DMAIC’s Control

Control is the fifth step of the Six Sigma five step process DMAIC. The objective of Control is to Develop and implement the best controls to maintain the gains and to celebrate, share & reward your successes.

This is the step that is most forgotten because we think we do not need controls. But if we do not perform this step then the gains we achieved in improve will be lost very quickly. Lost because when ever you change a process it takes time to make it part of everyone way of doing things. Think about this with yourself. You have just decided to change the way you do something. How easy is it to forget your new plan without something to help you remember that you changed? An example of this is if you say that from now on I will not snack after dinner. How long will it take before you forget that change and you do snack unless you place some controls (maybe locks on the snack cabinet) to remind you not to. So with any new process you will want to have controls in it to insure that those working the process don’t forget the new method.

The second thing in the objectives is to celebrate your success. I am afraid that in most companies, just like the news, good news or success stories are NOT mention much and it is extremely important that success is shared with all. This is how six sigma becomes a culture rather than a one shot application. Celebration, recognition and reward can be very simple and are always greatly accepted by all. So share your story. If you have a good one send it to me and I will post it on my website.

Here are a series of questions that you will want to answer before calling your project complete and moving on to the next one:

• Does your results link back to your objectives, deliverables, and exit criteria?
• Will the controls implemented sustain the gains?
• How will you recognize and celebrate the success of your team?
• Have attitudes changed about using Six Sigma?
• Have you addressed and closed all parking lot issues?
• What do you need to grow?

It is very important that you get all of these answered. Some that stand out are “Will the controls implemented sustain the gains” and “Have you addressed and closed all parking lot issues”.  Make sure that the controls you implement help to sustain the gains. Remember that controls are non value added to the customer but important to delivering what the customer wants, so minimize them but make sure they work. Something that may be unknown to you but very familiar to me is what I call a “Parking Lot”. On every project, I have a parking lot. I use it to put concerns, thoughts, and ideas that come up during the project that, at the time, pulled the team off its focused objective at the moment. Usually these are later addressed in the project but sometimes they have nothing to do with the project and don’t get address during the project. You must hand this off to someone to make sure they are address and not just dropped. They could be another project that will be worked. Forgetting them is like discarding a twenty dollar bill and it has a negative impact on spreading the Six Sigma culture in a company thus impacting further projects.

To answer the questions above it may take several tools and techniques to insure you have control.

• Non Statistical Controls
  • Standardized Procedures – These are detailed written series of actions which have to be executed in the same manner in order to always obtain the same result. Verbal never is good enough. It needs to be written down so that everyone does it the same way.
  • Run Rules – These are like standardized procedures but are only one page long and are used as a reference or guide by those that have been doing a job along time. Detailed procedures are usually not looked at after one has learned and done the job for some time, but there are things in the procedure that need to be available to even the expert worker. These are kept on what I call Run Rules. Must do for all.
  • Visual Controls – You may have heard the saying “a Picture is worth a 1000 words” it is true. Visual Controls are basically pictures that help control a process. Think of a handicap sign in a parking lot; it is a visual control to help hold parking spots for those that need to park closer to the store. And every driver knows what they mean. The old take a number is another visual control where it insures the customer that has been waiting the longest gets help first.
  • Contingency Plan – These are plans that you need to develop for when something goes wrong with the new process. It lets everyone one know that if they run into a problem (and believe me someone will) this is what you do to continue with the new process.
  • Preventative Maintenance – Is the same thing as oil changes with your car or your annual physical; it keeps everything working at an optimum level. It is proactive rather than reactive so you can schedule it during off hours. It is heavily into preventative,
    predictive, and scheduling. As a scheduled activity it needs to be coordinated with all involved working as a team.

• Statistical Controls
  • Control Charts – Control charts are not always the best method of controlling a given process element. In fact, control charts are seldom the method of choice. When process elements are important we would prefer that they not vary at all! Only when this cannot be accomplished economically should we resort to the use of control charts to monitor the element’s variation.

______________________________

The above are six tools I have not talked about before, other useful Control tools that I have talked about are:

Brainstorming, LCS, Affinity Diagramming, Multi-voting and 5 Whys from my article The First step of DMAIC – Define.

Well there you have it, a little more understanding of the Control step of the Six Sigma 5 step DMAIC process. I hope that this gives you a better understanding of what questions to answer and what tools to uses to get those answers in Control.

Peter Bersbach
Six Sigma Master Black Belt
Bersbach Consulting
From Process to Profits
1.520.829.0090

Tags: DMAIC, DMAIC Control, Method

This entry was posted on Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 11:36 am and is filed under Introduction to Six Sigma, Six Sigma Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.