Archer Dynamics

Picture this: You just got out of the staff meeting. It was another tense one. You spent the morning on a fire drill and now it appears a new one just landed in your lap. Issues seem to be cropping up out of nowhere. You know that something needs to be done about it, to stop this madness.

You had tried several times to fix some of the problems, but the attempts were either half-hearted or random ideas out of desperation. And none of them lasted past the next payday, you are bleeding out money and now you are seriously wondering what the year-end bonus will look like. Will there even be any?

Then someone mentions “Six Sigma”, they start talking about how great it is, but the moment they mention statistics and standard deviations your eyes glaze over. You may have a very vague recollection hearing about it in school. It had something to do with counting defective parts or was it? You can’t remember. Anyway, you aren’t impressed by it. And that’s an understatement.

Hold fast! Let’s leave the standard deviations and statistics to the nerds and let’s talk what their DMAIC method can really be about.

DMAIC doesn't always have to be about statistical perfection.
But, if used wisely, it can be about not being stupid twice.

Let’s unpack this…

Why you can’t skip steps (even when you “know” the answer)

When things get tough, you are not the only one who is being rushed. You can bet your managers are feeling the heat too, so when they tell you one day: “Everyone knows what the problem is. Just fix it!” they are not just venting. They likely know they are in a corner and jumping onto an illusion of a quick win is their natural reaction.

Skipping the important process mapping, analysis, root cause stages and going straight for a fix is a logical reaction in those situations. Well, not logical when one actually uses their pre-frontal cortex (rational mind), but logical when you realize that your boss is under duress and “thinking” from their mammalian brain. They are in a fight or flight mode. Keep that in mind. Knowing this is extremely important. There is time for conversations when emotions calm down.

I once worked on a project where our check processing ops center was under pressure to improve productivity. The leadership spent millions on a process modeling and scheduling software suite. We really struggled to make it work. Really struggled. Why? We never did a deep dive into an actual data analysis of “why” the ops centers were so behind at work and why their throughput was not improving. The thought was: it must be the scheduling. Well, it wasn’t. The real culprit were archaic manual processes no one was brave enough to rip apart and reimagine. This is an incredibly hard thing to do, especially when you process tens of billions of $$$ worth of checks every month. And taking the easy way out by looking at scheduling is a logical choice.
Well, as you may have guessed. It failed. We eventually stopped using the software, went back to Excel process capacity models, and started building our own in-house solutions to improve some of the manual processes. I’m not exaggerating. There were days when I’d get home, have a dinner, log back in, work through the entire night without sleep, change my clothes in the morning and go back to work. At least once or twice a week. This insanity lasted for many months. So, if you are in a similar situation. I can feel your pain. I’ve lived it. It forever changed my perspective on what a life in corporate world can be like. Merciless.

The sequence matters (it is not up for debate)

The Six Sigma methodology has those five phases for a reason:
Not only are we humans bad at each one of them, but we are also even worse at making them work together!

DEFINE - agree on what you actually do for a living and how
MEASURE - know what you produce and how you measure it
ANALYZE - find real causes of your problems 
IMPROVE - Find solutions and test them before going all in
CONTROL - keep your fix from evaporating

DMAIC cycle is like baking bread. Ever tried to add salt to the water when activating your yeast? Or mixing water and flour, kneading them and then adding yeast? Yeah. I can attest to the fact that neither is good. And I love baking bread. As a matter of fact, I baked two loaves just this morning. I make it now on autopilot, without even thinking and could recite the ingredients and measurements in my sleep. Kneading, first rise, punch down, shaping, second rise…The order of steps is as important as the ingredients themselves.

Define must come before anything else, because if you do not define what your process is like, what its inputs, outputs, and inner complexities are, you will never understand what to fix.

Measure has to take place before you Analyze, because doing analysis before you even collected data is not analysis, that’s called opinions. And bad ones at that.

Analyze must come before your fix because solutions without root causes are… well, how to put this? At that point you may number them, because you will be making a lot of them, over and over again. One worse and more misguided than the previous one.

Improve is what we all want and strive for, but it took the other three to get there, so make it count.

Control? Why is that one important? Well, because of physics. the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is a law and it applies here. Entropy may be fun to watch when watching butter melt, but not in a process flow. Unless you love chaos.

Why to treat it as a cycle, not a project

Oh, this one is juicy. When you look at most presentations on 6S they are often shown as a chain with a start and an end. I think that is one of the biggest misconceptions. Anyone who has ever worked on process re-engineering project and done some process mapping and process modeling will tell you that this always runs in a circle. It has to. Why?

Let’s imagine: you had a broken process. Your scheduling of clients was a train wreck, you worked hard on fixing it and succeeded in finding the root cause, figuring out your process had a gap, so you adjusted the process, rolled out the new procedures and all was good. Now, remember that the very first stage of your entire effort was Define? You had to map the whole process to understand it. So, now you changed that process with a new fix! You should go back and update the process maps. And that is the Define stage of the next iteration of your cycle. It never ends. You will always find problems and things to improve. So, having the most up to date process map is key. Trust me. You can thank me for that later.

The math you need (and can probably skip)

Now it’s time for a bit of math. Just a very tiny bit. If you are new to Six Sigma, you may be wondering where it got its name. Statistics.
What it really stands for is 6 standard deviations (σ) on the Bell Curve to show you what your goal of quality should be.
6σ measures how many defects per opportunity you have in your process. Without boring you with equations, rest assured that with 6σ you look at 3 standard deviations to the left and right of the curve, giving you total 6σ worth of items manufactured without defect and within spec. In real numbers? That is 3.4 defects per million opportunities, That is a whopping 99.99966% perfect output. Yeah. A lofty goal.
Most businesses operate at 2-3σ level at best (66%-93%). Sounds reasonable till you realize that would mean 70k-300k angry customers out of a million. Yikes!

The takeaway?
6σ level of quality may mean one angry customer per year.
3σ may mean one angry customer per day!

For our purposes, we can skip statistics altogether and just focus on the methodology itself: doing the things the right way.

Funny (sad) Truth:
We never have time to do things the right way the first time.
But we always find plenty of time to redo it over and over.
Why is that?

What Six Sigma really measures (hint: not widgets)

When 6S was devised it was squarely aimed at manufacturing quality and mitigation of defects, so metrics and statistics were very important.

But you may be in an industry where there is no manufacturing. You may be in healthcare, servicing, finance, retail, pick your poison…
Your so-called widgets/tokens of your process throughput could be confused customers, unanswered calls, billing errors, late deliveries, anything what can make your customer think: “these people don’t have their act together” should be treated as a defect in your output.

The framework that actually transforms your business

DMAIC works because it forces upon us discipline where we have a tendency to be complacent or lack attention span.

• Define – forces understanding (this is the map of your business)
• Measure – forces honesty (gut feelings don’t beat data)
• Analyze – forces logic (if all errors are human, process is broken)
• Improve – forces testing (pilot before betting your last dime)
• Control – reminds us that sustainability (it requires an effort)

Why should you care? Because Cost of Quality is real

According to ASQ’s own estimates the cost of poor quality can range from 15% – 40% of business costs. This is from the Six Sigma Black Belt exam body of knowledge. Originally established by Juran’s research.

Rework costs - those people are being paid. You eat the cost.
Lost Customers - remember: clients talk to each other.
Employee churn - your SOP = fire drills, will good people stay?
Opportunity costs -  are you strategic or just tactical?

It’s staggering. And what it tells you is that every process failure has a very real price tag.

Every.
Single.
One.

Need help?

Need help streamlining your processes or solving tricky business problems? I offer one-on-one consultations to get you unstuck fast. Book a free consultation with me today at goarcherdynamics.com.

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