Content By Ken Levine

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Some Thoughts on Lean Six Sigma and the Coronavirus
By: Ken Levine 06/16/2020

Lean Six Sigma (LSS) professionals have an enormous opportunity to add value to organizations and to our communities during this coronavirus pandemic. We have the objective orientation, methods, and tools to help. Process improvement is currently more important than ever in this “new normal” environment. Furthermore, it is clear that this is not a short-term event; it is a time for structural change. We also do not have the time to ponder the possibilities for too long.

The purpose of this article is to suggest a few thoughts and actions that would be helpful to consider.

The opportunity is huge because there is a clear need for change. Everyone is aware that we need to rethink our processes for the sake of the health crisis, as well as for economic reasons. And it is also obvious that we need analytics to find the proper balance between reward and health and safety. This is also not new to us, as this trade-off has always been with us, especially in manufacturing.

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Ensuring Lean Six Sigma Success With a Robust Define Phase
By: Ken Levine, Satish Nargundkar 07/31/2017

Completing the define phase of a lean Six Sigma (LSS) project is a critical part of any project, although it’s often underestimated in practice. The define phase of the define, measure, analyze, improve, control (DMAIC) process typically includes three elements. The first is selecting a specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) project objective. Second is creating a charter, and third is selecting a process to be improved. However, a lot more needs to be done before moving to the measure phase.

When Motorola created Six Sigma, it was originally set up as a four-step process, namely “MAIC.” The define step was added when it was found that having a clear, agreed-upon understanding of the project was critical to success. In this article, we discuss 10 key elements project leaders must keep in mind in completing the define phase. These ideas can also serve as a rubric for evaluating project presentations.

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How to Determine the Worst Case for a Process
By: Ken Levine 06/29/2016

How do you determine the “worst case” scenario for a process? Is it by assuming the worst case for each process task or step? No. The reason is that the probability of every step having its worst case at the same time is practically zero. What we’re looking for is a value that will occur a very small percentage of the time, but still be a possibility.

In statistics, we do this with a confidence interval, typically plus or minus three standard deviations from the mean to achieve 99.7-percent confidence.

For example, let’s say that we have a three-step process, with means and standard deviations of x1 = 20, s1 = 3; x2 = 30, s2 = 5; and x3 = 60, s3 = 9, respectively. Since variation (variance) is additive, the variance of the entire process is therefore:
S2Process = 32 + 52 + 92 = 9 +25 + 81 = 115, and the process standard deviation is:
SProcess = SQRT(115) = 10.7.

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What Really Is a ‘Stretch’ Objective?
By: Ken Levine 04/18/2016

One poorly understood concept in lean Six Sigma is how much to “stretch” when setting S.M.A.R.T. goals. These letters are defined as S—specific; M—measureable; A—assignable, attainable, or achievable; R—realistic, reasonable, or relevant; and T—time-based or time-bound. Regardless of the different interpretations, what do we really mean by these terms?

Clearly, we don’t want to set ourselves (or others) up with impossibly high goals or low-level objectives that discourage motivation. If you have worked in sales or other jobs where at least a portion of your wages were based on pay-for-performance, you know what I’m talking about. How can a manager know what an individual is capable of selling? How can a team leader know what is applicable to an improvement project?

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Recycling Your Meeting Waste
By: Ken Levine 01/16/2006

Lean Six Sigma and other continuous improvement initiatives require effective teamwork, and effective teamwork requires good meetings. Ineffective meetings are the reason many organizations fail to improve continuously. Therefore, effective meeting management should be an integral and early part of companywide training. Lean applications in the office environment have highlighted the significant rework and waste inherent in the majority of company meetings. Some of the tools and actions suggested to improve meeting quality include:

Establishing a mission statement
Determine the purpose of the team, get a consensus, identify metrics that will help to determine if there’s a problem and how success should be measured.

Using temperament instruments
Tools such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or Keirsey Temperament Sorter help managers assess the decision-making propensities of the individuals on the team. For example, it’d be good to know that everyone on the team is predisposed to making quick judgments or that the reverse is true.

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Root Cause Analysis Takes Too Long
By: Ken Levine 11/15/2005

Engaging your workforce is a major obstacle in a lean Six Sigma implementation. Only a limited number of employees will initially participate in Six Sigma improvement projects. It can also take one to two years before all employees participate in a lean kaizen event. It’s best to encourage individual improvement efforts and to provide just-in-time training to minimize the frustration of an employee who has been trained but is still waiting to participate on a team. There is another approach to this problem: service-recovery planning. Service recovery means to proactively respond to a defect in a organization’s service process. It can be done tomorrow by all employees at your company. It can be fun and it takes little or no training. The outcome is empowered employees and happier customers. How could this be a bad thing to do?

Service-recovery planning is a form of contingency planning. A few years ago, when many were concerned about Y2K, we placed a great deal of emphasis on this type of thinking. Then we forgot about it for a while. More recently, Sept. 11, Hurricane Katrina and other major catastrophes have placed contingency planning in the front and center once again. The same line of thinking should be used by organizations.