DMAIC – Define

Define is the first step of the Six Sigma five step process DMAIC. The objectives of Define are two fold. First is to define the issue (problem) and the real need to improve it (The Burning Platform). Second is to then get alignment and commitment to solve this issue from the sponsor and project team (including their supervision).  Define is one of the critical steps of this five step process. Many times, we do not gather enough of the right information to properly define the issue we are trying to solve. So to help me (and you) I have a series of questions that if you address them will help insure you complete this critical step. Here they are:

1. 1. What is the Burning Platform? Why do you need to do this NOW?
2. 2. What company goal does this support and what is its priority?
3. 3. What is the Top level process flow?
4. 4. Who are its – Suppliers and their inputs & Customers and what outputs do they receive?
5. 5. What is your vision of the future?
6. 6. What are you trying to accomplish and the process needing improvement?
7. 7. What benefits will the organization realize?
8. 8. Whom & what do you need to accomplish this project?
9. 9. What is the expected outcome of the project (quantified goals / objectives)?

10. How do you know you are done (exit criteria)?

11. Who are the committed/aligned team members?

It is very important that you get all of these answered. Some that stand out are alignment to company goals and having a good vision of the future. Goal alignment is critical if you want your team to stay together and finish the project.  If your project is not aligned you can bet team member supervisors will have other priorities that, in their mine, are higher than the ones for your project and will pull team members to work their priorities. Every project needs a good vision so the whole team will know where they are headed with the project. That increases the team alignment.

To answer the question above it may take several tools and techniques to collect the “facts and data” to answer these questions. Remember that in Six Sigma we like opinions, they help guide us, but we need data that validates the opinions. So in answering these questions many times you will get opinions but you still need to gather the data to show the opinion is true (or false). So here in define, there are several good tool and techniques that can help get you that data.

• SIPOC – Stands for Supplier, Input, Process, Output, and Customer. It is a very top level process flow of the process you are trying to improve, but it includes more than just the process flow. It has inputs to the process and who supplies those inputs. Plus it also has the output of the process with who (customer) will receive the output.

• GEMBA – Is just a Japanese term for “Go See” and here we use it to remind us to get out to the area where the process is working and really watch and see how it works. Nothing can be solved in a conference room or sitting at a desk.

• Creative Thinking/ Brainstorming – This is just a method for coming up with as many ideas as one can conceive of. They can be wild and crazy ideas because in them, just like the ore in mines, we will find the golden nuggets.

• LCS – Stands for Likes Concerns and Suggestions. This is one of the best and simple tools I have ever used. In any meeting (or even conversation), if all parties follow LCS you will eliminate divergence and create alignment in the discussion. Here how it works. There are three basic rules that anyone in the group must follow to comment on another person’s statement.
• First, you must states something you like about what the person said. This tells them you understood what they said and gets alignment and agreement on what you liked.
• Second (NOTE!!! you can only do this second step if you also have the third in mind otherwise you must stop on the fist step only!!!) Tell them you concerns about what they said.
• Third, you must always follow your concerns with your own suggestions for correcting your concerns.

• This really gets folks moving forward on issues they disagree on as we build ways around the disagreement through suggestions.

• Affinity Diagramming – usually follows brainstorming where you have all those wild and crazy ideas. Now we take them all and group them into area of similarities. This helps see those nuggets I was talking about before. A lot of times, I use post it notes in brainstorming so I can easily move them around and place in groups that are similar. It helps and gets everyone on there feet moving around.

• Multi-Voting – is a method of deciding or prioritizing ideas or tasks. The basic rule here is to give everyone an amount of votes (usually it is 20% of the number of ideas or tasks that you are trying to work) and let them vote on the ones they like best. Right away, you will see certain ones are more important than others to the group.

• 5 Whys – This gets us back to our childhood a bit but to get at the true root of something many times we have to ask why several times. It is simple but true. If we don’t ask “why” enough times we may not get to the bottom of the issue. But you will know when it is too many when you get there. Usually it is about 5 times.

Well there you have it. A little more understanding of the define step of the Six Sigma 5 step DMAIC process.

Peter Bersbach

Six Sigma Master Black Belt

Bersbach Consulting

From Process to Profits

1.520.829.0090

Tags: DMAIC, Method, Need

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 3:28 pm 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.