Lean Six Sigma Greenbelt

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Glossary

Six Sigma Overview

Process spread

Pursuit of Perfect Quality

Pragmatic Business Initiative

USL = stands for Upper Specification Limit
LSL = Lower Specification Limit

Six Sigma, you want to get your average to 3.4 defective parts per million

Distributions

We don't have to have a normal distribution

Why do we have to set the bar so high?

Say you have 14 operations with 99% yield for each operation...you end up with 86.9%

This is known as cumulative yield, end-to-end yield, and rolled throughput yield

56.4%

We can count defects instead of defective parts

Defects present opportunities

DPMO = Defects per million opporotunity

DPMO is more process focused

Example. 5 defects per part...reduced to 3 defects per part. Customer does not see a change, but you know you've made an appointment

GE shifted to Six Sigma Projects in the 90's

Leaders and Champions define KPI's
A "balanced scorecard" including but not limited to $measures

KPI's drive a prioritization process
Prioritization tells us which projects should be first in line

"Black or green belts" lead the teams
"Champions" provide resources

Champions:

• Management team members
• Identify and prioritize projects
• Assign project teams
• Provide teams with resources as needed
• Remove organizational barriers to project completion
• Provide project management support
• Community project results to the organization

Greenbelt vs Blackbelt

Lean is focused on time waste, Six Sigma is more focused on cost.

4 Relation of LSS to Other Initiatives

• Strategic Planning
• ISO 9001
• Voice of the Customer
• Supply Chain Management
• Balanced Scorecard

What are the things we're tracking on a monthly basis?

Deploying LSS Projects

• Roles and Responsibilities
• Limiting Projects in Process
• The continuous improvement cycle
• LSS and the Fire Model

Too many projects in process is inefficient. Takes too long to get projects done, takes too long to accrue benefits

It's best to give each belt one project at a time because it gives people a manageable workload, reduces lead time, and accelerates accrual of benefits

Continuous Improvement Cycles

LSS and the Fire Model

LSS Project Roadmap

PDCA

LSS follows a plan->do->check->act cycle

DMAIC

DMAIC has more "teeth" than PDCA

Common DMAIC Complications

The Lean Six Sigma Roadmap

Strengths of LSS Projects

• Aligned with business priorities
• Clearly defined scope and boundaries
• Combination of process observation and data analysis
• Solve problems by understanding them
• Conclusions supported by statistical standards of evidence
• Improvements verified quantitatively
• Statistical monitoring used to sustain gains

Characteristics of LSS Projects

• We want to improve a process or product
• The current process or product falls measurably short of what is needed of desired
• the cause of the problem is not known, or there is a lack of consensus as to what it is
• Process observations and data collection/analysis are required
• Root cause analysis is required
• Lean solutions may not be applicable

Examples of LSS Projects

Other Types of Projects (NON LSS)

• We know what needs to be done, and we want to do it
• It may be simple, quick, and cheap
• It may be complex, time consuming, and or expensive
• All of the above involve implementing KNOWN solutions
• These projects could be action items resulting from a LSS project, but they are not themselves LSS projects

Examples of non-LSS projects

• Automate a task that is currently done manually
• Upgrade Software to the latest revision
• Revise outdated work instructions
• Install a new piece of equipment
• Obtain environmental permits
• Replace Outdated Computers
• Install a barcode system
• Build a plant in China

Exercise 6.1 Classify these Projects as LSS or Non-LSS

Identifying Candidate Projects

Where do Candidate Projects Come From?

• Benchmarking: if they can do it, why can't we?
• Vision of the future
• Demand expected to exceed current capacity
  • Seems to require capital expenditure
  • better to reduce defects and lead times
• Voice of the Customer (VOC)
  • Quality
  • Delivery
  • Cost
  • Service
• Cost of waste analysis
  This class will focus on VOC and Cost of Waste Analysis

Capturing VOC Data

VOC Survey Method

Ask two questions for each customer requirement

1. What is the importance of this requirement?
2. What is your level of satisfaction with our performance relative to this requirement

Perceptual Map based on VOC data

Often your customers are happy, but at a huge expense to your business. Voice of the customer doesn't always tell you something useful

Cost of Waste Analysis

Includes:

• Cost of poor quality
• assists in project selection
• needed to establish project baselines
• Assists in defining project goals
• needed to determine project benefits
• money speaks loudest in many orgs

Apparent cost of poor quality

Hidden Factory

Rework loops create a "hidden factory"
No projects on hidden factory

Parts of the hidden factory

• inspections to sort good parts from the bad
• efforts to determine causes of defects
• inflating material orders and time/cost standards
• Returned goods
• service activity under warranty
• Trips to placate unhappy customers
• Loss of business due to unhappy customers
• Reworking or scrapping defective parts
• complicated inventory management
• specialized training for rework processes
• specialized rework equipment
• capacity allocated to work
• special rework qualification processes

Cost of waste analysis

Costs of poor transactional quality

• Waste is harder to see in the transactional processes
• The only quantifiable cost factor is the time people spend on NVA activities
• Even if this time is reduced, there will be no actual cost reduction (unless people are laid off)
• The real benefits are:
  • Reducing lead time
  • Increasing Customer Satisfaction
  • Increasing Capacity without additional resources

The Hidden Office

• Doing things over and over again due to errors or omissions
• Inspections to find errors and omissions
• Workarounds necessitated by root causes not being addressed
• Efforts to determine causes of errors and omissions
• Loss of business due to unhappy customers

Other costs of waste (from lean playbook)

From class 8/15/25

Prioritizing Candidate Projects

Qualitative description of a good improvement project

• Clearly defined problem, scope, and boundaries
• Clearly defined project metrics with baselines and goals
• Resources available, good chance of success, rapid benefits
• Aligned with business priorities
• Can complete in a reasonable amount of time
  Think "SMART" Goals. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound

Examples of Project Feasibility Metrics

• High likelihood of solving the problem
• Rapid completion of project
• Rapid realization of benefits
• Availability of required resources
• Availability of Data
• Process is easy to change

Sometimes people want to use cost of implementation or ease of implementation as feasibility metrics. The cost metric doesn't make sense for LSS projects because we don't know what the solution is going to be. The same can be said for the ease metric, if it refers to a solution

If on the other hand, the ease metric refers to the changeability of the in-scope workflow, then it is valid.

Measures of project impact: KPI's

• Customer satisfaction - quality, delivery, service
• Revenue, cash flow, cost of waste
• Growth in existing markets
• New market penetration
• Lack of adverse safety impact
• Lack of adverse environmental impact

An organization should use its key performance indicators to measure the probable impact of proposed improvement projects. KPIs are often established during a strategic planning process.

If your organization has a balanced scorecard, it has already taken a step towards understanding what its KPISs are. If a KPI in a balanced scorecard is defined too broadly, it will need to be broken down further to be useful in project prioritization. An example would be breaking "customer satisfaction" into separate KPIs for quality, delivery, and service.

KPIs should be define before they are used to prioritize projects. This helps people distinguish between the KPIs and the projects themselves, which in turn helps in scoping projects appropriately. For example, "reduce scrap and rework" is too broad for a project scope. A better project scope would be something like "reduce scrap and rework for product XYZ".

KPI's are supposed to reflect the priorities of the organization. As such, they should change when these priorities change, and only then.

We want the upper right quadrant for projects that we choose

Chartering LSS PRojects

Elements of a project charter

• Project Title
• Problem and goals statements
• Value stream scope
• Workflow scope
• Constraints, concern, assumptions
• Primary project metrics, baseline values & goals, KPIs affected
• Secondary "do no harm" metrics, baseline values
• Team members and roles
• Resources and roles
• Stakeholders and their connection to the project
• Start and project review dates

Purpose of the charter

• Make the business case for the project
• define the project scope and process boundaries
• define the project metrics, give baselines and goals
• identify the project team
• identify resources for the team
• identify stakeholders affected by the project outcome
• provide a starting point for managing the project
• create buy-in and excitement

The charter must evolve with the project

• Baselines for benefit metrics may not be known initially -- update the charter when these are determined
• project scope may be modified as new information comes to light
• stakeholders may change if the project scope is modified
• additional resources may be needed to overcome unanticipated barriers
• anticipated completion dates for project reviews may have to be pushed out

Problem Statement

• Describes the current situation in objective terms
• Does not suggest or imply solutions
• Locates the problem in time
• Can include baseline values of project metrics
• Gives enough information that people outside the team can understand what the project is about

Problem statement guidelines

• State the effect: Say who and what are affected, and how they are affected. Say what is wrong, not why it is wrong. Avoid "due to" or "because of" statements, they imply solutions
• Be specific: avoid general terms like "morale", "productivity", "communication", and "training" as they tend to have a different meaning in each person's mind. (use specific, operationally defined terms to narrow the focus to the problem at hand.
• Use positive statements: avoid "lack of" statements. Negative statements imply solutions. Do not state a problem as a question. This implies that the answer to the question is the solution
• Quantify the problem: say how much, how often, when, where. Use project metrics
• Focus on the "gaps": compare the current levels of the project metrics to the previous levels, expected levels, or desired levels. These will also be presented in the Project metrics section.

• What is happening
• Dissatisfaction due to long wait times
• Who is affected by the problem
• customers
• What are the gaps ✅ 2025-08-19
• what an acceptable wait time might be
• What are the consequences of not solving the problem ✅ 2025-08-19
• Where does the problem occur
• Uzbekistan call center
• When does the problem occur ✅ 2025-08-19
• When did the problem start ✅ 2025-08-19

• What is happening ✅ 2025-08-19
  We're experiencing misalignment issues on the 110's
• Who is affected by the problem ✅ 2025-08-19
• Customer D
• what are the "gaps" ✅ 2025-08-19
• during FAI we had all passing units. Now we are seeing about 10% of units failing
• What are the consequences of not solving the problem ✅ 2025-08-19
• lower yield, customer dissatisfaction
• Where does the problem occur ✅ 2025-08-19
• during verify
• When does the problem occur ✅ 2025-08-19
• at all times during verify
• When did this problem start ✅ 2025-08-19
• after segment 2

Problem Statement

After completion of the 110 Segment 2 process, the rate of gyro misalignment failures increased from 0% during Segment 2 to approximately 10% during Segment 3. This misalignment occurs consistently during verification testing, requiring rework of affected units. The resulting lower yield and rework time are causing shipment delays for Customer D and risk customer dissatisfaction.

Goal Statements

• reduce the number of reworks per tool by 50%
• Meet the 3-day turnaround time (TAT) expectation 95% of the time
• Achieve a level of 200 PPM or less for all castings after the first chemical milling
• Complete all first project reviews within the 10-day expectation

Project Scope

2 Dimensions:

• Value Stream Scope:
  • Which customers
  • which products
  • which services
  • which locations
  • which suppliers
  • which materials
• Workflow Scope
  • Starts with an RFQ from the customer, ends with an approved quote or request to modify the RFQ
  • Starts with the receipt of a CAD Drawing from the customer, ends with an approved tool and run conditions released to manufacturing.
  • Starts with ceramic slurry makeup, ends with a finished coating
  • billing, payment, adjustment, collection
  • order processing, fulfillment, costing

Constraints

Example project assumptions

• How often the team will meet
• how long the meetings will be
• time to be spent on the project by each team member
• roles and responsibilities of the team members
• in scope solutions will apply to out of scope areas
• will be able to get some process participants on the team
• we will engage stakeholders and convince them to support the project

Project Metrics

Categories of Project Metrics

The three main categories of project metrics are:

• quality
• delivery
• cost
  It is recommended that your primary metric be a Quality or Delivery metric, in order to keep your project focused on the process
  With process improvement, costs will follow

Examples of project Metrics

Project metrics MUST BE linked to KPIs

Metric:

Data needed. Number of units tested, number of units failing

Average number of units delivered on time per PO