Lean Six Sigma Green Belt – Six Sigma Analyze Phase Part 2

3. Identify all Inputs – Qualitative, Affinity Analysis

Qualitative analysis. First thing is brainstorming. Brainstorming is nothing but collecting multiple ideas from a group of members. You bring in group sorry, my mind. You bring in group of members into a room and then you ask them on what are the inputs which might potentially impact your output. You ask them, what are those x’s? And then everyone is going to give you some inputs about what is going to impact the output, right? You simply write down all the inputs. One extremely important thing to remember here is do not ever criticize anyone’s ideas.

The moment you criticize any one person’s idea, the other people would not open up. The other people would be feeling that you’re going to shame them before the rest of the folks if they open up. So do not criticize anyone’s ideas, however stupid the idea might be. You will have to take it and consume it, so at least you record it for the future purpose. And those might be the most smart ideas, the most disruptive ideas emerge from these kind of foolish ideas, which we initially feel, right?

All right? So this is one way of collecting ideas. But all the people might not open up. There might be a few people who are very sober, who would not open up, who are very silent, calm, right? They might not be participating to the extent that you require them to in helping you identify the inputs. So what do you do? That is a technique you can probably use structured brainstorming. And this is a variant of the brainstorming technique.

You can probably use a round robin. That means if I have people sitting around the table, I’ll ask each and every person to give me at least one input in the round robin fashion. And the moment I complete n number of rounds of discussion, people might say that, do you know what? I’m exhausted with the inputs, I cannot give you any more inputs. And that is when I open up the discussion for the entire forum, right? And during the due course of this, if person one gives you some input, person two says, do you know what? I really don’t know. Then you move on to person three, person four and all that. While this person while these people speak, there might be new ideas which this person might have thought about. So during the second round, probably he’ll come up with some input while listening to the other folks. So you build on each of these ideas. Also as part of this, another structured brainstorming technique is Delphi technique.

Think about this. I have three people, and all three are extremely intelligent folks. Person. A person B and a half person c. Right. All three people are extremely intelligent, superb folks. I cannot do my project without these folks. Now, if I call all these three folks into a single discussion, single forum, then the moment person A throws an idea, person B and person C would be quick to criticize this. If person B comes up with another interesting idea, person A and C would be quick to criticize this on similar fashion. If person C comes up with an idea, the other two folks will try to criticize this idea.

Why does this happen? This happens because everyone is an expert, everyone feels he or she is extremely important and their ideas are extremely relevant for you. That is what they assume, and hence these kind of conflicts arise. How do you get rid of these ideas? What you do is you walk up to person A, you say that, hey, do you know what? I want some help from you in identifying the inputs which might impact my output. Person A will give you a list, fine. You’ll walk up to person B and ask him the same thing on inputs which might impact your output in similar fashion.

You go up to person C and say, hey, do you know what, I need help in identifying the inputs or potential inputs which might impact my output. All three are going to give you some inputs. What you do is by keeping the enemy anonymous, you do one small exercise here. What you do is you take person A inputs which he has given to you, pass it on to person B and say, hey, here are the list of inputs which I think will impact my output, can you please review this for me? But person A name would not be mentioned in the sheet which you’re giving to person B. So you’re keeping the details of person A anonymous while you give the inputs which are identified by this person to person B.

And person B might have given you a list of inputs, right, which might impact your output. You’ll take that particular sheet and give it to person C and say, hey, help me review these inputs which might impact my output. Person B name would not be mentioned in this. You’re keeping the details of person B anonymous and you give it to this person for review. Person C also might give you a few inputs. Those details you pass on to person A and have them review those. So you connect two or three such rounds and the moment you feel that there are no major changes after second or third round, your person B or A or C might say, hey, there are no major changes to this. So that is when you stop it, you’re getting the consensus of the experts without getting into the conflicts. That is structured brainstorming all about. There are fewer variants like moderator probing, debon six heart thinking and all these things would qualify to be structured brainstorming, right? DiBono six hat thinking. We would discuss about that in improve hold on until then. All right, let us move on.

Discuss about affinity diagram what is affinity? What is basic meaning of affinity? English meaning of affinity? Affinity means togetherness, closeness, relatedness and all that, right? Affinity diagram means the same. It means organizing all the related ideas together based on some underlying similarity. There would be some underlying logic. For instance, when you have brainstormed, probably you have identified these many ideas or inputs which might impact your output. Out of these many, probably these many are related to quality, few are related to service, few are related to delivery, and few are related to price. You segregate them and you bucket them. You organize the related ideas together. Think about your cat Rami game, right? So all the twos together, all the sevens together, four, five, six, probably here, all tens together. You’re grouping related things together. And that is what affinity diagram is all about. You have a large number of qualitative inputs here, which can be placed into categories quickly and ideas generated from brainstorming.

You will most often than not have a huge list of inputs once you brainstorm and you categorize them using your affinity diagram. And this affinity diagram can be used in conjunction with cause and effect diagram. It can also be used in conjunction with interrelationship diagrams. Right? Another thing very interesting, there are a lot of dating websites available. There are a lot of dating applications available. They group related people together based on geography, based on gender, based on their likes, based on their dislikes.

All right? If there are a bunch of people who like to exercise a lot, they like to go to gymnasium regularly, probably all those people would be grouped together. There are a bunch of folks who fall under the age category of 18 to 25. Probably I’m going to bucket them together. Probably I’ll bucket all the people, people who are from New York together. So I’m grouping the related ideas related people together based on some underlying logic, maybe based on gender, maybe based on geography, maybe based on the income group, right? Based on all that.

4. Identify all Inputs – Fishbone Diagram

Fishbone diagram is also called as caus and effect diagram which is also called Ashikawa diagram. Now all in the same different names that’s it is. She cover diagram is used to identify cause of the problem. What is the problem, what is the cause of the problem? Right? And you need to identify that. We perform this to identify the root causes, various inputs which might impact my output. Yeah, this is going to help me identify we’ll look into an example in the next slide. Normally you combine this with five white techniques, right. To arrive at the root cause, our focus should be on identifying the root cause and addressing this root cause.

So we primarily focus on addressing the root cause to get a permanent solution to the problem. We do not address the cost. If you address the cause, you might not eradicate the recurring problem. If you want to eradicate the recurring problem, you need to provide a permanent fix. And in analyze phase we identify the multiple inputs which are going to impact the output. Right? How do I go about establishing the Fishbone diagram? Here’s the first one. You identify what your problem is first. That is your output, basically. That would be the effect which is head of the fish.

As a second step, you identify the major categories. You use either five M technique or you use seven P’s or the five S as a reference, basically. And the third thing is identify the potential causes and the causes would be the bones of the fish and these causes are nothing but your inputs and that is your object you have to analyze fish, is it not? So let us look into the case study. Now here is the case study, right? Very obvious problem statement or effect.

By the way, most married men are unhappy, right? So this is the problem or the effect which would be on the head of the fish. What is the second step? Second step is you will have to identify the major categories. Wife is one category, job is another category. Your girlfriend is another category. Your in laws is a fourth category. Probably you identify these broad categories and then under each category you ask these questions on why are married men unhappy and what are the reasons which fall in the wife category. Your wife never goes to a home, to her parents home. Why is that? So your wife’s parents are always with you.

Now that’s the cause, right? So what are you expected to couple this particular fishbone diagram with? You need to couple it with five Y analysis. Five Y analysis says that if you ask why five times, say you ask yourself the first why on why most married men are unhappy. You get an answer to that. Now you ask the second why on why my wife never goes to a parent’s home. Then you get answer to that second why. Probably you’ll ask another why you’ll ask why are her parents always with me? Right? You’ll get the third answer to that, and you will have to ask this why five times in order to arrive at the root cause? But most often than not, or My bad, not most often than not, it’s seldom.

You arrive at the root cause by asking the second Why? Or the third Why? Or the fourth why? You get to the root cause only if you ask five whys in most cases, right? And your focus is all about identifying those root causes and addressing them. And as part of analyze phase, this would be a why. And these are all your inputs.

This might be my X one. This might be my X two. If I go on asking why from a job for my girlfriend and in laws, I might get a bunch of inputs which might be potentially impacting my output, right? In order to arrive at these categories, you’ll have to do some brainstorming, some research, but as a general Tamru, probably, you can also use this five M machine related inputs, method related inputs, material person related inputs, and measurement related inputs. Right? I don’t want to be biased, hence I’ve put it as person instead of math, so you cannot sue me now. All right. Seven piece product, price, category place category promotion is a category. People is another category. Process, physical evidence, all these are the various categories that you have. And then you have five S.

Surroundings is a category. Supplier systems, skills, safety, these are the various categories. These will give you some idea on how to go about identifying the major categories. Remember, most projects might have their own specific categories, so this is just a reference, right? Use it judiciously once again. Now, let us look into the process mapperb.

5. Value Stream Mapping

Right? This is called as value stream mapping. The most important tool or technique when it comes to Lean also, right? So as I’ve told you, Lean and Six Sigma are like wife and husband. They got married, right? Unlike your real relationships, lean and Six Sigma go pretty well. They’re happily married since ages. All right. Okay, so let us look into this. This is a typical software development lifecycle SDLC, as most people commonly refer to this SDLC software Development Lifecycle. The first phase is requirements estimation. You collect the requirements from your client. You do some Requirements Estimation and you say that it’s taking me 20 hours. Okay? Then you move on to document your Functional Requirements. But before you start your Functional Requirements, you have to wait for probably 19 hours. Maybe you’re sending some documents for approval and it’s taking a lot of time for you. Hence, it’s 19 minutes here to document Functional Requirements, maybe it is taking 38 minutes for you. And once your Functional Requirements are done, you begin with the design, right? You lice with the Onsite team to get this done.

You can consider these as hours or days or minutes. It doesn’t matter, right? But you’ll have to document it somewhere that this is a unit of measure, right? All right. So design phase, you’re saying it’s taking 25 days, but you’re also saying that there is a wait time of 27 days. After the stop of or after closing my Functional Requirements to starting my Design phase, I’m sitting idle for 27 days. Alarming, isn’t it? Then you start your coding phase. Your coding phase alone takes 29 days. However, from your design to coding, you’re waiting for another 27 days. This is also alarming, more or less. After your coding, you’ll have to come up with your test plan and test case, which is going to take 22 days. That’s fine, but you had to wait for extremely high number of days. 36 days is your wait time. Ah, very interesting, isn’t it? Once you have your test plan and test case ready, you’re going to start your testing, which would take another 22 days.

Or my bad, it’s going to take probably three days. All right. But in order to start your testing, after your test case is complete, you are waiting for 27 days. And you’re waiting for another 27 days to start your user acceptance testing, right? Which takes 30 days. Now comes the actual analysis, right? If you look into your actual time taken, it would be 20 plus 38 plus 25 plus 29 plus 22 plus three, plus 13. And that is what is mentioned here. Your cycle time in days is so much. However, you had to wait for 19 days here. 27 days. 27, 36 days. 27 and 27 days, right. This wait time should be reduced for me. Now, if I can simply put down this process math, and if I want to know how many days is it taking from a project. Suppose that is my output. I’ll get all the inputs by looking into this flow.

There’s an input color requirement estimation there’s coding, test plan, testing, UAT, all these other inputs which will help me arrive at the output on time with desired quality. Right? Now, this is your process map analysis. But let me give you interesting insights here. If you want to do some improvement here, you will have to focus on improving upon your wait time. This is the time where you’re doing absolutely nothing. Your entire team is sitting idle doing nothing, right? So if you try to eliminate this, the entire wait time is eradicated. Hence improving the productivity of your process, reducing your cycle time. That’s your prime focus.

By using this process map analysis. By the way, what if you cannot eliminate? What would you do? I would probably try to combine Sales test plan, test plan and test case preparation and your my testing fees. Or probably I’ll try to combine my coding and the testing. So if I combine also, I’m going to get rid of my entire wait time. So either I can do this, I can eliminate, that’s my first focus. If I cannot eliminate, I will try to combine two steps. If I cannot do that, I’ll try to rearrange the steps in such a way that my wait time is at least reduced, if not completely eradicated. If I cannot rearrange the steps, then I would simply simplify the step so as to reduce the amount of wait time from 36 to probably six or something less than 36. Primarily, this should be my focus. Once I eradicate or try some improvements around reducing the wait time, then I target the actual processes.

These are the actual processes, right? These are the actual process steps which are performing. I’ll actually focus on that. Let us understand a few more things about value stream mapping, value added and non value added analysis. As I’ve told you, this is primarily a lean concept, but it gels well with six sigma as well. Process maps can be analyzed for various reasons to check how much time am I spending on each event, on each activity. Because I want to reduce the cycle time. That is my prime focus. Process steps. How many times am I repeating the process? If I’m repeating a particular process on the number of times, I can probably reduce that and prevent my rework, which will also indirectly reduce my cycle time. I try to reduce the duplication of effort. That is also another focus. I try to eliminate the unnecessary steps, not required steps.

And I want to segregate the value added activities from the non value added activities. Now, if someone is going to ask me what are those value added activities, I simply say this ask yourself, is customer willing to pay for the step that you are performing, for the event that you’re performing, or for the activity which you are performing. If the answer is yes, it is a valueadded step. If no, then it classifies as non valueadded step. Does it transform the product of the service? Is it done right the first time? If yes, probably that’s your value added step, right? So you ask these questions and non value added steps are not essential to produce the output. They do not add any value to the output. You have two nonvalue added steps. One is essential and one is nonessential essential.

Non value added step is a step which is a non value added step for which your customer is not willing to pay you. But you need to do that probably to satisfy your government regulations, probably to satisfy your audit norms and all that, right? Which is essential non value added activity. And the last thing is nonessential non value added activity. You have to come down heavy on this particular nonessential non value added activity and apply this ECRs. First, try to eliminate the step or try to combine the two steps, or try to rearrange the steps, or try to simplify the steps, right? And try to eradicate or reduce the negative impact of nonessential non value added step. And this value stream mapping which we have just seen, or VA and VA analysis as it is famously called eliminates the seven wastes of the process. What are the seven wastes in a process? I would say transportation, inventory, motion, waiting for some goods, overproduction will lead to inventory cost, over, processing defects. All these are the seven ways of the process. You can get rid of these processes or these seven ways from the process by implementing your value stream mapping which will help you identify your value-added and nonvalue added activities.

If you’re finding it difficult to remember these seven ways, here is my acronym timber t imwod. T stands for transportation, I stands for inventory, m stands for Motion, w for waiting, o for our production, o for our processing and D for number of defects. Right? This Motion people have come up with extremely sophisticated process improvements. Walmart, I believe, or any of your supermarket giant, what happens at the building counter. Basically, once you place your goods, products which you want to purchase, they’re going to scan these and bill for these.

And then the cashier would pick up a carry bag and hand it over to you. Or probably he’ll put all the goods here in the carry bag and give it to you. Think about this. There was a simple improvement that was done recently. This cashier. Or let me draw it properly to explain. You suppose this was a lane and the customers are coming through this to the cash counter and your cashier, she’s standing here, assume with a computer here, right?

And then she does all the billing for you. Once you put your goods here, this lady had to turn back, take the shopping bag and put the goats in there and give it to you. Always she was turning this side, picking up this bag and handing it over to you. Each time she moves this side or bends to take this particular bag and hand it over to you. It’s a waste of time for me, right? So they have instrument brought this to this side so that it’s easy for customers to quickly pick the bag and move on it saves a lot of time for them, right. Unnecessary emotions though it might sound trivial, it is going to save you significant amount.