STAT 167. STATISTICAL QUALITY CONTROL JRSReyes (2018). INSTAT.

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EXAMPLE OF DMAIC

Litigation Documents

Litigation usually creates a very large number of documents. These can be internal work papers,
consultants’ reports, affidavits, court filings, documents obtained via subpoena, and papers from many
other sources. In some cases, there can be hundreds of thousands of documents and millions of pages.
DMAIC was applied in the corporate legal department of DuPont, led by DuPont lawyer, Julie Mazza, who
spoke about the project at an American Society for Quality meeting [Mazza (2000)]. The case is also
discussed in Snee and Hoerl (2005). The objective was to develop an efficient process to allow timely
access to needed documents with minimal errors. Document management is extremely important in
litigation; it also can be time-consuming and expensive. The process was usually manual, so it was
subject to human error, with lost or incorrect documents fairly common problems. In the specific case
presented by Mazza, there was an electronic data base that listed and classified all of the documents, but
the documents themselves were in hard copy form.

DEFINE

The DuPont legal function and the specific legal team involved in this specific litigation were the
customers for this process. Rapid and error-free access to needed documents was essential. For
example, if a request for a document could not be answered in 30 days, the legal team would have to file
a request for an extension with the court. Such extensions add cost, time, and detract from the credibility
of the legal team. A project team consisting of process owners, legal subject-matter experts, clerks, an
information systems specialist, and Mazza (who was also a black belt in Dupont’s six-sigma program)
was formed. The team decided to focus on CTQs involving reduction of cycle time, reduction of errors,
elimination of non-value-added process activities, and reduction of costs. They began by mapping the
entire document-production process, including defining the steps performed by DuPont legal, outside
counsel, and the outside documents-management company. This process map was instrumental in
identifying non-value-added activities.

MEASURE

In the measure step, the team formally measured the degree to which the CTQs were being met by
reviewing data in the electronic data base; obtaining actual invoices; reviewing copying and other labor
charges, the costs of data entry, and the charges for shipping, court fees for filing for extensions; and
studying how frequently individual documents in the data base were being handled. It was difficult to
accurately measure the frequency of handling. Many of the cost categories contained non-value-added
costs because of errors, such as having to copy a different document because the wrong document had
been pulled and copied. Another error was allowing a confidential document to be copied.

ANALYZE

The team worked with the data obtained during the measure step and the knowledge of team members to
identify many of the underlying causes and cost exposures. A failure modes and effects analysis
highlighted many of the most important issues that needed to be addressed to improve the system. The
team also interviewed many of the people who worked in the process to better understand how they
actually did the work and the problems they encountered. This is often very important in
nonmanufacturing and service organizations because these types of operations can have a much greater
human factor. Some of the root causes of problems they uncovered were:
1. A high turnover rate for the contractor’s clerks.
2. Inadequate training.
3. Inattention to the job, causes by clerks feeling they had no ownership in the process.
4. The large volume of documents.
STAT 167. STATISTICAL QUALITY CONTROL JRSReyes (2018). INSTAT. UPLB

The team concluded that many of the problems in the system were the result of a manual document-
handling system.

IMPROVE

To improve the process, the team proposed a digital scanning system for the documents. This solution
had been considered previously, but always had been discarded because of cost. However, the team had
done a very thorough job of identifying the real costs of the manual system and the inability of a manual
system to ever really improve the situation. The better information produced during the measure and
analyze steps allowed the team to successfully propose a digital scanning system that the company
accepted. The team worked with DuPont’s information technology group to identify an appropriate
system, get the system in place, and to scan all of the documents. They remapped the new process and,
on the basis of a pilot study, estimated that the unit cost of processing a page ofa document would be
reduced by about 50%, which would result in about $1.13 million in savings. About 70% of the non-value-
added activities in the process were eliminated. After the new system was implemented, it was proposed
for use in all of the DuPont legal functions; the total savings were estimated at about $10 million.

CONTROL

The control plan involved designing the new system to automatically track and reports the estimated
costs per document. The system also tracked performance on other critical CTQs and reported the
information to users of the process. Invoices from contactors also were forwarded to the process owners
as a mechanism for monitoring ongoing costs. Explanations about how the new system worked and
necessary training were provided for all those who used the system. Extremely successful, the new
system provided significant cost savings, improvement in cycle time, and reduction of many frequently
occurring errors.

Source: Montgomery, D. C. (2009). Introduction to Statistical Quality Control 6 th Edition. pages 54-56.