Getting started with Six Sigma

The purpose of this step is to clearly understand theproject scope,business problem, goal, potential resources and high-level project timeline. Following are deliverable of this phase:

• Develop the Project Charter
• Identify the Project CTQ
• Create Process Maps 

Develop the Project Charter

Project Charter one of the important document that summarizes the current scenario, purpose& goal, project’s scope, measures of success,quantitative & indicative project benefits and team members. In order to prepare the project charters, several meetings and preparatory steps may be needed. In some case gathering the Voice of Customer may be required to understand the problems.

Project Scoping determines how the projects will contribute to overall business, team composition, resources required, whether efforts will be diverted to maximum impact areas, financial etc.

Identify the Project CTQ

CTQ also has known Critical to Quality metric. This is measures of success for the projects. There are one CTQ for DMAIC projects. It can be a measure of effectiveness or efficiency. The key performance indicator for business and customer voice. Usually indicative or accurate current performances are reported in the project charter.

The above two deliverable run parallel and they are of significant importance becauseit start with team member induction,  formal kick-off of the projects, Lean Six Sigma training.

Create Process Maps

A detailed process document after understanding end to end system. However in case such documentations already exists becomes easy for the projects team members to revisit.

Process maps can be high level end-to-end process documentations like deployment process-charts, SIPOC (Suppliers, Inputs, Process, and Outputs& Customers) which use step-by-step process flow-chart orSwim-lane technique. 

Once the process maps have been created, the team can use them to identify challenges, issues, delays, the bottlenecks, inputs & outputs, etc. On completions of the above deliverable a formal defined review is conducted.