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Six Sigma has penetrated a wide range of settings, including small, medium and large organizations in manufacturing and service industries such as hospitality and banking.
To create initial acceptance and commitment across organizations for a true Six Sigmajourney, success of the first few high potential projects is critical. As all these projects are based on the define, measure, analyze, improve and control (DMAIC) approach, the role played by DMAIC in gaining the overall success of Six Sigma is equally critical. In fact, in such situations DMAIC can be viewed as a marketing tool.
DMAIC is the one of the basic elements of Six Sigma. Even those who have attended only a four-hour Six Sigma overview training module are aware of its fundamentals. Ample reading material is available to understand DMAIC in depth, so this article will focus on actual experiences related to some of the key failure modes associated with the DMAIC methodology and effective countermeasures to overcome the failure modes (see Table 1).
Solving Pseudo Problems With DMAIC
DMAIC is an effective problem solving methodology that has evolved over time as the first cousin of total quality management's (TQM's) plando-check-act cycle. The true value of DMAIC can be realized only when it is used to identify root causes for problems and derive solutions to overcome the root causes.
One of the most common failure modes for DMAIC is when it is used in situations in which either the root causes are obvious or the problem is trivial. Such problems are referred to as pseudo problems, and solving them using DMAIC will neither justify the investments of time or effort nor utilize the best of DMAIC.
Pseudo problems can be spotted in:
* Processes with high detectability of defects.
* Processes lacking a business process management system (BPMS).
* Processes lacking control of already completed projects.
* Projects that focus on cost reduction rather than customer impact.
Readers should appreciate that the inappropriate use of DMAIC is very different from solving pseudo problems. When DMAIC is used in situations other than problem solving, we refer to it as inappropriate use, but pseudo problems are actual problems that need to be solved but...