2. Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma
INTRODUCTION
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 2
3. Presenters
Joe Wiley Ron Kiker
MSFOC Lead Facilitator MSFOC Lead Facilitator
Lean Six Sigma Black Lean Six Sigma Black
Belt (DOD) Belt (NASA)
Established Enterprise Air Lean Six Sigma Master
Speed Program, Belle Certificate (Villanova)
Chasse NAS Applied Project
Master Instructor (USN) Management Master
20+ years instructional Certificate (Villanova)
experience Certified Professional in
Learning and
Performance (ASTD)
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 3
4. Previous PM Challenge Lean Six Sigma topics
“Lean Six Sigma: What Every Program Manager Should
Know” – 2010
“Lean+ Tying it All Together” – 2008
“Project Management – Putting Lean Into Action” – 2006
“Applying Lean Principles to the Risk management
Process” - 2006
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 4
5. Question…
What is the normal process used when developing a
project plan/WBS?
– Use a previous project as a template and then modify for the
current project.
– Brainstorm and include every activity imaginable so that you
don‟t get caught with a short timeline/schedule.
The problem with these approaches is that they build
waste into the project
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 5
6. What are the typical ways of compressing the
critical path?
Fast Tracking –
performing activities in
parallel
Crashing – adding
resources
“Across the Board”
Compression –
compress everything
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 6
7. Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma
LEAN SIX SIGMA ORIGINS &
FOCUS
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 7
8. Origins of Lean Six Sigma
Lean Six Sigma
Variation Reduction
(1900s)
Toyota Production Quality Improvement
System („50s) Tools („30s and ‟40s)
Just-In-Time Total Quality
Manufacturing („70s) Management („50s)
Lean Production
(„80s) Six Sigma (mid-‟80s)
–Lean Six Sigma (mid ‟90s)
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 8
9. Lean’s Focus
Identification of value-adding (VA) and non-value-adding
(NVA) activities
Removal of NVA (waste) activities from the process
Analyzing process flow and delays
Maximizing process velocity
Use of process analysis and idea creation tools
Utilizes kaizen events (Rapid Improvement Events)
Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5
• Lean training • Measure and • Create and map • Evaluate • Present results
• Begin mapping analyze current new process improvements • Celebrate!!
current process process • “Test drive” new
• VA/NVA • Brainstorm new process
analysis process • Modify as
needed
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 9
10. Six Sigma’s Focus
Elimination of defects as defined by the customer
Reducing variation
Use of data collection and analysis, cause analysis, and
basic quality tools
Utilizes the DMAIC process
Define Measure Analyze Implement Control
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 10
11. Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma
SPECIFIC TOOLS
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 11
12. LSS tools for compressing the critical path
Current State Process Mapping
Value-Added Analysis
Future State Process Mapping
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 12
13. Current State Process Mapping
Assemble team & determine scope of mapping event
– Ensure team has authority to make critical path decisions
– Scope my include entire critical path or a portion of the
critical path
– You could break the entire critical path up into logical
portions and conduct improvement event on each section
B C
A D E F I
G H
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 13
14. Create a Functional Process Map
Shows not only the linear sequence of activities, but also
the responsible functions for each activity
A D E F I
Dept D
Dept C
Dept B
Dept M
Dept S
TIME
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 14
15. Value-Added Analysis
Non-Value-Added – activities that
consume resources but creates no
value in the eyes of the customer.
Non-Value-Added Required – activities
that add no value but which cannot be
eliminated due to regulations, customer
requirement, current technology, etc.
Value-Added – activities which change
the form, fit, function, or usability and
which the customer is willing to pay for
and which is done right the first time.
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 15
16. The Forms of Waste
Waste – anything that adds cost or time without adding
value.
1. Excessive Inventory 5. Over-Production
2. Excessive 6. Waiting
Transportation 7. Producing Defects
3. Excessive Motion 8. Injuries
4. Over-Processing
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 16
17. Excessive Inventory
Any unnecessary supplies or materials.
Excess supplies and Files awaiting signatures
materials or approvals
Backlogs of work Files awaiting task
Obsolete databases, files, completion
and folders Obsolete office
equipment
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 17
18. Excessive Transportation
Any unnecessary movement of materials or information.
Delivering documents E-mailing documents that
that are not required are not used
Document storage Routing for unnecessary
Excessive filing approvals or processing
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 18
19. Excessive Motion
Any movement of people that does not add value to the
service.
Searching for computer Travel to unnecessary
files meetings
Searching for work Hand-carrying paperwork
documents Return trips back to the
Trips to printer or copier office for supplies or
materials
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 19
20. Over-Processing
Putting more work or effort into the process than is required by
the customer.
Duplicating reports or Constantly revising
information documents
Duplicate data entry Reformatting
Unnecessary reviews or Unnecessary process
approvals steps
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 20
21. Over-Production
Producing work or providing a service prior to it being required or
requested. Producing more than is needed.
Producing reports no one Entering same
reads or needs information multiple times
Making extra copies Working ahead
Excessive e-mails Producing at a faster
pace than needed
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 21
22. Waiting
Idle time in the process in which no value is being added to the
process. Both people and products/services can wait.
Waiting on approvals Electronic queues
Waiting for information or Waiting in meeting
decisions Conflicting commitments
Waiting for others to Over-flowing in-boxes
complete tasks
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 22
23. Producing Defects
All processing required to correct a defect.
Data entry errors Forwarding partial
Missing information documentation
Errors in documents Any work that does not
Any type of rework
meet customer
requirements
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 23
24. Injuries
Work-related personnel injuries.
Injured personnel Improper ergonomics
Near misses Slips, trips, and falls
Lost work days Worker‟s Comp claims
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 24
25. Value-Added Analysis
Identify every activity on the current process map as
either VA, NVA Required, or NVA
Dept D
Dept C
Dept B
Dept M
Dept S
TIME
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 25
26. Future State Process Map
Remove the waste and the critical path is automatically
compressed
Also a good time to consider what activities can be
performed in parallel for fast tracking
Dept D
Dept C
Dept B
Dept M
Dept S
TIME
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 26
27. Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma
SUMMARY
Compressing the Critical Path with Lean Six Sigma Slide 27
Editor's Notes
This presentation by Mark Adrian is in the PM Challenge archives and is an overview of the history of NASA’s lean six sigma program. It also has some introductory materials on what lean six sigma is. The archives include both the slides and an audio recording of Mark’s presentation.Our presentation will focus on applying specific lean tools to shorten a project’s critical path.
Question the group as to how they develop a project plan for a new project. Have volunteers briefly describe their typical process. Answers will be similar to what is shown on the slide.The problem with this approach is that there is not serious consideration given to whether every activity included in the project plan is really necessary and actually adds value to the finished product. Also, the steps that makeup each activity are not closely examined to determine the value-adding aspect of each step.
The typical ways of compressing the critical path in the PM world are to either fast track or crash, or even worse compress everything across the board (the lazy path).With fast tracking, you examine the activities in the project, especially along the critical path, and identify activities that can be run in parallel with each other, thus shortening the critical path. Could increase the cost if additional resources are needed to run the parallel activities.With crashing, you simply add as many resources as necessary to shorten the amount of time the critical path activities take to complete. Obviously, this increases the cost of the project.With lean six sigma, you can reduce the scope which automatically reduces the cost and schedule, while still maintaining (or actually increasing) the quality of the project.
Six SigmaVariation Reduction: in the early 1900s, an American statistician named Walter Shewhart began studying variation, the major and minor fluctuations we see in any given process or sequence of tasks every single day.Quality Improvement Tools: Shewhart began developing a group of quality improvement tools, what today has become statistical process control tools, to reduce the amount of variation in any process and then monitor and control that variation over the long term. W. Edwards Deming was a follower of Shewhart who got involved in the study of processes and system improvement in the 1930s and ‘40s.Total Quality Management: In 1950 W. Edwards Deming was invited to Japan to teach them about variation and process improvement. His work in Japan gave rise to the original Total Quality Management (TQM) system, which focused on reducing variation and improving quality. One of the people that studied under Deming was TaiichiOhno, an employee of a small manufacturing company called Toyoda.Six Sigma: In the mid ‘80s an engineer at Motorola named Bill Smith took much of Shewhart’s, Deming’s, and Juran’s principles, modified them, applied a strict methodology for implementing the principles (the DMAIC process) and developed Six Sigma. Six Sigma was so successful for Motorola that before long partners of Motorola began asking Motorola to teach them the Six Sigma methodology. Companies like GE, Allied Signal/Honeywell, Black & Decker, DuPont, Dow Chemical, Bombardier, Federal Express, Johnson & Johnson, Seagate Technologies, Sony, and Toshiba were all early adopters of Six Sigma.LeanIn the mid 20th century, a small Japanese manufacturing company named Toyoda wanted to manufacture cars in Japan. Employees went to the Ford Motor Company to observe how Ford manufactured cars. Upon returning to Japan, those company leaders realized that they did not have the capital to manufacture on a scale comparable to Ford. So, they invented their own manufacturing system that focused on having only value-adding activities in the system, removing all non-value-adding activities, because as a small upstart they could not afford to do any activity that did not add value to the product and which they could collect monies for doing. One of the people involved in starting this auto manufacturer was TaiichiOhno who had studied under Deming. Ohno concentrated on making sure the manufacturing process had as little variation as possible, which allowed them to consistently manufacture high-quality products. This company became Toyota.Just-In-Time Manufacturing: Toyota modified their production system even more so that they did not manufacture any vehicles until they were needed in the supply line. They concentrated on minimizing large inventories of finished vehicles for which they had no buyers. This allowed them to maintain a good cash flow and allowed them to have several inventory turns per year. Toyota then began working with their suppliers to implement JIT supply so that Toyota did not have to pay for large quantities of raw materials. This method of manufacturing became know as the Toyota Production System.Lean Production: When the Toyota Production System was brought to the US, its name was changed to lean manufacturing/production.Lean Six SigmaIn the mid-1990s, companies began realizing that Lean and Six Sigma needed each other. Like the early days of TQM, Lean suffered because of the lack of infrastructure. Six Sigma was great at reducing defects and improving quality, but wasn’t really suited to eliminating the waste that slowed processes down. People saw the futility of improving a wasteful process. So, lean and six sigma were combined into Lean Six Sigma.Manufacturing to TransactionalSeveral of the early adopters of six sigma started applying six sigma methodologies to the transactional/service processes that supported their manufacturing process. They found that not only did improvements on the service (transactional) side of the house make their manufacturing side run better, they also found that the improvements realized on the service side were even more significant than what they were seeing on the manufacturing side. They also found that they frequently saved as much, or even more money, by improving the service side than they did from improving the manufacturing side.Before long, six sigma was being applied in organizations that were strictly service and did no manufacturing.When lean and six sigma were combined into lean six sigma and applied in the service sector, many found that the lean tools achieved greater results faster than the six sigma tools.
One of the strongest and most effective tools in the lean toolbox is the identification of value-added versus non-value-added activities. Once a processes has been completely mapped, the next step is to identify every task in the process as being value-adding or non-value-adding and removing as many of the non-value-adding tasks as possible. This removes the waste from the processes which automatically speeds up the process and frees up a lot of employee time.Lean also looks closely at the process flow and identifies where and why delays occur. Several tools can be used to identify and remove the process delays which maximizes the process velocity. Greater process velocity results in happier customers because they are not having to wait for the process to be completed.Some of the tools used in lean events include: Value stream mapping Process or functional process mapping Physical process mapping (spaghetti diagrams) VA/NVA analysisTakt time analysis Failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA)Mistake-proofing Load balance evaluations Root cause analysis Brainstorming solutions Affinity diagrams for organizing large numbers of ideasThe primary vehicle for accomplishing lean’s goals is the kaizen event. Kaizen is a Japanese word that means “good change for all.” These events are also called process improvement events. We’ll look at the format for a kaizen in detail in a few minutes.
Let’s talk now about the focus of the six sigma side of the lean six sigma coin.Six sigma’s focus is on the elimination of defects as defined by the customer and the reduction of variation in the process. Variation could be variations in the quality of the service or variations in the amount of time to complete the service. Why does one customer get good service and another get poor service? Why does a process take 10 minutes to complete one time, and an hour to complete the next time? The six sigma tools answer these questions and fix the problems of variation.Some of the tools used during a six sigma event include: Check sheets Control charts Histograms Correlation and Regression Analysis (to determine relationships) Cause-and-Effect diagrams (AKA: Fishbone, Ishikawa) Pareto charts (for determining significance of factors) Run charts Root cause analysisSix sigma uses the DMAIC process which stands for Define, Measure, Analyze, Implement, and Control the process.
Value-added Analysis is one of the most effect tools in the lean tool box.Once a process is thoroughly mapped, an analysis is done on each step in the process to determine whether the step is adding value from the customer’s perspective. Tasks can either be classified as value-adding, non-value-adding, or non-value adding but required.Value-added activities are activities which change the form, fit, function, or usability and which the customer is willing to pay for and which is done right the first time.Non-value-added activities are activities that consume resources but creates no value in the eyes of the customer. These activities are removed from the process which creates immediate savings in personnel time and non-personnel costs associated with the removed tasks.Sometimes tasks add no value to the process, but they cannot be removed from the process. These tasks fall into the non-value-adding but required category. These are activities that add no value but which cannot be eliminated due to regulations, customer requirement, current technology, etc. With these tasks you concentrate on doing them as quickly and as inexpensively as possible while you look for ways to remove them.
Anything that falls into one of the non-value-adding categories is considered waste. These are the forms of waste. The first seven are the seven traditional forms of waste.Many organizations also add the 8th waste, injuries, so as to keep safety in the forefront of employees minds and concentrate efforts to remove or mitigate all injury causing activities from processes.Let’s look at each of these forms of waste, define them, and look at examples of them to see if we can spot any of them in our projects.
