Tools for Continuous Improvement

• Creativity and Innovation

• Deming’s P-D-C-A Cycle

• Poka-Yoke (Mistake-Proofing)

• JIT manufacturing

• Kaizan

• Zero-defect

• Taguchi’s Quality Loss Function

Creativity and Innovation

• Creativity – one’s ability to develop or discover new phenomena or ideas

• Innovation – ability to find ways and means to practically use such ideas

• Creativity is essential for continuous improvement

• Creativity and innovative skills are the foundation for new products,
problem solving

Why Creativity and Innovation?

• Customers demand innovative products and services

• Increasing competition

• Need for value addition

• Development of new technologies for cost effective production

• From ‘what used to work’ to ‘what works better’

• Customers expecting superior performance of products/services

Promote creativity through

• Quality Circle

• Suggestion Box

• Small Group Activity

• Brainstorming

Creative approach to problem solving - five steps

1. Redefine and analyze the problem

2. Generate ideas through brainstorming

 3. Evaluate the ideas and select the vital few

4. Implement the solution

5. Verify results and fine-tune the solution for consistency

Deming’s P-D-C-A Cycle

• Also known as Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle

• Used for problem solving with never-ending cycle of improvement

• PLAN:

- study the current situation

- gather data

- analyze the problem

- plan for improvement with definite target

• DO:

- implement the solution to eliminate the cause of the problem

• CHECK or STUDY:

- check and determine if the plan is working correctly

- identify further problem, if any

- look for opportunity to improve

• ACT:

- implement the final plan for improvement after sorting out problems

- sustain and standardize improvements

Problem-Solving Method

• Better results are possible in Process Improvement, when problem-solving

method is employed

• This has SEVEN phases which are interdependent

• The ultimate objective is continuous improvement

Problem-Solving Method The SEVEN phases

1. Identify the opportunity

2. Analyze the current process

3. Develop the optimal solution(s)

 4. Implement the changes

5. Study the results

6. Standardize the solution

7. Plan for the future

Identify the opportunity

• Identify and prioritize opportunities for improvement

• This has three parts – identify the problem, form the team, define the
scope

• Identify problems through:

- Pareto analysis

- Proposals from key insiders

- Customer surveys

- Employee surveys and Brainstorming

When do we have a problem

• Performance varies from an established standard

• Deviation from the perception and facts

• The cause is unknown

Criteria for prioritizing the problem

• Is the problem important and why?

• Will problem solution contribute to the attainment of goals?

• Can the problem be defined clearly using objective measures?

• Will the solution give maximum benefit with minimum efforts

Form the Team

• It may be a natural work group or one where members already work

together

• For problems of multifunctional nature, the team to be selected and

tasked by quality council

Define the Scope

• A problem well stated is half solved

 • Criteria for a good problem statement:

- describes the problem as it exist

- states the effect (what is wrong, when it happens, where is it occurring)

- focuses on what is known, what is unknown, and what needs to be done

- uses facts

- emphasizes the impact on the customer

• Example of a good problem statement:

“As a result of a customer satisfaction survey, a sample of 150 billing

invoices showed that 18 had errors that required one our to correct”

• The desired state could be:

“Reduce billing errors by 90%”

Charter for the Team

1. Authority – Who authorized the team?

2. Objective and Scope – expected outputs and specific areas to be

improved

3. Composition – members of the team and process and sub-process owners

4. Direction and Control – guidelines for internal operation

5. General – methods to be used, resources, and specific milestones

2. Analyze the Current Process

• Define: Process boundaries Outputs and Customers Inputs and Suppliers

Process flow

• Determine levels of customer satisfaction and measurement needed

• Gather data and identify the root causes

• Develop a process flow diagram

• Define target performance measures with respect to customer

requirements

• Determine data needed to manage the process

• Establish regular feedback with customers and suppliers

• Establish measures for quality/cost/timelines of inputs and outputs

• Gathering data:
 1. Confirms the presence of the problem

2. Enables the team to work with facts

3. Establishes measurement criteria for baseline

4. Enables the team to measure the effectiveness of an implemented

solution

Team to develop a plan that includes input from internal and external
customers

Plan to answer:

what problem do we want to learn about?

what are the data used for?

how many data are needed?

what conclusions can be drawn from the collected data?

what action to be taken as a result of the conclusion?

• Common items of data and information are:

customer information- complaints and surveys

design information- specifications, drawings, functions, field data, service,

and maintainability

process information- routing, equipment, operators, raw material,

component parts and suppliers

• Common items of data and information are:

statistical information- mean, median, range, standard deviation,

skewness

quality information- Pareto diagram, cause and effect diagram, check

sheets, control charts

supplier information- process variation, on-time delivery, technical

competency

• Identify and verify the causes

• Some verification techniques are:

- examine the most likely cause against the problem statement

- recheck all data that supports the most likely cause

 - check the process when it is performing satisfactorily against when it is
not by using the who, where, when, how , what, and why approach

• Some verification techniques are:

- utilize an outside authority who plays “devil’s advocate” with the data,
information and reasoning

- use experimental design Taguchi’s quality engineering and other

advanced techniques

- save a portion of the data used in the analysis to confirm during

verification

3. Develop the optimal solution(s)

• This phase establishes potential and feasible solutions and recommends

the best solution to improve the process

• Here creativity plays a major role and brainstorming is the principal

technique

• Creativity has three types:

1. Create new processes

2. Combine different processes

3. Modify the existing process

4. Areas for possible quality improvement:

- number and lengths of delay

- bottlenecks

- equipments

- timing and number of inspections

- rework

- cycle time

- materials handling

4.Implement Changes

• This phase prepares the implementation plan, obtain approval, and

implement the process improvement

• Implementation plan report describes:

- why will it be done?

 - how will it be done?

- when will it be done?

- who will do it?

- where will it be done?

• Answers to these questions will lead to the required actions, assigning

responsibility, and establishing implementation milestones

• The final element of implementation is monitoring that answers:

- what information to be monitored and what resources are requires

- who is responsible for taking the measurements

- where to take the measurements

- how to take the measurements

- when to take the measurement

5. Study the results

• This phase monitors and evaluates the changes by tracking and studying
the effectiveness of improvement efforts through data collection and
review of progress

• Team to meet periodically to evaluate the results to see that the problem
has been solved

6.Standardize the Solution

• Institutionalize the change by positive control of process, process

certification, and operator certification

• Positive control assures that important variables are kept under control

• It specifies the what, who, how, where, and when of the process

• Standardizing the solution prevents “backsliding”

• Certify the quality peripherals – the system, environment, and supervision

• Finally, operators must be certified to know what to do and how to do it for

a particular process

• Cross-training may be needed in other jobs within the process

Plan for the Future

• This phase aims to achieve improved level of process performance

 • To conduct regularly scheduled reviews of progress by the quality council
and/or work group

• To identify areas for future improvement and to track performance with

respect to internal and external customers

• Track changing customer requirements

• Continuous improvement is accomplished by incorporating process

measurement and team problem solving in all activities

• Improve quality, delivery, and cost

• Strive for excellence by reducing complexity, variation, and out-of-control

process

• Apply knowledge gained in problem solving, communications, and group

dynamics to appropriate activities within the organization

• Problem solving concentrates on improvement rather than control

Poka-Yoke (Mistake-Proofing)

• Makes use of automatic devices or simple methods that help to avoid

common human errors

• It focuses on:

1. Prediction or recognition that a defect is about to occur, and then

providing warning

2. Detection or recognition that a defect has occurred and then stopping the
process so that no further defect can be produced

3. Needs a creative mind and ability to think outside the box

4. Solutions range from colour coding of cables to Instrument Landing

System for aircrafts

5. Poka-Yika products eg. Car alarms, fire alarms, circuit breakers, automatic
overload switch off

JIT manufacturing

• To avoid building up queues at a work station – work-in-progress

inventories – but still ensuring that no work station is idle

• Introduced by Toyota Motor Co., Japan

• JIT changes material flow from “Push” process to “Pull” process

• Ensures smooth production without delay in all work stations

Kaizen
 • Means continuous improvement

• Basic tenant is that large number of small improvements over a period will
result in substantial improvement in organizational performance

• Quantum improvement in performance leads to changing the vision of the

organization and morale of the employees

• An expert team - Kaizen Organization – sustain the Kaizen activities

• It is a cross functional team

• Performance targets may be quality, cost, service efficiency, cycle-time

reduction, supply chain management

Kaizen improvement focuses on the use of:

• Value-added and non value-added activities

• Muda, the seven classes of waste

- over-production, delay, transportation, processing, inventory, wasted

motion, defective parts

• Principles of motion study

• Principles of materials handling

• Documentation of standard operating procedures

• 5 S’s - seiko (proper arrangement)

- seiton (orderliness)

- seiketso (personal cleanliness)

- seiso (cleanup)

- shitsuke (discipline)

• Visual management by visual displays

• Just-in-time principles to produce only the units in the right quantities

• Poka-yoka to prevent or detect errors

• Team dynamics for problem solving, communication skills, and conflict

resolution

Reengineering

• Is the fundamental rethinking and radical design of business process to

achieve dramatic improvements in critical measures of performance
 • Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award has defined continuous
improvement as referring to both incremental and “breakthrough”
improvement

Zero-Defect programme

• To eliminate identified defects by preventing their occurrence to the

maximum extend, if not completely

• Motto: “Doing it right first time and every time”

• Crosby: it is an absolute standard of performance

• Cost decreases and value is added to the product / service

Taguchi’s Quality Loss Function

• Taguchi on Quality: loss imparted to society from the time a product is

shipped

• Technique for reducing the inherent variability in a product or process

• Taguchi: improving quality can reduce cost, and quality gets improved by
reducing variations

• Problem solving through engineering and statistical approaches

• Focusing only on the controllable factors and their effect on variation, a

product could be designed with minimum variation, leading to improved
quality at reduced cost

• QLF analysis to be used in the early stages of design

(diagram)