GOODWILL INDUSTRIES OF

WESTERN NEW YORK

IE 409/509
SIX SIGMA QUALITY PROJECT
Department of Industrial And Systems
Engineering

INTRODUCTION
Founded by three local businessmen: Allen Hamling,
Edward Read and Dr. Harvey Ott, under the auspices of
Grace Methodist Episcopal Church in 1919.
Vision: We will develop a resource base that maximizes the
services we provide in the communities we serve. Our
services will be united by a vocational emphasis and
characterized by relevance, excellence and cost
effectiveness.
Mission: We help individuals and families in our
community achieve a better life through work and
independence.
2

HOW DO THEY WORK?

Accept donations from people in the form of
clothes, furniture, electronics, toys, shoes, etc.
Collected goods are put through different quality
checks.
Quality-checked goods are sold at extremely
nominal rates at different Goodwill stores located
in Western New York.
Scrap gathered from non-sellable items sold by
weight.
3

PROBLEMS FACED!
At Goodwill Industries, from floor planning
and material handling to inventory control, there
is no standardization.
Some of the problems were:
The process floor layout was not optimally
designed, flow of materials showed high
redundancy.
Lack of process standardization in different
departments.
4

AIM AND OBJECTIVES

Based on these, we decided to work and improve the following:
Process planning and optimization of wares sorting section.
Overall plant layout optimization
Comparing cost of rags and soft toys for selling as waste so as to
release the floor space occupied by the soft toys.
Sorting time reduction by sort station redesign.

D M A I C
As per the Six Sigma method, we followed the
D Define
M Measure
A Analyze
I Improve
C Control
rule. The following were our observations and actions.

DMAIC TOOLS USED

PHASES

SIX SIGMA TOOLS

DEFINE

i.
ii.
iii.

Project Selection Matrix

Project Charter
Process Flow Chart

MEASURE

i.
ii.

X- Bar& R-Bar Charts

Spaghetti Chart

ANALYZE

i.
ii.
iii.

Why-Why Diagram
Brainstorming
Cause and Effect Chart

IMPROVE

i.
ii.
iii.

Optimized Flow Chart

Optimized Shop floor Layout
Cycle Time Reduction

CONTROL

i.

Guidelines

SIPOC
SIPOC is a high-level picture of the process that depicts
how the given process is servicing the customer.
Can be seen as a high-level process map.
Typically used during the define phase of a process
improvement project - helps clearly understand the
purpose and the scope of a process.

EIGHT WASTES
We could relate to the 8 diseases as follows:
Overproduction
Inventory: Due to insufficient of fixed labor force and
specialized workers
Transportation: The truck scheduling was not under our
control.
Defects: not measurable due to lack of a standard to relate to.
Motion (Operations): Material handling problems
Over-processing
Waiting: Again the problem of material handling
Non-Utilization of Resources: Real Estate wastage

WE WORK ON?
Overproduction
Inventory: Due to insufficient of fixed labor force and
specialized workers
Transportation: The truck scheduling was not under our
control.
Defects: not measurable due to lack of a standard to relate to.
Motion (Operations): Material handling problems
Over-processing
Waiting: Again the problem of material handling
Non-Utilization of Resources: Real Estate wastage

CAUSE AND EFFECT

PROCESS FLOW CHART

Current Layout

OptimizedFlowChart

REQUIREMENT OF NEW
LAYOUT
Relevant from the process flow diagram.
Ideal situation of automation is not possible due to budget
limitations.
The new layout provides an optimal solution within the
given constraints.

CURRENT PLANT LAYOUT

16

OBSERVATIONS

Staging areas far away from processing

areas.
Distance of Textiles and wares sorting
section from entry and exit is more
Distance of bales from entry and exit is less
Waste generation area far from entry and
exit door
17

REVISED PLANT LAYOUT

18

ADVANTAGES
Textile and wares sorting area closer to
entry and exit doors
Staging areas are closer to processing area
Material Handling reduced
Increasing speed of Flow
19

WARES SORTING SECTION

20

DEFINE

21

CURRENT LAYOUT FOR

WARES SECTION

22

MEASURE

23

X- BAR & R-BAR CHARTS

Xbar-R Chart of C1, ..., C6
20

19

20

18

17

19

22.5

20

19

16

18

22

20

Sample Mean

UCL=21.841
21.0
__
X=19.4

19.5

18.0
LCL=16.959

18

20

22

23

19

17

3
Sample

UCL=10.12

17

21

21

19

20

21

21

20

23

16

19

17

Sample Range

10.0
7.5

_
R=5.05

5.0
2.5
0.0

LCL=0
1

3
Sample

SPAGHETTI DIAGRAM
OriginalSpaghetti

ANALYZE

26

Why-Why?
Rejection rate
Brainstorming

27

IMPROVE

28

REVISED LAYOUT

29

CONTROL
LABOR TRAINING ACCORDING TO
GUIDELINES FORMULATED

30

1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)

TO PROCESSORS:
There will be two levels of sorting, light skimming
and thorough sorting.
Stand in front of the cage and skim through the
items one by one. This level need not be thorough.
Reject most, keep aside what looks really good.
If the item looks acceptable place on the table,
otherwise, dump in the dustbin.
After the table is full, shift focus on the table to
thorough check all items on table.
What is acceptable after this stage, place in the
respective basket.
After the cage is empty, push the empty cage aside
and replace it with full cage.
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TO HANDLERS:
There are the following primary tasks for the
handlers:
1) Replace empty cages with filled ones
2) Replace full baskets of electronics, books,
shoes and wares with empty ones.
3) Replace the full bins with empty ones.
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CONCLUSION
Reduction of material Handling
Reduction of human effort for handler
Possibility to free up resource
Reduction of steps of process

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