During implementation of Six Sigma, lots of problems are encountered. During defining phase the teams are created after defining the business objective. The project teams are formed during this stage as per the processes to be monitored and analyzed.
Every team member should be well conversant with some tools to solve the problems encountered during monitoring and analyzing the processes. I am writing down some some tools to be mastered by teams, which are going to help them during this phase.
These tools are listed below and also referred quality control tools:
Quality Tree Diagrams
These are diagrams created after brainstorming the requirements of the customer. Once created, these help in drilling down the requirements analysis in greater details.
Process Mapping.
These are the work flow diagrams within the organization. Processes are represented as graphical objects. These help in better understanding of, how work is done in the organization.
Flow Charts.
Flow charts represent the organization setup as input-action-output relationship. This relationship is shown graphically to monitor the desired processes.
Check Sheets(Histograms).
These are more of related with somewhat deeper analysis of data. These have main purpose of collecting and understanding data. These basically lead us towards the trends of occurrence of particular events.
Pareto Analysis.
Pareto analysis is the ranking or opportunities. If we have a number of opportunities for improving our processes in the organization, then which opportunities should be taken first. Pareto analysis helps in choosing these. These work on 80/20 principle.
Cause and Effect Diagrams
These diagrams help us in monitoring the causes of many quality problems encountered in a process. These diagram methods were developed Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa. A group’s members contribute the causes based upon their knowledge. These provide the ultimate understanding of the processes. So, anything disturbing the normal behavior of the process can be easily identified.
Affinity Diagrams.
The affinity diagrams are based upon categorization of ideas. These are helpful in brainstorming the solutions for particular types of problems. These give us qualitative analysis of the problems.
Apart from the above tools, the ones listed below are called 7 M tools and Continuous Improvement Tools. These tools are helpful in analyzing qualitative data as well.
1. The content help has been taken from the book “The Six Sigma Handbook†by “THOMAS PYZDEKâ€. These tools have been discussed in great detail in the above book.