Pm Lean

Lean #

Lean methodology is often referred to as Lean Manufacturing because it originated in the manufacturing world. The main principle in Lean methodology is the removal of waste within an operation. By optimizing process steps and eliminating waste, only value is added at each phase of production.

Today, the Lean Manufacturing methodology recognizes eight types of waste within an operation: defects, excess processing, overproduction, waiting, inventory, transportation, motion, and non-utilized talent. In the manufacturing industry, these types of waste are often attributed to issues such as:

  • Lack of proper documentation
  • Lack of process standards
  • Not understanding the customers’ needs
  • Lack of effective communication
  • Lack of process control
  • Inefficient process design
  • Failures of management

These same issues create waste in project management.

Implement Lean project management when you want to use limited resources, reduce waste, and streamline processes to gain maximum benefits.

You can achieve this by using the pillars of the Lean 5S quality tool. The term 5S refers to the five pillars that are required for good housekeeping: sort, set in order, shine, standardize, and sustain. Implementing the 5S method means cleaning up and organizing the workplace to achieve the smallest amount of wasted time and material. The 5S method includes these five steps:

  • Sort: Remove all items not needed for current production operations and leave only the bare essentials.
  • Set in order: Arrange needed items so that they are easy to use. Label items so that anyone can find them or put them away.
  • Shine: Keep everything in the correct place. Clean your workspace every day.
  • Standardize: Perform the process in the same way every time. *Sustain: Make a habit of maintaining correct procedures and instill this discipline in your team.

Within the Lean methodology, 5S helps you boost performance.

The final concept of Lean uses a Kanban scheduling system to manage production. The Kanban scheduling system, or Kanban board, is a visualization tool that enables you to optimize the flow of your team’s work. It gives the team a visual display to identify what needs to be done and when. The Kanban board uses cards that are moved from left to right to show progress and help your team coordinate the work.

Kanban board, showing columns (to do, in progress, testing, and done) with sticky notes representing tasks of a project. Kanban boards and 5S are core methods of the Lean methodology. They can help you successfully manage your project. Now let’s analyze the Six Sigma method and learn when is the best time to use it.

Six Sigma #

Six Sigma is a methodology used to reduce variations by ensuring that quality processes are followed every time. The term “Six Sigma” originates from statistics and generally means that items or processes should have 99.9996% quality.

The seven key principles of Six Sigma are:

Always focus on the customer.

Identify and understand how the work gets done. Understand how work really happens.

Make your processes flow smoothly.

Reduce waste and concentrate on value.

Stop defects by removing variation.

Involve and collaborate with your team.

Approach improvement activity in a systematic way.

Use this methodology to find aspects of the product or process that are measurable like time, cost, or quantity. Then inspect that measurable item and reject any products that do not meet the Six Sigma standard. Any process that created unacceptable products has to be improved upon.

Now that you understand both Lean and Six Sigma, let’s see how they come together to improve the performance of your project!

Lean Six Sigma #

After both Lean and Six Sigma were put into practice, it was discovered that the two methodologies could be combined to increase benefits. The tools used in Lean, such as Kanban boards and 5S, build quality in processes from the beginning. Products developed using Lean methods are then inspected or tested using Six Sigma standards. The products that do not meet these standards are rejected.

The largest difference between these methodologies is that Lean streamlines processes while Six Sigma reduces variation in products by building in quality from the beginning and inspecting products to ensure quality standards are met. You may find that one of these two methods—or using them both together—can improve the efficiency of your projects.

There are five phases in the Lean Six Sigma approach. They are:

  • define
  • measure
  • analyze
  • improve
  • control

commonly known as DMAIC. #

DMAIC is a strategy for process improvement, meaning you’re trying to figure out where the problems are in the current process and fix them so that everything runs more smoothly. The goal of each step is to ensure the best possible results for your project. Just like with Waterfall and Agile, there’re more specific details for using DMAIC and the Lean Six Sigma approach. But what’s great about the DMAIC process is that it can be used to solve any business problem.

Let’s break it down. The first phase is to define the project goal and what it will take to meet it. This first phase is very similar to the initiation phase of traditional project management. Let’s take a real scenario to illustrate. Imagine that you are brought on as a project manager for a large travel company to help streamline and minimize customer service wait times that have been surging due to a recent sales promotion. Before you begin working on tackling the issue, you’re going to need to define the project goal and talk to stakeholders about expectations for the project. In this case, the goal is to take average wait times down to less than 10 minutes on average compared to 30 minutes.

Next, it’s time to measure how the current process is performing. In order to improve processes, DMAIC focuses on data. Here you want to map out the current process and locate exactly where the problems are and what kind of effect the problems have on the process. Using our example, you’re trying to figure out why it’s taking so long for the travel company to address a customer service issue. To do this, you look at company data like average wait times, number of customers per day, and seasonal variations. Then you’ll set a plan for how you’ll get that data and how often to measure it. This could look something like having the company generate reports on a weekly, monthly, quarterly basis. In other situations, you might have employees or customers fill out surveys or look at inventory, shipping, and tracking records, things like that.

Once you have the data and measurements, you can move on to the next phase which is analyze. Here, you’ll begin to identify gaps and issues. In our example, after mapping out the process and data points, you may see that staffing is inadequate on days where customers are the highest. Data analysis is important for project managers regardless of which method you choose and we will learn more about that in an upcoming course. From your data, you’ll have a strong understanding of causes and solutions to get to the next stage, improve. Oftentimes, project managers may want to leap straight to this phase but really projects in process improvements should only be made after a careful analysis. This is the point where you present your findings and get ready to start making improvements. In our example, this could be modifying staffing to address customer needs.

The last step of this cycle is control. You’ve gotten the process and project to a good place, and now it’s time to implement it and keep it there. Controlling is all about learning from the work you did up front to put new processes and documentation in place and continue to monitor so the company doesn’t revert back to the old, inefficient way of doing things. To sum it all up, you can remember DMAIC like this, defining tells you what to measure, measuring tells you what to analyze, analyzing tells you what to improve, and improving tells you what to control.