Dedicated and successful execution improves your company’s results quickly, creating financial freedom and capacity for critical customer work.
A concise and clear structure of the project phases support this:
- Define – Clarify issue and scope
- Measure – Get the status quo data
- Analyze – Understand the metrics and root causes
- Improve – Execute improvement actions
- Control – Monitor results and continue…
When defining the issue (define) the task is to clearly describe the problem as well as what is in scope and what not. This allows the project team to be laser focused and aligns expectations with all constituencies.
Measuring the status quo (measure) provides the database for the subsequent steps. During the analysis (analyze) the true structure / content of the issue is being understood. How available paths of action may impact the status quo becomes visible. Classic examples are production cycle times or quality issues. It is important to measure and analyze with the right level of granularity – improving cycle time for example will only be successful if the various steps of a process are looked at in detail.
When the issue and implications of potential actions are understood the improvement phase (improve) calls for deciding on the right action and then delivering results by implementing and executing those.
The control cycle (control) ensures the results are sustained and a continuous improvement process is started.
Documenting those phases starts with the project charter. Over the course of the project status reports are provided to the constituencies, formally concluding the project finishing with an 8D-report. (REPORTING CYCLE)
The DMAIC overview, the reporting tools and various productivity methods are integrated in our software tool box that enables strong project execution and building up a knowledge pool. The application is (private-) cloud based and hence immediately available and scalable. Customizations can easily be added.
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