Six Sigma Project. Productivity ImprovementsBarry O’ Shea.

BSc Manufacturing Management.

Six Sigma Project BLOG.

Introduction: My name is Barry O’ Shea and I am a student on the L7 BSc Manufacturing Management course with IT Sligo. I have undertaken a productivity improvement related project and will apply the learning’s from the Six Sigma philosophy to meet the objective.

About my company: I work in the Electronics sector and in particular in the data storage arena. The sales profile of this company is different to that of which I would have been previously used to, where sales / shipments are measured on a quarterly basis. 40% of the quarterly volumes may ship in the last 2 weeks of the quarter and 15% may ship in the last day. Materials are assembled and tested, then positioned and made available, so that when as orders materialise, the modules are configured as per customer order, tested and shipped.

Where the idea came from? The cost of labour relative to the cost of the product produced is a small percentage of the overall cost. The main focus of the company is to satisfy the customer’s requirements at any cost, as opposed to the right cost. The permanent/ temporary headcount ratio is heavily weighted towards the temporary labour model, to leverage on the cost of labour, as required during different stages of the quarterly cycle.

Why was this not introduced before in this company? Various attempts were made, but from my understanding previous attempts were too cumbersome, required too many resources to manage the process, the data inputting was cumbersome and the data was never used in a meaningful way. In summary, the DESIRE to make it succeed was not there at management level.

LPU the definition. Labour hour per Unit (LPU) in its simplest form is (Qty of Units produced / hours used in the manufactured of the units.)

How will success be measured?

Six Sigma Explained.

Six Sigma DMAIC.

Refers to a data driven strategy for improving processes and is an intregral part of a companys Six Sigma Quality Initiative.

DMAIC is an acronym for the five interconnected phases: Define, Measure, Anyalise, Improve and Control.

Define: What is it we are trying to improve?

Measure:What is the current benchmark?

Anyalise:What are the constraints that is limiting us from doing better?

Improve:What plans can we put in place to improve the current situation?

Control:What future plans can we put in place:

to ensure that the improvements stay in place?

to ensure that ongoing improvements are sought?

· Productivity website developed.

Benefits of the Website:

· Standardised method of capturing the hours and where they are spent

· Easy to use and requires little overhead to maintain

· Built in method of capturing the data once entered.

Using the web tool developed by a team member, the information is easily extracted.

A review of the issues, standard times and the resources of the area led to the following actions

Using the following action list and the top issues collect via the productivity tracker

Led to:

· Weekly supervisory review / ownership of headcount management and identification of non product / process related activities yielding a headcount reduction of 6 technicians.

· Analysis of top issues impacting the day to day activities, led to a potential additional annual saving of $500k relating to labour at supplier / cardboard material cost / labour un-boxing drives by introducing an alternative process of storage / transportation of hard drives. This is now part of a continuous project now being undertaken.

· Review of material shortages has led to a better communication process to / from suppliers / supply cells and the Service Level Agreement, yielding to contingency planning in advance of process delays.

The use of the LPU tracking chart compares current trend relative to previous quarters. It also shows the hours used compared to product produced on a weekly basis so labour can be managed and directed to where it is most required.

Summary.

Cost Saving:

Cost saving demonstrated through the reduction of headcount of 6 technicians. Future cost savings now being pursued through an additional project which is a result of the data collected during the Measure & Animalize phases. The project is now being introduced across the operations department, using the tools developed as part of this project. The project and the tools developed are easily transportable across all value streams and across sister sites.

Lessons Learned

Lessons learned exercise with the team and project stakeholders was carried out as part of the project close out. The main points are listed below:

· Having the opportunity to select key skills as part of the team make up was invaluable.

· Listing out the project scope and not allowing project creep was beneficial to the successful outcome.

· Applying the learning’s from the Project Management module was hugely beneficial.

· Seeking out advocates of such a project was beneficial in advance, so that team members had the project set as one of their objectives.

· This project was underway in advance of the current semester, which allowed the tools (productivity website) to be developed. A successful outcome is more important than speed of execution.

· Taking time to research and understanding the DMAIC tools and applying the learning’s has shown me that anything is possible once broken down into smaller elements.

Feedback from Production team.

Following the implementation of the project, I conducted a VOC exercise with the project team and the wider production team involved.

· Communication in advance and throughout the project removed any skepticism that may have existed.

· Seen as a development activity amongst all team members.

· Team members had little realization of the non value activities being carried out on a daily basis.

· SOP's really easy to follow and work well as training aid - especially for new employees

· Realization is that the ask is to” work smarter and not harder”.

· Variation in the ways that people / shifts carry out the same activity- realizing that standard work is the next thing to be addressed.

Conclusion.

Overall I am extremely happy with the outcome of the project.  I have been learned from this and have been exposed to many elements of the DMAIC process as well as utilizing the learning from the Project Management module. Throughout the project, I have learned the importance of communication within and external to the team and have learned the importance of networking and selling the project to create advocates of what we are doing. The power of different skills and tribal knowledge, mixed with the desire to challenge the norm and having the desire and determination to carrying on leads to improving the way we work.

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11IT Sligo Six Sigma project. BSc Manufacturing Management.