Lean & Six Sigma Tools & Techniques to Deliver Business Excellence

Introduction

A Business Improvement programme deploying Lean & Six Sigma has the potential to deliver huge improvements to the efficiency and effectiveness of your organisation and will deliver improvements on a continuing basis in the future, but to achieve this you must look at it as a strategic initiative not a short-term fix.

This four-day course will focus on delivering practical training that will deepen your understanding of how you can help transform your organisation in to achieve significant cost savings while, at the same time, delivering a vastly improved service to your customers or clients.

Aims

The aim of this course is to help you understand the range of options open to you if you are considering launching a business improvement strategy or building on your current approach. Your choice may depend on the type, size and maturity of your organisation and this course will help you make that choice. To achieve this the course will explore a range of strategies, tools and techniques used by world class companies, globally.

Objectives

By the end of the programme delegates will be able to:

Present a business case for deploying Lean and Six Sigma tools and techniques to deliver a Business Improvement strategy
Recall the history and development of Lean, Six Sigma and Quality Control
Name the seven classic wastes, plus five others
Contrast quality control with quality management
Name the components of the Toyota Production System, the stages of a Lean strategy and list the seven classic wastes of the Toyota Production System
List the principle of Lean and name the steps to be taken to deliver a Six Sigma project
Demonstrate an ability to construct a process map and a control chart
Relate the benefits of deploying: a workplace organisation system (5S), Failure Mode & Effects Analysis (FMEA) and Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED)
Reproduce the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model and list the steps to be taken to deploy self-assessment as a business improvement tool
Recognise the steps to be taken to engage in a Benchmarking exercise
Recall the components of the Balanced Scorecard
List the steps to be taken to implement a business improvement strategy

Methods

It is our intention to provide a learning environment that helps you to understand a range of concepts, tools, techniques and methodologies through a range of interventions that will be informative, varied and fun. We will use exercises, simulations and case studies to support presentations.

Duration: 4 days

Who it's for:
Directors, managers and those involved in business improvement initiatives, in all sectors of the economy particularly those wishing to understand the options available to launch a business improvement strategy.

Course Content

Day 1

Introductions and administration

· The programme for the day

· Personal introductions

· Course objectives, content and methods

· How to improve knowledge retention, the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve

· Access to course material

· Support and follow up

Session 1: The History and Development of Quality Management

Exercise: defining Quality
Review of exercise
The business case for adopting an improvement strategy
Case Study: the Porsche car company
Developments in Japan; the role of Dr W Edwards Deming and the introduction of quality control systems
Exercise: calculating standard deviation
Review of exercise
Developments in USA; the birth of 6 Sigma and the launch of the Malcolm Baldridge Award
Exercise: calculate six sigma
Review of exercise
The five steps of a Six Sigma project
Developments in Europe; the ISO9000 family of standards; the European Foundation for Quality Management; National and local Quality organisations; the Excellence Model and Awards

Session 2: Business Improvement

· Exercise: simulating a process to identify ‘waste’

· Review of exercise

· Defining the 7 Classic Wastes

· Further wastes

· Quality Control v. Quality Assurance

· Exercise: visual checks

· Review of exercise

Day 2

Session 3: Case Study – The Toyota Production System (TPS)

• Case Study: the Toyota Production System

• Exercise: line balancing – Heijunka

• Review of exercise

• Exercise: standardised work

• Review of exercise

• Improving productivity with Total Productive Maintenance

• The components of the value chain

• Establishing operations stability

• The three pillars of the Toyota Production System:

Just in Time (JIT)
Capacity planning & control
Inventory management & control
Inventory planning & control
Exercise:calculating takt time
Review of exercise
How to achieve flow
Exercise: simulating flow
Review of exercise
Pull versus Push systems
Jidoka
Automatic and manual line stops
Synchronising the actions of people and machines
Error proofing system
Creating a visual control system.
Culture – the critical role of organisational culture
Case Study: Incremental improvement in an Olympic cycling team

Day 3

Session 4: Lean Operations 1

· The origins of Lean

• The Lean philosophy and the five principles of Lean Operations

• The first dimension: specify value

• Exercise: defining customer and specifying value

• Review of exercise

• The Voice of the Customer

• How operations managers match customer experience with customer expectations

• Exercise: identifying the dimensions of customer service

• Review of exercise

Session 4 cont: Lean Operations 2

• The process of mapping a business process – learning to see

• Establishing scope

• The role of a process map in process improvement activities

• The process improvement process

• Exercises: produce a SIPOC Map

• Review of exercise

• Exercise: produce a process sequence map and calculate AdeltaT

• Review of exercise

• Exercise: produce an ‘as is’ value stream map, calculate Takt Time, AdeltaT, reengineer the process and produce a ‘to be’ process map

• Review of exercise

• Exercise: apply new technology to digitise the process

Session 4 cont: Lean Operations 3

· How to create flow in an operations

· Batch processing versus one piece flow

· How to achieve one-piece flow

· Exercise: simulating one-piece flow

· Review of exercise

· How organisation structure can improve workflow – a case study

· The benefits of a ‘pull’ system over a ‘push system’ – the Kan Ban system

· Striving for perfection – the search for perfect processes.

Session 5: A Six Sigma Strategy

· The DMAIC system

· Case Study: The TSB Homeloans application of Six Sigma tools techniques

Day 4

Session 6: Other Toyota Improvement Systems

· The 5S Workplace Organisation System

· Failure Mode & Effects Analysis (FMEA)

· Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED)

· Review of exercise

Session 7: The EFQM Excellence Model and Self- Assessment

The European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model
Using the Excellence Model as a self-assessment tool to effect improvement: characteristics of enablers, characteristics of results, the scoring system.
The limitations of self-assessment.
Exercises: scoring an enabler and a result.
Review of exercise

Session8: Benchmarking

· Case study: how and why Xerox developed Benchmarking

· How Benchmarking contributes to a business improvement strategy

· The five steps of the Benchmarking cycle

· Types of Benchmarking initiatives

· Sources of Benchmarking intelligence

Session 9: An implementation Strategy for your chosen methodology

· Project selection, what to take into account

· Maintaining communications with key stakeholders

· The seventeen step system for delivering a continuous improvement strategy

Session 10: The Cultural Dimension

· Measuring and monitoring employee productivity