Recently, I found myself on jury service. It was an interesting, but frustrating experience as I witnessed so much waste within the system and processes operating at the Crown Court. As a simple example, the first case I was on was adjourned because the prosecution had failed to organise copies of the witness statements for the jury – this lost almost half-a-day. It was a ridiculous waste of everyone’s time, especially as even if the Court didn’t have a working photocopier available, there was a copy shop just around the corner!

There were lots of other examples of waste and rework, but this post isn’t looking to solve the problems of the Courts, though I’d be happy to help. But serving on the jury served to highlight the terrible waste that goes on in organisations and businesses, throughout this country and beyond. Various estimates have been made about the extent of the cost to both Public and Private Sector Organisations, but for many it seems to be in the range of 25-40% of their annual budget.

At a time when so many organisations are being asked to do more with less, tackling this waste seems too good an opportunity to miss. Incidentally, how much waste and rework is going on in your organisation? And how much effort is being invested to reduce or eliminate the root causes of the underlying problems? Depending on your answers, you might feel the need for some errornomics.

Errornomics is a word I made up several years ago, though others appear to have used it, albeit in a slightly different way that seems more to do with ergonomics. A definition is needed. The word doesn’t appear in the Oxford English Dictionary, at least at present, but if it did, I feel the entry would look like this:

Errornomics: a plural noun describing the science that deals with the identification, removal, and prevention of wasted time, effort, and money.

A lot of the waste sits in an organisation’s processes. Perhaps as little as 10-15% of the process steps add value. What’s more, whatever it is that’s going through the process spends only an incredibly short amount of time in those value-adding steps. Before you can identify what does and does not add value, you need a common language operational definition to test for Value-Add:

Testing for Value-Add (must pass all three tests):

The customer is interested and cares about this step.
The step must either physically change the output in some way, or be an essential prerequisite to doing so
The step must be actioned ‘right first time’
This first criterion can be difficult to assess, but consider whether the customer would be happy paying for this step to be carried out if they knew you were doing it – it’s a subjective view but it tends to get you thinking.

You have to address this waste, though do remember that some Non-Value-Added tasks will remain necessary for regulatory or safety, health, environmental or regulatory considerations. These are called ‘essential Non-Value-Added steps’. The key objective with these tasks is to ensure the process is designed to carry them out as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Waste comes in a variety of forms. I suspect the people reading this post will be fully familiar with Ohno’s ‘seven wastes’, and the Tim Wood mnemonic to help you remember them:

• Transportation
• Inventory
• Motion
• Waiting
• Overproduction
• Over-processing
• Defects

But if this isn’t the case, please let me know and I’ll run through them in a little detail.

It’s worth recognising, however, that there’s at least an eighth category of waste covering people and failing to use their skills, knowledge and potential. Some feel this breaks into two categories – misused and untapped. The untapped category is such a waste and one that can frustrate people to the point that they leave for more fulfilling work and challenges.

Looking at the misused aspect, there is a wide range of examples which fall into this category. Much of this will be around not properly structuring the way work is distributed and described. So, for example, how often do you see confusion in the alignment of both individual and Departmental goals with people working at cross purposes?

And how often do you either hear or say the words, ‘that’s not quite what I meant’?! Spending a little more time properly describing and agreeing the requirements of a task is time well spent, assuming the task is a Value-Added one!

One way or another there’s a lot of waste to address.

Errornomics pulls together a number of techniques, including, for example, Value-Add analysis, Error Proofing and Failure Modes Effect Analysis (FMEA), to help organisations address the waste and Non-Value-Add that’s impacting their margins and operating capability.

Find the article on LinkedIn here.

Lady Justice – The Old Bailey

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Read the full article here.

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A Brazilian toucan who lost half her upper beak while being illegally trafficked has been given a bill created on a 3D printer! Tieta was rescued from an animal fair in Rio de Janeiro by a wildlife protection agency and taken to the Free Flight Institute, where vets worked with technicians to create a beak to allow her to eat properly.

One of the ‘features’ for our upcoming anniversary event will be a display of new technology items that will include a 3D Printer courtesy of our client Ricoh Europe. I’m not sure what we might be printing on the day, but it won’t be a toucan beak! Nevertheless, if you haven’t spotted this story in the press, I thought it made a pretty interesting item and it also reminded me of the old Guinness advert from probably around the time we founded Catalyst Consulting!

The new beak, which was modelled on one from a bird that had died, had to be light enough for the toucan to move freely, but resilient enough to allow her to eat fruit and insects.

20th Anniversary Event

We’re also getting excited about our forthcoming 20th anniversary event at The Dorchester Hotel, where both customers and suppliers will not only be able network with one another, but can also tune in to some excellent presentations, and debate new ways of working as we look to the future.

Among our speakers will be North Ayrshire Council, winners of the Quality Scotland Lean Six Sigma Award. Their winning project focused on the provision of Occupational Therapy Equipment. This important service was simply taking too long with average delivery over a month.

A DMAIC project sought ways to improve delivery times and enhance communication. Working through the DMAIC phases, and supported by their Chief Executive, they developed their Improvement Charter with clearly defined goals and success criteria. Mapping the existing process and collecting accurate data enabled them to see there were too many process steps resulting in the delays that slowed down delivery.
Working with operational staff, the improvement team identified and agreed a simpler and smoother process flow with outstanding results:

We’re also delighted to have presentations from three of this year’s shortlisted organisations for the BQF Lean Six Sigma Award, CooperVision, Ricoh and Forensic Science Northern Ireland. The UK Excellence Awards evening is on the 15th October and we’ll provide updates on the outcome, as well as some detail about our clients’ projects in the next newsletter.
Incidentally, we’re delighted that we’ve been shortlisted for the Customer Satisfaction Award, though we won’t be holding our breath!

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The ability to ‘storyboard’ is a core skill for Green and Black Belts. The format can be standardised only so far, but here are some key points to help you:

• DMAIC storyboards are usually created in PowerPoint which enables easy update, learning, and sharing. It’s also a good format for tollgate reviews or if you are applying for certification and need to present your project to an Assessor.
• You don’t need a lot of detail – concentrate on the high level story. Good practice is around 15-25 slides, beginning with a ‘title slide’ providing a little background or context.
• You can keep more detailed information about the project in a separate folder to review if required, or simply append additional slides with this backup detail to the end of your storyboard.
• Storyboards do not need to be neatly typed and tidy – if you ran a workshop or team session charting things up on a flipchart, take a photo and insert it into the slide, as appropriate.
• The DMAIC phases provide the framework for the storyboard, but remember to highlight the people issues of managing change, the stakeholder analysis and management, for example, and how you’ve addressed the ‘A’ factor of the E = Q x A equation*
• Define the problem as specifically as possible and include the Improvement Charter with a quantified Problem Statement and Goal Statement, even if these are estimates – say so if this is the case. The Charter will need updating as you move through the DMAIC phases and find out more about the process and the problem your tackling.
• Measure is all about how the work gets done and how well, so your storyboard is likely to include Process or Value Stream Maps and data displays such as Control Charts, for example. The ‘maps’ might well be photos of a ‘brown paper and post-it notes’ exercise. Remember to update the Improvement Charter and show the changes.
• In the Analyse phase, you’re a detective looking to find the root cause. You might well be using techniques such as the Fishbone and Interrelationship Diagrams, or using Pareto analysis or statistical tests in some way. Your storyboard will need to show how you determined the root cause.
• For the Improve phase, the storyboard needs to show how you went about generating potential solutions, the method you used to select the most suitable, including the selection criteria involved, and the discoveries you made in testing the solution in a pilot. You may well need a slide for each of these three stages to show the outputs from team workshops or brainstorming sessions, for example, the assumptions made in selection, and the results from the pilot, which might also have given you the opportunity to carry out an FMEA to highlight prevention opportunities.
• The key storyboard items for the Control phase will be the Control Plan and the results following the implementation of your solution, though remember these may take a little while to come through.

The tollgates provide an opportunity to update your Improvement Charter and Storyboard. They also enable you to take stock of the benefits accruing and the financial details; for example, reductions in errors, improvements in processing time and customer satisfaction. In determining the benefits and financial details, ensure you record the assumptions behind your estimates or calculations, as you may need to explain these to others in the organisation.

Maintaining an up-to-date storyboard as you work your way through the DMAIC phases helps you prepare for the reviews and share discoveries.

Some Organisations implementing Lean Six Sigma don’t bother with storyboarding. As a result, people miss the importance of this technique as they strive to meet project objectives and schedules. Ignoring the use of storyboarding is short-sighted: if you don’t capture the discoveries, challenges and ‘Aha!’ moments of a project, the rest of the organisation is none the wiser and potentially makes the same discoveries and overcomes the same challenges over and over again.

* (See below) The effectiveness of an improvement project or, indeed, the deployment of Lean Six Sigma thinking hinges on two broad factors which have been put into context by George Eckes the Chief Executive Officer of a Colorado-based consulting group and a former psychologist. He came up with the E = Q x A formula to help express the importance of the ‘soft stuff’:

E = Effectiveness: This represents the effectiveness of the implementation which depends on the quality of the solution and the level of acceptance.

Q = The quality of the solution: An ideal solution may have been identified, but its effectiveness will depend on how well it is accepted.

A = The level of acceptance of the solution: The level of acceptance is key, as it has a multiple effect on the overall success of the implementation.

You can find out more about Lean Six Sigma DMAIC projects and the importance of Managing Change by taking a look at our website, www.catalystconsulting.co.uk .

The post Top Ten Tips for Creating a Lean Six Sigma DMAIC Storyboard appeared first on Catalyst Consulting.

This Award provides a great opportunity for organisations to win recognition for the work that their business excellence and improvement professionals are delivering to customers, shareholders and other key stakeholders. It recognises exceptional performance improvement projects based on Lean Six Sigma. We’re delighted that over the years, Catalyst clients have been very successful, most recently, the Office for National Statistics.

The projects could follow DMAIC, DMADV, or PDCA frameworks. Projects of all sizes are eligible, though we exclude programmes covering how an organisation approaches the implementation of Lean Six Sigma.

How to enter

Entry is simple, just click here and complete the online registration form, submit a description of the project using no more than 1500 words (a template is provided), and up to 10 PowerPoint or PDF slides. The closing date is 5^th June.

Judging criteria

The judging panel will carry out an initial assessment of each entry in order to agree an appropriate shortlist of finalists. You can see the criteria used below, but using the right tools is important – too many projects seem to use more than are really needed – and highlighting any ‘soft stuff’ managing change issues should never be ignored. The size of the project benefits is not a deciding factor in their decision either; rather they will use the following criteria:

• Understanding of the problem being tackled, including a clear problem and goal statement
• The right method has been used, be it DMAIC, DMADV, or PDCA
• Application of the right Lean or Lean Six Sigma tools, at the right time, and in the right way
• Achievement of the benefits targeted, and an effective Control Plan to ensure the gains are secured

The selected finalists will be invited to make a more detailed presentation on their entry, providing the judges with the opportunity to ask questions. Following this, the panel may choose a winner. It could be you!

The post Is your Lean Six Sigma project a winner? There’s only one way to find out … appeared first on Catalyst Consulting.

“Sometimes in our lives
We all have pain, we all have sorrow”

At work, this pain and sorrow is often caused by poorly performing processes that are full of waste and Non-Value-Add (NVA) steps and activities. If we are wise, we’ll look to do something about it.

The DMADV Process

If you have a process that’s broken beyond repair, and where a DMAIC improvement project won’t be enough, then that ‘something’ could start with our three-day Lean Six Sigma for Innovation and Design course in London, beginning on 28^th April.

It’s a programme that takes you through the DMADV (Define Measure Analyse Design Verify) process and aims to help you achieve genuine six sigma performance.

If you’re not already familiar with ‘DMADV’ you can download the DMADV Road Map that puts a little more detail on the journey to better design.

On the other hand, if there is a load of waste and NVA that you have to bear, then our Lean Practitioner programme could be the answer. We’re running this highly practical three-day course in London on 3-5 June. The course content aims to provide participants with a sound knowledge of Lean Thinking, its key principles, concepts, and tools, and an awareness of the importance of Managing Change techniques to help ensure successful improvement.

It’s designed to enable participants to attain Lean Practitioner level certification with the British Quality Foundation (BQF). The course can also provide an ideal ‘top up module’ for people who have been trained as Six Sigma Green Belts or Black Belts, but where Lean Thinking may not have been appropriately covered.

To find out more or book a place on either or both programme(s) please e-mail us at info@catalystconsulting.co.uk or call 0845 345 2282 to discuss your requirements further

The post Getting it right first time : Lean on Me appeared first on Catalyst Consulting.

In Shakespeare’s famous play, Juliet tells Romeo that a name is an artificial and meaningless convention:

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

This encapsulates the central struggle and tragedy of the play, and is one of Shakespeare’s most famous quotes. What’s more, it’s inspired me to think about all the names organisations use for their improvement programmes. These include, for example, Lean; Six Sigma; Lean Six Sigma; Operational Excellence; Continuous Improvement or Kaizen.

If you’re serious about improving performance, then however you package and label your approach, you’ll almost certainly be using a selection of Lean and Six Sigma concepts, tools and techniques to help you achieve success. So, please don’t worry too much about what you call your programme, choose something that works for you.

As you can see, dipping into Shakespeare has also inspired me to take poetic licence with Lean Six Sigma! I’m sure you can do better, perhaps producing a rhyming elevator speech for your improvement programme. Please send your ‘entries’ to me at jam@catalystconsulting.co.uk  there will be a small prize for the best entry, a copy of ‘Lean Six Sigma For Dummies’.

Meanwhile, here’s my effort:

Poetic licence with Lean Six Sigma

If you jump to conclusions,
You could cause confusion;
The solutions you choose,
May be wrong.
So manage by fact,
Don’t simply react,
Or the problems you face
Are prolonged.

There are tools to help
Find the root cause
Or highlight
Where there’s waste.
Make your processes flow
And the bottlenecks go
So it’s more
To your customers’ taste.

Lean Six Sigma’s the way
To improve every day
And enhance the way
Things are done.
Engage your staff
Don’t do things by half
You’ll find improvement
Is fun!

So follow DMAIC
Or results could be tragic
You’ll waste precious time
And resource
Use six sigma with lean
Not sure
What I mean?
Then book on our very next course.

So, we have a little competition for budding bards – please let me have your entries by 28th February.

The post What’s in a name? That which we call a rose appeared first on Catalyst Consulting.

How are you doing with your customer satisfaction ratings? I’ve been taking a look at some Net Promoter Score benchmarking results recently, and it seems that not too many organisations are floating their customers’ boats.

You probably know that NPS is based on the fundamental perspective that every company’s customers can be divided into three categories? “Promoters” are loyal enthusiasts who keep buying from a company and recommend their friends and colleagues to do the same. “Passives” are satisfied but less enthusiastic customers who might well be wooed by the competition. And “detractors” are unhappy customers who are most unlikely to be recommending the company.

But did you also know that the average firm scores an NPS efficiency of only 5 to 10 percent. In other words, promoters barely outnumber detractors. Many firms—and some entire industries—have negative Net Promoter Scores, which means they are creating more detractors than promoters day in and day out. This helps explain why so many companies fail to deliver profitable, sustainable growth, no matter how aggressively they spend to acquire new business.

The following examples of current NPS star performers are taken from the Satmetrix Net Promoter industry benchmark reports. Looking at the best performers across all industries in the USA and Europe, USAA (Banking) comes out on top with 83%, with their Auto Insurance operation scoring 74%. Apple scores well in the UK (67%), Germany (70%), and France (57%), but you can see there’s still room for improvement.

Understanding customer requirements, the CTQs in Lean Six Sigma speak, and the processes that aim to meet them is the foundation of good customer service. Having the right measures in place to monitor performance and know the extent of improvement needed is vital.

This links back to my last blog where I talked about managers needing to work on their processes with the people in the processes to continuously improve performance and achieve everyday operational excellence.

By the way, in case you wondered, Catalyst has been using NPS for over 5 years and scores 84.5% for our Foundation Green Belt programmes and 72% for all products and services combined. As with the likes of USAA and Apple, we have scope for improvement, but we’re proud to say that much of our business comes from client referrals, something that underlines the importance of NPS as an effective measure of performance in the customers’ eyes.

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In case you’re wondering, this isn’t about the old Dusty Springfield track. Sorry to disappoint if that’s what you were wishing and hoping for! Instead, this blog looks at the role of the manager.

In all too many organisations it appears that the majority of managers don’t really understand their role; they’re not sure what to do. Often they have performed extremely well in their previous role and been promoted as a result.

If they are lucky, they will have received training in a variety of topics, including, for example, interview techniques, budget setting, appraisals and report writing. But many organisations fail to see the need to train their managers in process management and improvement activity.

As a result, the processes aren’t effectively managed and the people in the process are often seen as the cause of process problems. Deming summed it up very well:

“Eighty-five percent of the reasons for failure to meet customer expectations are related to deficiencies in systems and process… rather than the employee. The role of management is to change the process rather than badgering individuals to do better.”

I like to describe this as ‘working on the process with the people in the process to continuously find ways of improving the process.’ For that to happen, of course, the manager needs to be clear on the role and needs to be aware of the various tools and techniques that can be used to help improve the everyday process performance.

Lean Six Sigma pulls together a vast array of improvement tools ranging from the very simple to the more sophisticated statistical analysis techniques. In the quest for everyday operational excellence, managers need to understand the tools that are needed to help manage their processes. This does not need to be as comprehensive as the toolkit required by Green and Black Belts, for example.

Ideally, though it will enable them to not only improve their everyday performance, but to also take on board at least some of the common language of Lean Six Sigma, as well as more easily provide the information needed by Green and Black Belt improvement projects that link to their processes. Catalyst’s ‘Everyday Operational Excellence’ training programme aims to help managers and team leaders by enabling them to work on their processes, ensuring:

• There’s a clear customer focused objective with prioritised customer requirements
• There are appropriate process or value stream maps in place
• A well managed data collection process that provides a balance of input, process and output measures enabling the correlation between these variables to be understood and managed
• The process performance is stable and predictable
• The process has been error-proofed
• There’s a control plan in place that clearly identifies what to do if things go wrong, for example, or where the ongoing data indicates a warning in some way

By the way, all of the relevant tools and techniques are described in ‘Lean Six Sigma For Dummies’ written by John Morgan and Martin Brenig-Jones.

Owning and managing processes is part of the change of thinking and behaving that is an essential ingredient in successful organisations, otherwise, managers can find themselves in the middle of nowhere.

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Many of us are still making resolutions today.  If, like me, you have committed to a New Year resolution, do you think you’ll meet it? We all start with good intentions, but don’t always seem able to follow through as we should. Time will tell, of course.

Resolutions for your business

Much the same applies to your organisation’s business plans that support its strategy. I don’t have any statistics on the success or otherwise of New Year’s resolutions, but there are some interesting and potentially frightening stats on strategy deployment. Published in the CFO Magazine, these show the percentage of people who understand their organisation’s strategy:

•  71% of executives
• 40% of middle management
• 3% of the rest of the workforce

It’s not too surprising then that so many strategies fail to be effectively deployed! What’s the position in your organisation? How well is the strategy understood by people? And is there a clear ‘True North’ that everyone is driving towards? Are the organisation’s business plans agreed using a catchball process, or are they simply imposed? Communication, buy-in and ownership are essential ingredients for success.

If you’re serious about deploying your strategy you’ll also need drive. Focus, determination and energy are vital, but so too is the need for a systematic approach such as provided by Catalyst’s DRIVE model:

DRIVE – Strategy Deployment

• In the Define phase, you’ve recognised where you want the organisation to be – its True North
• The Review phase provides a reality check assessing the organisation’s capability to achieve the change needed
• There are three parts to the Improve phase. These look to prepare for the journey, shape and scope what needs to be done, and then implement the agreed actions and projects
• In Verify you are monitoring progress and performance against plan ensuring that you are on track
• And in Establish you ensure the gains made are held as you seek to embed the new ways of working into the organisation’s DNA

If you would like to find out more detail about this model and its use in strategy deployment, take a look at ‘Lean Six Sigma Business Transformation For Dummies’ written by some of our team, or get in touch with us.

Either way, good luck with those resolutions!

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