CONTROL STAGE

There were several objectives which we have completed in the control stage:

• the new methods of measurements became standardized in practice,
• established a training requirements,
• the predicted impact of the improvements, has been achieved (financial aspects to be confirm by Management),
• all technical changes made in the MicroVu machine, have been documented and process have been described in detailed for future references.

Standardize on the New Methods:

• process control - all variation to the process are documented and potential sources of variation are addressed
• control plans - weekly maintenance, calibration and software updates are performed
• work instructions - has been provided and operation procedures has been updated
• training

Training Requirements:

• based on the lessons learned and on the new procedures will be really helpful to stakeholders, particularly operational personnel, so that they understand why the changes were necessary and how the conclusions were developed.

FMEA:

We have also revised the FMEA and applied all recommened action to the process.

IMPROVE STAGE

The IMPROVE in DMAIC is about redesigning the process to achieve improved capability. Prior to the Improve phase being completed, the process must be run with its updated configuration and settings. 

This phase requires realization of the KPI’s that are causing the outcome. 

The activity requires three things: 

1 - brainstorming by project owners and members whose goal is to create a solution that will address the main problem - Proposed Counter Measures from the Analyze stage,

2 - testing the solutions -Measurements Comparison,  

3 - assessing the outcome of the executed solutions - Yield calculation.

This stage will help conclude the amount and relationships of identified variables to the project Y. Most of the time before rolling-out a full-scale implementation, project owners conduct test run on a sample group. This is done to determine the finest settings. It is logical to choose the most effective setting which is also factored on the company’s resources, procedures and policies .

Proposed Counter Measures

Counter Measures which have been identified in the Analyze stage now have been assigned  to the Engineer who will look into the main Key Findings and will make necessary adjustment while investigating FMEA.
FMEA is a system for analyzing the design of a product or service system to identify potential failures, then taking steps to counteract or at least minimize the risks from those failures.
The FMEA process begins by identifying “failure modes,” the ways in which a product, service or process could fail. A project engineer examines every element of a service, starting from the inputs and working through to the output delivered to the customer. At each step, the team asks “what could go wrong here?”

 Measurements

Measurements have been collected after analyzing FMEA process. 

The results are represented below on the same graph, which represents previous months. After implementing all of the potential x's - Counter Measures, it has been established that the number of remeasures rapidly decreased, which represents great results of the project. Although, project team have finished identifying all potential causes, they still have to monitor measurement results and continue stimulation analyzes.

 

 

Assessing the outcome of the executed solutions - 
Yield calculation

In our Yield indicators we can see a significant improvement, as over the three shifts there are Yields which are indicating minimum of 96.6%. These results are satisfying, however we will be aiming to achieve Six Sigma Level of 99.99966%. 

After implementing all of the introduced changes by our team we can see improvement, now in our further steps we might assign IT member to look closely at the MicroVu software, as we are presuming that the measurement problems might also be related with something we didn't look at, as we didn't have an IT Software Developer in our team.

 

ANALYZE STAGE

 This phase is about - What does your data tell you? Is often intertwined with the Measure Phase. Our data collection team consist people who have collected  different sets of data and additional data. As the team reviewed the data collected during the Measure Phase, they have decided to adjust the data collection plan to include additional information. Then team analyzed both the data and the process to narrow down and verify the root causes of remeasures occurring at the MicroVu process.

Root Cause Analysis:

Root cause analysis (RCA) is a method of problem solving that tries to identify the root causes of faults or problems. A root cause is a cause that once removed from the problem fault sequence, prevents the final undesirable event from recurring.

Once we have the branches labeled, we began brainstorming possible causes and attached them to the appropriate branches. We have also used 5why's to support our session.

After our team's brainstorming session we have finished our fish-bone diagram to visualized all potential X's, in the next step we  further identified the key findings of potential causes. 

 

Key findings on MicroVu Process Analysis:

In our Key Findings we have distinguished three major causes of the remeasures problem and our support team will be working on improving these three effects on remeasure. A large number of potential root causes (process inputs, X) of the project problem were identified via root cause analysis. However the top 3 potential root causes were selected using multi-voting tool for further validation. 

 

The purpose of this step was to identify, validate and select root cause for elimination. A data collection plan was created and data were collected to establish the relative contribution of each root causes to the project metric, Y. This process was repeated until "valid" root causes could be identified. 

We have:

• Listed and prioritized potential causes of the problem
• Prioritized the root causes (key process inputs) to pursue in the Improve step
• Identified how the process inputs (Xs) affected the process outputs (Ys). Data was analyzed to understand the magnitude of contribution of each root cause, X, to the project metric, Y.
• Detailed process maps could also be created to help pin-point where in the process the root causes reside, and what might have been contributing to the occurrence.

MEASURE STAGE

MEASURE STAGE

The goal of the Measure phase of a Six Sigma DMAIC project is to get as much information as possible on the current process so as to fully understand both how it works and how well it works. This entails three key tasks: creating a detailed process map, gathering baseline data and summarizing and analyzing the data.

 The Measure Stage date have been gathered over the last three months and represents number of Total Measurements and Total Re-measurements. Since the problem have been highlighted we can observed major difference between the beginning of the project and now. The number of re-measurements is declining, as project is still in progress.

                                                                                                   CTQs

 During the Define Stage, the project team established CTQs representing the customer expectation for quality. The CTQ measures and specifications will be used to calculate a process sigma score for the baseline process, so gathering data on those specific measures is a primary focus at this point in the DMAIC project.

We have calculated Total Labour Cost for Total Measurements, Re-measurements and for Good Measurements to see what how much money the company XYZ is wasting on measurements errors.

DPMO

 At this stage, the collected data is evaluated and sigma is calculated. It gives an approximate number of defects. There are 20 opportunities for a measurement error during the MicroVu process. (More details in the Interim Report).

FY Final Yield   

Final Yield and other yield metrics served as baseline scores Measure Phase. we have calculated Yield for further analyzes of the process progression.

Yield Process

Define Stage

Background:

The company XYZ has a focus on cost, improving efficiency, reducing waste (re-measures – waste of time and waste of labour) and implementation of Six Sigma elements.

Project identified a significant opportunity in reducing re-measures and increasing MicroVu availability.

Manufacturing and Quality Assurance raised a problem that a large number of re-measurements are occurring at the MicroVu.

Problem statement:

The existing manufacturing MicroVu is not optimized in terms of correct measurement for range of units being measured, which is contributing to significant labour wastage and equipment availability seen in the department. The problem has been observed over the three months on three shifts (Days, Evenings and Nights).

In XYZ company, there are too many re-measures on the MicroVu, which are Non Value Added activities to the final product for the customer. The aim is to decrease number of re-measures by implementing specific procedures of maintaining operation of MicroVu and realigning its parts.

Further Information on – What is a MicroVu? 

MicroVu measuring machine provide high precision dimensional measurements for quality control and inspection.

        

Source: Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Hz8mNKp_bc

Goal statement :

A Six Sigma project Gantt Chart will also help to ensure deadlines of each phase are achieved to complete all of the goals below.

 

Goals are SMART - Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time bound estimated for max 12 weeks.

1. Allocate specific training and support for the usage of MicroVu.
2. Reduce labour cost – Decrease of minimum 25%.
3. Saving projection up to €40,000/yr saving on labor.
4. Stabilize the process. Have define Operation Procedure for In-Process Measurement (MicroVu).

5. Time saving projection 20% of total number of measurements.
6. Reduction usage of quartz mandrel 33%.

Metric	Baseline	Goal	Blue Sky
Labour Cost	€16,0000 / yr	25% Reduction	30% Reduction
Time of Measurements	7800 Hours / yr	20% Reduction	30% Reduction
Quartz Mandrel Cost	€36,000 / yr	33% Reduction	66% Reduction
Financial Savings	Project Savings €51,880

Project Scope:

Project Scope is focusing on customers, theirs expectations and needs, also from the company point of view it is vital to improve manufacturing and minimalise waste (savings). The key factor in the scope is to establish CTQ's and theirs opportunity for improvement. When documenting project scope's all involved parties are required to be specific as possible in order to avoid scope creep. Also flow chart be be determined during the definig the project's scope.
Brainstorming Session will help to establish potential causes of the existing problem.