Key concepts of Six Sigma, Six Sigma we have some major fundamental concepts and principles, understanding how processes work and the nature of variation is a very important aspect of Process Management and six sigma. All measurement and tracking metrics are related to variation. Voice of the Customer relates to collecting customer feedback and understanding where to focus and what is important for the customer. What will be the final output for the customer in the end they make that is define measure, analyze, improve and control. This is the roadmap for process improvement and the way to drive and implement Six Sigma principles. PDSA cycles that is Do study act cycles out of cycles of continuously improving performance step by step.
And the transfer function relates to the understanding of how a process works. What the process essentially does is transform inputs into outputs. The transfer functions states that the output or results are directly related to the inputs that feed the process, as well as the actions taken to transform these inputs. Understanding process variation is a key activity it is related to taking measurements on how the process performs. There are two types of variation, common cause variation that is typical for any process and it's a normal part of the process itself. It is within normal range and meet customer specifications.
Imagine driving to work every day. Normally it takes you 20 minutes to get to the office. But on some days, it takes you 17 minutes on others 24 minutes. In any case, you still managed to get to work on time. If this duration is consistent, we say that the process of driving to the office has common cause variation, or also natural variation. On the other hand, special causes are different.
These are all the events that happen to the process of driving to the office that are unusual, and delay you from getting there on time. This might be road repair works, or let's say unusually heavy traffic caused by heavy snow for example. And this is what we call special cause variation. processes that we say need improvement for into this particular category. These are processes where we have a lot of special causes that prevented the process to run in a smooth and predictable manner. Now the question is how to make things better.
First of all, we need to understand how the process works today, break it into smaller part, measure it and start to think about root causes and how to deal with this. Putting the data on a control chart will help us tell where we have special causes. And third, treat them. A process change will probably be required that will lead to eliminating the special cause variation and getting to a better process. The Six Sigma they make roadmap that we'll talk about in more details, help us do this. Let's now talk about the customer.
Customer is at the heart of quality and quality is defined by the customer. We may think that we know all about our customers, but never just assume so listen To the customer, and collect customer feedback. First of all, define who are your customers then collect feedback in the form of surveys, or just go and talk to them about what they like, what they don't like, what they want, and also what they need. Sometimes people know what they need, but cannot translate it into a very specific requirement. Need is different from won't look at the image of a car. This is the first attended model car made by car bands.
In 1885. This car was something completely new. Before that people were using mostly horses for transportation. If you had asked the person what they wanted, they would have probably told you they wanted a faster horse and not occur because they would never have seen one. However, when you explore The need behind this wish, you'll see that there is the need to move faster. It is this need that prompted the creation of the first motorcar.
The next concept is that they make roadmap they make is the framework or roadmap for improving processes. They make sense for define, measure, analyze, improve control, that they make roadmap is used for managing Six Sigma projects. It's essentially used for making improvement. What happens is that at the start of the project, we have defined phase where a problem or opportunity gets defined. Then we move on to measure phase to measure Process Performance. We look into relevant metrics and collect data that helps establish the current state.
Having done that, the next step is to analyze the data to understand more about the root causes of the problem. It is at that point when we decide whether the process can be improved or needs a complete redesign. The next step is to concentrate on how to improve the process to generate solutions, prioritize them and choose the best one. And having done that, we implement and then enter the control phase that ensures the process performance has improved and the change is sustainable. In summary, they make is the systematic methodology prescribed to achieve six sigma. PDSA cycles come next PDSA cycles are simple but effective approach and conceptual model with six sigma we have three main questions to answer.
What are we trying to accomplish? How do we know that a change is an improvement and what changes can we make that will result in an improvement and we use relevant tools to progress through the project at each phase of the the make roadmap. We have smaller cycles of warning that we call PDSA cycles, where we do certain activity, then study the result and see if we progress in a positive direction. And if we make good progress we go on if not, we go back a step, and this helps reduce risks. This most cycles are known as PDSA cycles, the PDSA cycles are at the heart of the improvement actions. To repeat again, the logic forward is that we first plan some actions, do them, study the result.
And if successful, we go on and implement, then we start the new cycle of doing and learning PDSA cycles reduce the risk of delivering something that does not suit us. Well. Let's look at each step of the PDSA cycle. With plan we ask the question, what changes do we need to make? What data is required? We Do we make the change?
Preferably a pilot study. With check, we asked the questions, what was the effect of the change? What did we learn? We act we implement new learning that should lead to improvement and customer satisfaction. Dr. Deming believed that 85% of all defects are caused by process failures and not people failures. For that reason, he believed that it was very unwise to put any blame on workers over poor quality.
Instead, he favors collecting data from the process to understand which of the inputs to that process were critical to quality. Quality is achieved through controlling the variation in process inputs. final inspection of the finished product does not prevent quality defect, you just prevent those defective products to reach the customer. In the transfer function, the Y is the function of x All we say that the outputs are a result of the process inputs. To understand the link between the transfer function and six sigma, you can begin with understanding what is why. If you consider a complete process as input for going into a transformation, which produces an output, then the Y is the output or the final result, the Y can also be considered as the actual process that you want to improve.
In the transfer function, dx is the variable that actually contributes to the success of the process. Or we call this the input. The function of x gives you the Y result that you're looking for. So, another way of thinking about this is the x or the input Go through the function of transformation to generate the output, or the value that you're looking for. Two questions for you that will test your understanding of the session and what we talked about. You see the questions on the screen.
Take a moment and pause the session to think about an answer. The answer will appear once you click on the Play button. Now, what is six sigma? Six Sigma can be defined as a process that has a six sigma level of quality and has only 3.4 defects per million opportunities. The next question is Is it important to have a six sigma level of quality? The answer to this question is that it really depends.
Six Sigma level of quality is considered a benchmark for quality. But we also need to take into account what the customer perceives as good quality or acceptable quality. Depending on the industry and customer needs, we get to different levels of quality. Six Sigma is achievable in manufacturing. Well in service processes is not that easy, especially when we have people involvement in the processes as people are not machines. And there are multiple factors preventing us from having six sigma quality in a service environment, such as healthcare or call center operations.
More and more companies look into opportunities to automate some of their service process. See where possible, so does it give some additional opportunities to get closer to Six Sigma performance?