Lean Six Sigma

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CPS – Crawford Professional Services retains experience requisite certification as a (LSSBB) Lean Six Sigma Black Belt specializing in Process Improvement and Operational Excellence with Lean Six Sigma (LSS) at the core of our offerings. We integrate the LSS methodology with other Continuous Improvement activities to develop a mission-specific solution (Project Charter) that delivers sustainable desired results.

Operational excellence may also be viewed as or called (Business Process Re-engineering), referred to as Business Process Redesign, Business Transformation, or Business Process Change Management.

Operations excellence is a philosophy of leadership, teamwork, and problem solving resulting in continuous improvement throughout the organization. 

This is accomplished by focusing on the needs of the customer, empowering employees, and optimizing existing activities in the process. It stresses the need to continually improve by promoting a stronger team using greater ownership of activities and making the environment better for both employees and customers. 

It also encourages continuous improvement to reduce operational cost and wastes without affecting quality, time, delivery, and cost of products or services being offered. 

CPS-will evaluate methods to improve your current operations/processing program (s), and envision the ideal future state where you want to be within the next 3-5 years. 

LSS (lean six sigma) can also provide more immediate results starting within the first year. Lean focuses on waste reduction achieving its goals by using less technical tools.

A continuous improvement process (abbreviated as CIP or CI), is an ongoing effort to improve products, services, or processes. These efforts can seek "incremental" improvement over time or "breakthrough" improvement all at once. 

The Key to successful implementation and quality results with Six Sigma or Lean methodologies start with 

Change Management.

Change starts with the top and flows throughout the organization. Without the acceptance and confidence of change throughout, failure is imminent.

CPS- will establish initial assessments, tools, planning and presentations to facilitate the necessary confidence of change, establishing a proactive beginning that’s vital for any Six Sigma/Lean success.

We have listed a sample of processes/tools that would be utilized to aid in the facilitation of a successful LSS (lean Six Sigma) project.

SWOT analysis—An assessment of an organization’s key strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It considers factors such as the organization’s industry, competitive position, functional areas, and management.

Gap analysis—A technique that compares an organization’s existing state with its desired state (typically expressed by its long-term plans) to help determine what needs to be done to remove or minimize the gap.

SMART Planning:

S.   Specific

M. Measurable

A.  Attainable

R.  Relevant

T.  Tentative

Measurement System Analysis (MSA). Development of metrics that measure the progress toward achieving each desired goal.
 

The Six Sigma DMAIC Model – Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control  

Define: Define the problem and scope a project, how to build a business case to quantify the financial impact of the project to the business, and building a project team.

Measure: Identify potential causes to the problem, validate your measurement system with measurement system analysis, and baseline your current process and its capability. 

Analyze: Determine the correct sample size, data distributions, and a multitude of data analysis tools. 

Improve: Integrate Lean tools with the Six Sigma Consulting. 

Control: Strategies to sustain process improvements. These strategies range from human behavior and resistance to change to the more analytical strategies of statistical process control charts and control plans.

Value Stream Mapping:

A Lean manufacturing or Lean enterprise technique used to document, analyze and improve the flow of information or materials required to produce a product or service for a customer.

Value stream mapping is a paper and pencil tool that helps you to see and understand the flow of material and information as a product or service makes its way through the value stream. Value stream mapping is typically used in Lean, it differs from the process mapping of Six Sigma in four ways:

1. It gathers and displays a far broader range of information than a typical process map.

2. It tends to be at a higher level (5-10 boxes) than many process maps.

3. It tends to be used at a broader level, i.e. from receiving of raw material to delivery of finished goods.

4. It tends to be used to identify where to focus future projects, sub- projects, and/or kaizen events.

A value stream map (end-to-end system map) takes into account not only the activity of the product, but the management and information systems that support the basic process. This is especially helpful when working to reduce cycle time, because you gain insight into the decision making flow in addition to the process flow. It is actually a Lean tool.

Lean excellence, often simply called "lean", is a systematic method for the elimination of waste ("Muda") within a business system. Lean also takes into account waste created through overburden ("Muri") and waste created through unevenness in workloads ("Mura"). Working from the perspective of the customer who consumes a product or service, "value" is any action or process that a customer would be willing to pay for.

5S -A term that derives its name from the five terms beginning with “s” that are used to create a workplace suited for visual control and lean production. 

Collectively, 5S is about how to create a workplace that is visibly organized, free of clutter, neatly arranged, and sparkling clean. 

The 5S’s are defined as follows: seiri (sort; also sifting) means to separate needed tools, parts, and instructions from unneeded materials and to remove the latter; seiton (set in order) means to neatly arrange and identify parts and tools for ease of use; seiso (shine; also sanitize or scrub) means to conduct a cleanup campaign; seiketsu (standardize) means to conduct seiri, seiton, and seiso at frequent, indeed daily, intervals to maintain a workplace in perfect condition; and shitsuke (sustain; also self-discipline) means to form the habit of always following the first four S's. See also individual listing for each of the 5S’s.

Kaizen workshop get to the future state, you undertake a workshop that Looks at each element of the current state and sees what can be done to make it better. 

The Kaizen will include the activity mentioned above to identify the current work processes and will normally run through a week, beginning with an education on Lean, then moving to develop the current state, process analysis change identification, and future state outcomes.

Kaizen uses the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA), Plan Do Study Act (PDSA), cycle as a Lean operating model. Is based on the idea that you create a plan for change, do a trial of the change, check the outcomes or results, and then act upon the results to implement the change.

5 whys—A persistent questioning technique to probe deeper to reach the root cause of a problem. Addressing the who, what, where, when, why, and how questions is a useful technique to help develop an objective and a concise statement of a problem.

Fishbone diagram-cause-and-effect analysis—The process of identifying the likely causes of any outcome. Some cause-and-effect analyses produce an output like a fishbone diagram. Others produce a cause-and-effect tree with multiple sub-branches. cause-and-effect diagram—A diagram resembling a fish skeleton that is used to illustrate the main causes and sub-causes leading to an effect. One of the seven basic tools of quality.

FMEA-failure mode and effects analysis—A procedure in which each potential failure mode in every sub-item of an item is analyzed to determine its effect on other sub-items and on the required function of the item.

Gantt chart—A type of bar chart used in process/project planning and control to display planned work and finished work in relation to time. Also called a milestone chart. Additional Process/flow charting also utilized.

Value analysis—An analytical process that assumes a process, procedure, product, or service is of no value unless proved otherwise. Value analysis assigns a price to every step of a process and then computes the worth-to-cost ratio of that step VA- Value added, NVA-No value added.

Gemba Walks- gemba walk is a critical and necessary step in learning how a process is actually accomplished. Otherwise, learning about a process is relegated to a conference room, a flip chart, and a half dozen conflicted subject matter experts arguing over how the process works.

Control plan/charting—A living document that identifies critical input or output variables and associated activities that must be performed to maintain control of the variation of processes, products, and services in order to minimize deviation from their preferred values. 

Lean Six Sigma methodology can be applied to any business looking to transform to a lean operational status, or simply improve processes and operational guidance, including TQM (Total Quality Management).

Please give us a call for additional information, or to schedule an onsite consultative visit.

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