(Illustration) Let's identify our Six Sigma Project.

Let's identify our Six Sigma Project.

Master : I hope you're ready to learn about the Six Sigma D M A I C process because now its time to get down to business. You're going to start with Define and find out what this customer really wants.
Master : That's where the D M A I C process comes in. In the Define phase we can help John to wrap his arms around the problem, so to speak, by identifying some issues that are critical to meeting Alberti's expectations.
Master : Here are the three steps of the Define phase:.
Master : Step A is to identify your customer's CTQs. CTQ means Critical to Quality. In other words, what does your customer think is essential and how do you set up a project to meet their desires.
Master : Step B is to develop your team charter. This documents the scope of your project, the business case, and the role of team members.
Master : Step C, the final step of the define phase, is to build a map of the current process that will help you target a specific area for improvement.

Master : So your first job is to define what the customer wants and then start finding areas for improvement.

Master : I'll turn over the teaching of define to a good friend of mine, Angela Davis, PhD. She's an expert on this phase and you'll learn a lot from her.

Master : Good Luck and I'll see ya later.

Doc : Thank you Master. Hello there, I'm Doc. Friends say I'm a real people person, and I tell them I have to be it's my job. Getting to know people and what they want from a business is what I love to do. So, let's get to know the folks at Rockledge and show them how we use Six Sigma to meet and exceed their expectations!

Doc : We will begin by determining how to determine what the customer wants and use it as the foundation for developing the project goals.

Doc : The objectives for step A are to identify a projects C T Qs. In order to be able to figure out what is critical to quality for your customer,

Doc : we will need to identify the project's customers.

Doc : Once we know who the customer is, we will analyze customer data to determine customer's project CTQs.

Doc : Then we will take the CTQs and define and build a process product drill-down tree to figure out the process that needs attention. Now we are ready to begin.

Doc : The first question we need to answer is: Who is the Customer? The customer is the person who receives the output of the process. Once we learn who the customer is, we will be able to determine what they want.

Doc : There are two basic types of customers, the internal customer, and the external customer.

Doc : An external customer is the person or company outside of GE that requires the process output. On the other hand,

Doc : an internal customer is a person who depends on the output of your process to refine or create the final output for the external customer.

Doc : Therefore, we have

Doc : customer-driven C T Qs, which are defined by external customers, and

Doc : process-driven C T Qs, which are typically driven by internal customers.

Doc : Now that we know who the customer is, the next question we need to answer is, how do we finally determine the customers C T Qs? Since Critical to Quality C T Q characteristics are determined by the customer our job is to explicitly define the C T Qs.

Doc : So, the next step is to determine what the customer really wants. There are several sources of information or existing customer data that can be gathered to determine exactly what the customer wants : > Business goals, > Customer surveys, > Complaints, > Benchmarking data, > Executive-level discussions, and

Doc : Job-specific discussions all represent common factors that can be prioritized to find out what the customer wants. The customer data collected then will lead to the project C T Qs.

Doc : You're doing great so far. You have successfully determined two very important components for this case: The customer Mr. John, the General Manager and the C T Qs,

Doc : Which are to maintain ninety-eight percent availability as determined by the contract

Doc : and meet the contract delivery requirements. Now we are ready to create a process product drill-down tree to identify product and process C T Qs and complete Step A. Again, congratulations for a job well done.

Doc : So now that we know what the Rockledge customer wants, we are about to begin examining what we can do internally to meet those desires.

Doc : Six Sigma's focus on improving internal processes to meet customer requirements can be further explained using the formula Y equals f of x.

Doc : On the left of the formula is what we call the big Y. It is equal to the customer's CTQ; therefore, it is the desired outcome of Six Sigma. In the Rockledge case the big Y is Unit Availability.

Doc : The right side of the equation explains that this desired outcome is a function of internal processes or product characteristics that we can control. We call those processes X's, and it is our job to find an X for the Rockledge case that will contribute to achieving Unit Availability.

Doc : Depending upon how broad your Y is, you may have to subdivide it into more manageable components. We often refer to that as drilling down from the Big Y to little y’s. Drilling down to a little Y will be part of our task throughout the Define and Measure phases. We will get to the X's in Analyze.

Doc : Our next job is to define and build a process product drill-down tree.

Doc : A definition of a process product drill-down tree is a way to integrate C T Qs and business strategy. It helps to determine how customer C T Qs become project C T Qs. and ensure that what we are addressing has a genuine impact on the customer.

Doc : We are going to build a generic product process drill-down tree.

Doc : First, identify the high-level C T Q covered by your project Next, break this C T Q into the component lower-level C T Qs or processes. Then, identify the product groups or process steps, which form the next logical way to subdivide the project.

Doc : This process continues until it reaches the scope of interest The number of levels you drill down with depend on both the complexity of the higher level processes and the scope of our intentions to implement improvement through our six sigma project.

Doc : Now take a look at how the Rockledge case C T Qs are illustrated in a process product drill-down tree.We are only going to focus on one side, or branch, of the drill-down tree.

Doc : First, we have two C T Qs, which are maintaining high-level availability and meet contract delivery requirements. Doc : We will focus on the unit availability issue for now. We’ll deal with contract delivery requirements later. Now, we will drill down and see how a customer C T Q becomes a Project C T Q.

Doc : From the Big Y, we will drill down to a dependent variable better known as the little Y, which is, in this case, scheduled outages.

Doc : From the little Y,we can drill down to a second little Y, which is reduce outage duration. Here we can measure the duration of the outages. You will be able to accomplish that during the Measure Phase of the DMAIC process. We now have taken the customer's C T Q, maintain a high level of availability, and flowed it right into the project level C T Q; reduce outage duration. Whew! You did it!

Doc : By completing the process product drill-down tree, you have finished step A of Define. Now the project is taking shape. Spend a moment reviewing what you have learned.

Doc : For the Rockledge case we learned that

Doc : The customer is Mr. John

Doc : We also realized Mr. John primary C T Q, Frank and G E Contractual Services must to meet ninety eight percent plant availability in year three of the contract. Doc : The product process drill down tree allowed us to flow this C T Q?into the projects C T Q which is to reduce outage duration at Rockledge..

Doc : Congratulations!

Doc : You now are ready to develop a Team Charter, Step B of Define.

Doc : Believe it or not, you are finished with Step A of Define: You identified the projects C T Qs, which means:
Doc : You identified the project customers, which ensured a valid source for the voice of the customer.
Doc : And analyzed the voice of the customer to determine the customer C T Qs.
Doc : You also discovered that using the process product drill-down tree allowed you to integrate the customer data with business strategies and flow the customer's C T Q into the project C T Q.