Measure step - 1Master: So, you took on define and you're ready for more, huh? Well, I'll get you started then. Your overall goal in the measure phase is to figure out what measurements are important to the project and to record the relevant data.
Master : It's during this phase that you are going to start looking at a specific process performed in the Rockledge Plant and convert it into numbers so you can evaluate how well they're doing it.
Master: But before we get too deep into Measure, let's review what you have to work with. In Define, we established the high-level C T Q for the project. In the Rockledge Plant case, the plant owner is concerned with "maintaining a high level of unit availability." And if he's concerned about that, so is our internal customer, the GE facility manager.
Master: So, you got the team together, with all the right players to investigate this subject,
Master: And you ended up with this drill down from that high-level goal to a manageable process component-reducing scheduled outage duration.
Master: Now that we know where we are, let's see where we're going by taking a look at the steps of Measure.
Master: Step one is selecting the C T Q characteristic. During this step the focus of your project narrows by drilling down even further to a specific task or product characteristic with a reasonable scope for a greenbelt project.
Master: Step two is defining a performance standard. This is the point when numbers, such as time, size, and distance, are assigned to the task and the desired performance of the process is established.
Master: The final step in the Measure phase is -- surprise, surprise -- to Measure! Now that the project task is clearly defined and the desired performance is documented, the measurements have to be collected. And part of making sure they are collected correctly is having a plan and a valid measurement system.
Master: Remember that turning a process into numbers gives you factual support for the improvements that you want to make. So, your assignment for the Measure phase of the Rockledge Plant case is to decide what you should measure and how to measure it, then go do it!
Master: Professor, the measurement expert, will be helping you with this phase.
Master: So I'm going to turn it over to you and the professor to run with it. Take it away Marx.
Professor : Thanks for the introduction, Master. We have a lot of ground to cover in Measure. I take over once the team knows what a customer wants, and I start looking at what's happening internally at the process level.
Professor : Welcome to step one of Measure. Our goal for this step is to drill down from what you learned in Define to identify the specific sub-process or system characteristic that will be the subject of your greenbelt project.
Professor : There are several tools available to help you think through selecting the right characteristic for a project. As you'll learn, not every tool is needed for every project. In this lesson, you'll be introduced to those tools and will be able to explain what each one is used for.
Professor : When we left the Define phase for the Rockledge Plant case, we had determined that by reducing the duration of scheduled outages we could meet the customer's C T Q of maintaining a high level of unit availability.
Professor : So, to put it another way, we have begun the scoping process by going from the "Big Y" of unit availability down to a "little y" of duration of scheduled outages. Remember that every project is different, and the level that you need to drill down to depends on how broad in scope you want your project to be.
Professor : For the Rockledge case, "Duration of Scheduled Outages" is a bit too broad for a single project, so in the Measure phase we need to further narrow the scope by identifying factors that impact the duration of a scheduled outage. I'll show you a few tools to help you do this.
Professor : There are five tools for you to choose from. They are:
>A Quality Function Deployment chart, or QFD
>A Process Map
>A Fishbone Diagram
>A Pareto Chart
>And a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis, or F M E A. Each tool provides a different perspective on the brainstorming process. You will not use every tool for every project. Select each tool to learn more about its purpose and when you might use it.
Professor : The purpose of a QFD is to translate customer CTQs into measurable sub-processes or product characteristic. A series of QFDs help to narrow the focus of a project by allowing you to brainstorm internal processes or characteristics that relate to desired outcomes, then to rate the relationships between the two. We'll use this tool to help us in the Rockledge case.
Professor : For example, your customer wants a "comfortable automobile." That means things like comfortable seat cushions and a comfortable steering wheel. So, how does a steering wheel rate in overall "automobile comfort?" If it comes out pretty high, then you'd ask what makes the steering wheel comfortable? Is it the angle? The height?The material? And so on. I'll show you more about how this tool is used as we determine the focus of the Rockledge Plant case.
Professor : A Process Map is a graphical representation of steps, events, operations, and relationships of resources within a process. Team development of a process map provides several benefits
Professor : Including creating a view of the process that is shared by the whole group, revealing unnecessary or redundant steps, and comparing actual processes being practiced against the ideal. If you think these problems might be present in your process, it is a good time to do a process map. We'll look at a process map for the Rockledge Plant case.
Professor : The Fishbone Diagram is also known as the Cause-and-Effect Diagram.
Professor : It gives you a structure for looking at an Effect and brainstorming the Causes of that effect, then rating those causes. It's sometimes a good place to start in a project and can be quickly completed. A fishbone will help us out in the Rockledge case.
Professor : The Pareto chart is a quantitative tool used to identify a focus area. It operates on the principle that there can be many factors in a process, but only a "vital few" have real impact on the performance.
Professor : To use the Pareto chart you must have historical data.
Professor : For example, if you have valid data on how many seconds it takes restaurant staff to complete each step of making a hamburger, you could use a Pareto chart to map out the time for each step. If you saw that bun toasting took a longer time than was deemed necessary, you might focus your project on a faster way to get it toasted!We will look at a Pareto chart in the Rockledge Case.
Professor : A Failure Modes and Effects Analysis, or FMEA, identifies ways a sub-process or product characteristic can fail in order to prevent failures.
Professor : A team should create an FMEA when the six sigma project is considered "high risk" in terms of potential cost or other impacts.
Professor : For example, because of the potential safety impact, an FMEA might be used on a project dealing with the design of the brake system for a car. The FMEA is not necessary in the Rockledge Case, but we will look at a typical example later in this lesson.
Professor : In Define we already drilled down from the high-level C T Q of 98% Plant Availability to the process of Scheduled Outages. The team is now ready to brainstorm a more manageable sub-process for our project. We have determined our project does not pose a high risk in terms of money or safety. Which of the tools shown would give us a framework for rating the relationship between the CTQs and internal processes?
Professor : Before we get started drilling down I want to mention that, for learning purposes, we're going to use several tools on the Rockledge case, so it may seem like there is some repetition. In your own projects, use whatever tools are necessary to document your drill down process and determine the focus of your project. We'll begin with a blank Q F D. This is also known as a "House of Quality." Let's start building our house.
Professor : We are going to start with our original customer CTQs. These will be entered in the left column and we'll call them our "What's" because they represent what the customer wants.
Professor : At the Rockledge Plant we know the customer wants plant availability, reliability, fuel efficiency, and GE Services.
Professor : Next, use the collective knowledge of the team to rank the importance of those wants. The scale can be arbitrarily chosen; however, a scale of one to five is commonly used, with five being the most important and one the least. For example availability rated a five because it's a very important C T Q.
Professor : Then, the team brainstorms the internal processes or product characteristics that impact those customer desires. These items are How we impact What the customer wants, so we'll call these our "How's" and fill them in along the top row.
Professor : Once that list is complete, use the matrix to rate the relationship of each function or process to the customer wants based on the 9- 3- 1 scale shown.
Professor : For example, the relationship between Availability and Scheduled Outage Process is strong, so we'll rate that as a nine.
Professor : Finally, multiply each relationship rating by the importance rating for that row. Then, total the results of each column and put that number in the total cell.
Professor : For example, going down the Scheduled Outage Process column multiply five times nine, add that amount to five times nine, and so on, for a total of one hundred and two.
Professor : Evaluate the totals of each column to determine which of our "How's" have the greatest impact on what the customer wants. But these are still too broad to effectively measure, so we need to drill down further.
Professor : Watch this.
Professor : We take the highest scoring "How's" from the first house and they become the "What's" of a second. Since the rankings were pretty close for all the how's in the first house we'll include all of them in the second. The logic of moving from house to house is that those internal processes or product characteristics that have the greatest impact on customer satisfaction are more specific components of what the customer wants.
Professor : And, we can drill down further and identify How to meet those new What's.
Professor : Depending on the nature of your project, you might need to do 3 or 4 levels of drill down to get to a manageable process or product characteristic for your project.
Professor : Looking at this second house, which three sub-processes would likely become the What's of the third house?
Professor : Based on this second house it becomes clear that "cycle time for scheduled maintenance" can help us meet the customers desires. As for the other characteristics, this information can be provided to other functional teams to address in detail. So, we'll take scheduled maintenance cycle time and drill down further on it.
Professor : Whoa! It sounds like we have some dispute over what sub-processes are involved in this. I think I know a way to resolve this.
Professor : There is another tool that can help us graphically represent a process and come to a common understanding of the factors involved.
Professor : So, start by brainstorming steps in the scheduled maintenance process. Don't worry about order yet; just list them.
Professor : Once the brainstorming is over, start sequencing the steps until you come to an agreed order.
Professor : In a process map, symbols represent each type of process step and arrows show the connections between these steps. For convenience we have used primarily rectangles to represent the steps.
Professor : Here is another way to look at our issue to make sure we aren't missing something that we should consider for our project. It is called a fishbone, or cause-and-effect, diagram.
Professor : First, put the effect you want in the head of the fish. In our case that is to reduce maintenance cycle time.
Professor : Label the "bones" with categories that are appropriate to your problem - anything that will help the group think creatively about the subject. Six areas commonly used are the six "M's" -- measurement, materials, men-and-women, mother nature, methods and machines. However, to address our specific situation, we have chosen to use people, customer, environment, method, and parts.
Professor : Then, fill in the causes of the effect under the appropriate category.
Professor : Finally, rate the causes according to ease of implementation and impact on the issue, using the numbers shown in this scale.
Professor : The group thinks that removal and installation of nuts on a gas turbine is a characteristic that would be manageable and worthwhile to improve. Based on that information, how do you think they rate it on the scale from one to four?
Professor : Nut removal and installation is one component of the overall Gas Turbine Disassembly process, identified earlier as an area needing improvement, and it rated a "1" on the fishbone diagram for high impact and ease of implementation. This tells me that the group believes it would be a good process to focus our improvement project on. There is another quantitative tool we can use to verify the group's selection. Can you remember what it is?
Professor : Does the term Pareto chart sound familiar? A Pareto chart is much like a histogram, it takes raw data
Professor : and puts it in a form that allows us to analyze it visually. When trying to decide on a project focus, it helps us to compare how frequently different causes occur or how much each cause is costing the organization.
Professor : This allows us to separate the vital few causes, those with high frequencies or high cost,
Professor : from the so-called trivial many that do not have as much of an impact.
Professor : As it turns out, we aren't the first team to consider maintenance cycle time on Gas Turbines.
Professor : In step one you learned about the five tools that you can use to drill down from the customer CTQ, or big Y, to a manageable characteristic, or little y, that becomes the focus of your project.
Professor : Then we used four of the tools, the QFD, Process Map, Fishbone and Pareto, to scope our Rockledge Plant project from the customer CTQ down to a manageable sub-process. We also looked in detail at the standard use of the FMEA.
Professor : Our drill-down effort has given us a focus for our Six Sigma project on the tasks and elements involved in nut removal during gas turbine disassembly. This project will have a major effect on our goal of reducing cycle time for scheduled maintenance, which in turn has a major effect on the customer C T Q of ninety eight percent plant availability.
Professor : Congratulations, you made it through step one and I think we've come up with a good focus for the Rockledge case.
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