Every Beginning is Difficult
New undertakings or experiences are always challenging at first. This is no different when Schenker Singapore (Pte) Ltd, a transportation & logistics company, decides to embark on something new like Lean Six Sigma. It might seem to be even more demanding at the outset since the number of 3rd party logistics providers rising to this challenge is very limited. Best practices in this industry are not widely spread and hard to come by. ...
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Three Rules for Data Analysis: Plot the Data, Plot the Data, Plot the Data
Very often we draw conclusions and make decisions based on a limited perspective on data only: we look at means and evaluate yield and defects. Some simple yet powerful tools can help to make much more out of the data available. The first three steps of any data analysis shall be: Plot the Data, Plot the Data, Plot the Data. ...
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Red Tape? - Not Here
Everyone, undoubtedly, has had the unenviable honour of experiencing ‘bureaucratic government processes.’ Be it applying for your first ID or passport to initially obtaining a driving license and the inevitable dealings with the tax man. Judging by the time it takes and the “milestones” or number of departments one has to go through when dealing with German government bodies, the processes behind ID, passport or driving license must be highly complex and are usually being done by constantly overworked people….
What to Do With Special Causes?
“Don’t use Six Sigma to tackle special cause variation!” is one of the common phrases being repeated by Lean Six Sigma coaches and a very important recommendation for the management, too. The Six Sigma methodology is indeed targeting variation that is an inherent part of the process – common cause variation - that has been expected and tolerated due to its unknown and supposedly complex root causes. Understanding this variation and analysing the real root causes before implementing improvements is a fundamental pillar of the methodology and driver for its success. Collecting data over time and going through the project work tool by tool take time - normally some month, sometimes more than half a year. This is time we cannot effort to invest in case that something unexpected, something special jeopardises our process and its output, endangers our employees or compromises our relationship with our clients....
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Working Capital Meets Lean Six Sigma
The South-East Asian logistics centre of a German multi-national supplier of electrical products for industrial use had decided to reduce inventory for common items from over 82 days stock turnaround time to 55 days – the world-wide standard for their company. Savings would have been significant if they could keep on time delivery (OTD) stable above the standard of 96%. Inventory reduction was achieved due to policy changes and new target settings. At the beginning all seemed to go well...
Make Use of Your Survey Data - Kano Them!
Nearly all medium-size and large companies spend hundreds of thousands or even millions on customer surveys every year. Customer survey results are being used to amend strategies, design new products and services and focus improvement activities. Gathering customer survey data is only the first step. The second step involves making best use of the expensive data, analysing them, drawing business relevant conclusions and making important decisions. How are we doing in this step?
The Power of Webbing- Revealing Assumptions to Solve the Problem a Different Way
If you want to clarify or explore a task, find root causes of a problem or develop your strategic thinking skills you may want to consider the queen of exploration tools: WEBBING. One of the ways to remember this tool is by looking at Spiderman. Like Spider-man you can use the tool to move from building to building (question to question) having always a different perspective of the world (task). Why would you do that?
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Strategy Deployment Case: What You Measure is What You Get
Developing a compelling vision and mission statement as well as a sound strategy is vital for any organisation. Equally important is the translation of the strategy into the day-to-day business. This step becomes even more critical for multi-national companies with their need for regional adaptation and alignment with corporate at the same time. So, how do we make sure our mid- and long-term plans - developed in the head quarter – make sense to business leaders and employees in other regions?
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Staff Survey Case Study: What’s Next After Employee Opinion Survey?
OurBank is a small German bank with branches in Germany and approximately 300 employees working either in the headquarter office or in one of the branches. OurBank went through an acquisition, i.e. we became part of a large American multi-national enterprise focussing on financial services.
Due to the acquisition and the resulting uncertainty, staff turnover was sky-high, morale was down and performance was unsatisfactory. All communication activities nicely drafted in the 100-day M&A plan were not able to make the turn-around. Further talking about “Change Management” would have been devastating. Surveying employee satisfaction every quarter only reemphasised the problem for the management and sent the wrong signal to the staff. So, what happens next?
BPR Case Study: Preparation for ERP Purchase & Implementation
An Australian construction equipment rental & leasing firm had decided to implement an En-terprise Resource Planning system in 12 months. During this 12 month period there was an expectation that all front-end services including Sales, Customer Service, Receivables, Payables, would be re-designed to achieve streamlining and simplification prior to ERP imple-mentation.
Operations spanned 18 cities across Australia with many more small ‘re-sellers’ located in the Australian interior or ‘outback’ as it is locally known. Compounding a normal organisational and operational setup was the fact that this firm grew a substantial portion of its business through the acquisition route thus effectively incorporating myriad systems and practices. There were 5 Receivables systems, 4 Payables systems and a decentralized customer service database (more than 200 input platforms) which needed to be tied together to make the ERP implementation work.…
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SMED Case Study: Steel Tools Manufacturer
After a Lean programme for inventory was instituted the production facility struggled with getting a good product mix out to the finished goods inventory due to relatively long change-over times for cutting dies. Steel tool (final product) cutting dies need to be replaced after every 4 Kanban batch runs of 225 pieces each.
This frequent changeover, occurring once every hour of work is necessary to maintain and re-sharpen the cutting die’s cutting edges. Current changeover time for the cutting die was approximately 60 minutes and included the use of a single 10 ton forklift though the die weight was 5 tons. Nearly 50% of a working day was ‘wasted’ on changeovers not including the impact of the ‘inability’ to achieve a high vol-ume of product mix for agility to meet with product demand requirements of a Lean pro-gramme.…
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Leadership Development Case Study
Our client, a leading world authority in microelectronics development and research, appointed a senior research fellow to head its entire research and development division. Could the company’s top scientist and academic researcher, who had never managed a staff of more than twenty, make the transition to effectively manage hundreds of people in his division? …
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Team Effectiveness Development Case Study
Our client, a US-based IT manufacturing MNC, needed to align the efforts of its seven separate IT divisions and help division leaders think of themselves as part of one culture – one body – one department. Until this point, each leader and unit had been functioning as a separate department. The firm called on COE to help with team effectiveness development.. …
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DMAIC Case Study: Process Excellence for Financial Services
OurBank is an American international bank with 50 branches in Germany and approximately 300 employees working either in the headquarter office or in one of the branches. In 2003, the senior management of OurBank decided to adopt and implement Six Sigma as their business management tool across all business units in the Europe region.
According to the OurBank business strategy, the car loan business was identified as one of the business priorities in the next 12 months. The strategy was to significantly grow the car loan business market share within the region in two years time, by 100% in the first year, and by another 70% in the second year....
DFSS Case Study: New Steel for Bao Steel - Design for Six Sigma
Through process design for high-tech electrical steel using DFSS methodology, COE has developed a group of DFSS Black Belts to lead Bao Steel in Shanghai through the breakthrough project …
DMAIC Case Study: Increasing Customer Satisfaction - Six Sigma DMAIC
Analysing and improving productivity and competitiveness for Schneider Electric in South East Asia .….
VOC Case Study
Validating and amending the core metrics of a global logistics company to ensure the service quality measurement system accurately reflects the customer experience….
