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Lean Engineering in Lean Six Sigma

By on April 8, 2012 in Information Technology, Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized

Lean Six Sigma challenges for Service and Product Development are

  • Short life cycles for service offerings, products and technologies
  • Integrated development and quality approach with suppliers
  • Customer expectations becoming more demanding
  • Technology (hard/software) becoming increasingly complex
  • Extremely high requirements for service and manufacturability
  • High impact of poor OTOQOC performance on confidence
  • High costs of development of complex services and products
  • High cost of post design changes, amendments & failures

Short life cycles for both products and technologies.

[Comment: This requires dynamic changes in product designs be managed at the sub-assembly level and coordinated across product lines to gain the most synergy for our development efforts.]

Customers have rising expectations for quality of total service [Comment: Customers don’t care if the problem is a handset or service provider.]

Increasing number of product development projects.

[Comment: Nokia has chosen to compete in all technology areas.  Since technology has not yet consolidated around one or two standards, we face the need to innovate and refresh all product lines on a regular basis.  Most of our competitors are not attempting this same approach.]

Products must be capable of manufacture in the millions.

[Comment: Mistakes cannot be made in production, right the first time is essential or we will not effectively compete in this business.]

Reliance on component parts quality from suppliers.

[Comment: We do not control our own destiny for quality but must seek exceptional partners who can contribute to our overall effort on behalf of our customers.]

Software is complex and interoperability is essential & interoperability is essential.

[Comment: Again, “right the first time” is the rule for software as well as hardware.  We also rely heavily on standards and industry partnerships to assure that we maintain seamless integration between hardware manufacturers and service providers.]

 

 

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Lean Six Sigma Value Stream Mapping

By on April 3, 2012 in Information Technology, Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized
During the Lean Six Sigma projects the Black Belts we learn them mapping a value stream, using symbols we understand, we have identified ways to reduce Lead time.
This means that the time spent on value add activities as a % of total time spent is increased,
But we haven’t changed any of the value add activities. We haven’t bought new high tech expensive equipment or tried to get people to work harder, we have simply improved the system.
We haven’t calculated benefits but you get the  feeling that the ‘future state’ system will perform better for OTOQD and cost.
We used a volume manufacturing example because it’s easier to visualise value streams with physical things; now let’s look at non-manufacturing.
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Lean Six Sigma and the Art of war by Sun Tzu

By on March 7, 2012 in General, Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized

The art of war by Sun Tzu, is governed by five constant factors, to be taken into account in the field when laying plans. These are: (1) The Moral Law; (2) Heaven; (3) Earth; (4) The Commander; (5) Method and discipline. Which suits fine the need for Vision, Skills, Incentives, Resources  and Methodologies.

Lean Six Sigma programs are not just an ‘one-off‘, to keep the Culture of Continual Improvement, the constant presence of the methodology is essential.

Tu Yu quotes Wang Tzu as saying: “Without constant practice, the officers will be nervous and undecided when mustering for battle; without constant practice, the general will be wavering and irresolute when the crisis is at hand.”

The Lean Six Sigma approach was first introduced and developed at Motorola in late 1980s. Later in the mid-nineties, it was adopted by General Electric and Allied Signal. To maintain a critical mass one should keep up a 2% Black Belt and a 10% Green Belt of its company‘s popluation. Six Sigma is now adopted by many other reputed companies.

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Lean Six Sigma implementation have a first look at the Traditional Layouts

By on February 28, 2012 in Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized

During your Lean Six Sigma implementation, have a first look at the Traditional Layoutsof the area, which are often complex and bottlenecks affect the flow of materials, information and value adding capability. Common disadvantages are

•Complex flows of material.
•Reduced vision and ownership of the
•Total value chain.
•Operators concentrate on islands of efficiency.

Better try out Cell Layouts, which are typically U shaped, operations are combined and single piece flow is adopted. Bottlenecks are eliminated by the use of multiple operators or machines. Immediate advantages are usually

•The flow of materials becomes smoother.
•There is no queuing between machines.
•Throughput time is reduced.
•Operators are trained in more than one task.
•Value stream visibility is much high.
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Lean Six Sigma and the Baby Boomers

By on February 23, 2012 in Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized

Europe’s population is aging. More and more workers, especially the Baby Boomers, are or will be approaching retirement age in the very near future. When this group of workers begins to leave the labour force, it will place great demands on the existing workforce and on the economy as a whole. Through Lean Six Sigma and Lean Transformation we might be more efficient with less resources. But how will we deal with the lesser knowledge and experience of the Baby Boomers?

Europeans relocating from other parts of the continent or immigration will not address the full shortage of workers in the European economy. In order to successfully meet the challenges of the demographic shift and the high demands of today’s employers, we need to tackle the labour issue from both the supply and demand sides of the equation.

It is important to understand that all companies compete in a global market place and, more often then not, are competing with companies with a greater cost advantage. To ensure European companies are able to sustain themselves, they must look at how they can improve operational efficiencies to maintain their competitive advantage.

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Black Belt training? Why is it different to previous improvement initiatives?

By on January 9, 2012 in Lean Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma @de, Uncategorized

Black Belt training? Why is it different to previous improvement initiatives?

With in-company training one actually aligns process improvement to customer requirements and business objectives. It can be applied to service and business processes, not only for production processes.

With a Black Belt program in-house one establishes a standard language and problem solving methodology across different business functions.

The improvement goals are all bottom line focused and will provide the company  a significant return on investment, i.e.  improvement  of  On Time Delivery,  structural financial benefits through efficiency and cost savings, increased customer confidence.

Black Belt project manager must ensure team work, this includes the coaching and training of Green and Yellow Belts. A proper change management project should not take longer than 6 – 8 months. Black Belts are trained to make use of DMAIC.

An organisation can relatively easy grow improvement competences and culture on a massive scale through in-house training, the purpose of the qualification and coaching of Black Belts is to engage all of the people in this drive for continual process improvement.

Deploying one unified methodology, language and tool kit will support companies to promote integration and common ways of working with respect to performance improvement and to progressively reduce its  dependence on external consultants.

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