six Sigma: Improve

Woo hoo, in the improve phase you actually get to make the difference that the project was put in place for. This is where, after identifying what causing your problem during analyse, you create and implement a solution to it. You might have to test and trial a few ideas, you don’t always get it right first time, but this is the steps in which you actually make those physical, process or procedural changes that will solve the problem. But will it last?

Six Sigma - Control

If you want all your teams hard work and your improvements to last once everyone has moved onto the next project, then the control phase is where its at. If you don’t implement a strong control plan, then once the focus is lost, things will start to drift back to how they were. That machine setting that its so important to set to 140 - over shifts, time and new employees you’re inching your way back to the pre-project setting. The new form you’ve implemented? If its not adequately trained out, accessible and written in to the procedure - people won’t use it. Control is all about maintaining your improved state and also having a mechanism in place to be able to spot a drift so that it can be quickly acted upon. Without the control phase, you might as well not bother because in 6 months you (or someone else) will be doing it all again.. a strong contender for the most important phase?

Six Sigma - The most important phase

Six sigma is a process. Each step works with all of the others to provide a framework of logic that can be applied to any problem of variation, none can be missed. Thats a bit of a cheat though, to answer my original question, which is the most important phase? I’ve seen a lot of six sigma projects over my career, and I most commonly see failure down to two areas. Firstly a poor define phase - a badly defined project tends not to get far beyond the measure phase, because no-one is actually sure what they are doing. Secondly, projects fail because the team moves on too soon, before they have put control in place. They celebrate the improvements they have put in place (great!), but without a control plan a few months or years later and the process is back out of control. So, gun to my head, I’m saying its a toss up between define & control! Let me know what you think, I’d love to know.