This is the second phase of the DMAIC process. [If you happen to land on this article and have not seen the previous one, please have a look here: “Process Improvement“].
In the MEASURE phase the objectives are: the identification of the critical measures, the taking of a ‘baseline’ for the process and the looking into greater details at the operational performance of the process in order to attempt to quantify the opportunity. It is about:
- understanding the current process;
- gather more data to get into the root causes.
During the Measure phase, more clarity will be sought about the individual Xs that are affecting the ‘Big Y’ identified in the Define phase. It is like breaking down the equation Y = f(Xn) into the components as Y = f(X1 + X2 + X3 + etc). The improvement team will go into the details of what is happening along the process, when specific things happen, at what stage of the process. The team will define an important ‘baseline’ as the representation of the current state of the process. This baseline will be referred to once the correction measures are trialled.
To aid decision, data should be gathered and there are a variety of tools and techniques that can be used. Below is a selection of the tools, which are not necessarily in the order of priority or importance.
SIPOC
The SIPOC is a diagrammatic tool that summarizes the inputs and outputs of a process. It is used to define a business process from beginning to end. The acronym SIPOC stands for ‘Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs and Customers‘ with each of these terms being the heading of a column in a table. The Process (which hopefully has been sketched as a flowchart in the Design phase) is at the centre and at every step of the process Inputs and Outputs are mapped: Inputs on the left and Outputs on the right of the Process column. These Inputs and Outputs will be assigned to Suppliers and Customers, respectively.
The SIPOC defines also upstream and downstream links and it identifies where to collect data. It will be an opportunity to validate the charter, but, most importantly, it helps in starting with rating the quality of the inputs and outputs, assisting with the identification of the weak steps in the process.
Value stream map
This is meant to be one of the most powerful tools at disposal of the improvement team. It maps step-by-step the whole process, but it focuses the attention on what is adding value to the process and what is not. It is meant to be effective in communicating where the improvement efforts have the most beneficial effect. The team will be taking measures of times and costs associated to the following components:
- Tasks that add value (CVA), as activities that are essential to deliver the service or a product to the customer/beneficiary. They are inherent to the process -“the customer is happy to pay that“;
- Tasks that do not add value (NVA), as ‘waste’, as for example rework due to human errors – “the customer would not be happy to pay for it“;
- Tasks that do not add value, but that are strictly related to the business’s process (B-NVA): they do not add value, but they are there for running the processes and the business, like internal audits, internal tasks required for purchasing goods, internal approval processes etc.
This tool is extremely useful in making the functions aware of their processes and offer opportunities for quick wins (reduction, removal, simplification).
Pareto chart
This is an interesting tool to help in showing those problems that offer the greatest potential impact, if resolved. It is based on the principle named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto and it states that ‘20% of sources cause 80% of any problem‘.
It is a highly impactful chart that is used often in process improvement any time when there are data available that can be grouped under defined classes of causes. It contains both bars (where individual values are represented in descending order) and a line (representing the cumulative total). The principle is that you could solve most of the problems by taking care of the issues represented by the tallest bars.
With the process well mapped and the information at hand the improvement team can move now to the next phase, trying to make sense of all they have collected and shortlist the possible key interventions.
Marco Bottacini, Senior Portfolio Manager, GALVmed
The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinion of GALVmed.
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