Sustaining a Culture of Process Control and Continuous Improvement

The Roadmap for Efficiency and Operational Excellence

Philip J. Gisi

• Editorial: Productivity Press
• Año: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351582872
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Commerce
• Categoría: Commerce Général

This comprehensive book presents a methodology for continuous process improvement in a structured, logical, and easily understandable framework based on industry accepted tools, techniques, and practices. It begins by explaining the conditions necessary for establishing a stable and capable process and the actions required to maintain process control, while setting the stage for sustainable efficiency improvements driven by waste elimination and process flow enhancement.

This structured approach makes a clear connection between the need for a quality process to serve as the foundation for incremental efficiency improvements. This book moves beyond talking about the value contribution of tools and techniques for process control and continuous improvement by focusing on the daily work routines necessary to maintain and sustain these activities as part of a lean process and management mindset.

Part 1 discusses process quality improvement with an understanding of variation and its impact on process performance. It continues by stressing the importance of standardizing a process to achieve process stability. Once process stability is reflected in a consistent and predictable output, attention is turned to ensuring the process is capable of consistently meeting customer requirements. This series of activities sets the foundation for process control and the sustainable pursuit of efficiency improvements.

Part 2 focuses on efficiency improvement by eliminating waste while improving process flow using proven tools and methods. Although there is a clear relationship between waste elimination and process flow, these activities are discussed separately to allow those more interested in waste elimination to work independently from those looking to optimize value stream flow.

Part 3 explores the principles, practices, systems, and behaviors required to maintain process control while creating a mindset of continuous incremental improvement. It considers the role organizational structure, discipline, and accountability play as essential components for long term operational success.

This book will:

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• Provide readers with a clear roadmap for establishing, achieving, and maintaining process control as the foundation upon which to pursue efficiency improvements.

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• Establish direction and methods for continuous and sustainable process improvement

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• Define the practices, systems, and behaviors required to realize desired results and develop a culture of process control and continuous improvement along the road to operational excellence.

I Quality Improvement: Building a Foundation for Lean Efficiency Improvements

Overview

Processes exhibit a life cycle. They start with a design concept, move into development and are verified against product and process requirements before manufacturing starts. During the development stage, process stability and capability must be demonstrated before the product and supporting process are released into production since both contribute to a foundation upon which all other improvements take hold. Unfortunately, many organizations embark on efficiency improvements without considering the current quality (e.g. stability and capability) of their existing processes validated during the development phase. This oversight may jeopardize the integrity of subsequent improvement efforts since process enhancements built on an unstable process are not likely to be sustainable over time.

In our quest for continuous improvement, we often rush to implement changes without due consideration of current process conditions. When we recognize processes have not been performing to expectation, we must first “fix” what’s broken before making enhancements. Unfortunately, many of the processes that we struggle to improve today were likely efficient and effective at their inception. In fact, most of these processes were designed to be stable and capable of consistently meeting customer requirements. Regrettably, with all running well, other priorities started drawing our attention elsewhere, leading us to ignore the periodic monitoring and control necessary to prevent these processes from slowly deteriorating into a state of instability and underperformance over time. With loss of attention and often unclear process ownership, people working with these core processes encounter problems that become roadblocks. These unresolved roadblocks lead to creation of workarounds in order to simply get the job done!

Problems continue to mount as new obstacles occur, all of which are being overlooked due to lack of clear ownership and accountability. As the number of workarounds increases, process efficiency decreases, impacting the overall performance of resulting outputs. Consequently, we eventually come to realize our processes have broken down due to a lack of attention and control. As with any process or system, if we do not take time to look for deviations and react appropriately to maintain proper control, a process will slowly deteriorate, leaving in its wake defective products, inadequate services, frustrated employees and unsatisfied customers.

Quality improvement starts with the identification and elimination of defects (or special cause variation) preventing continuous conformance to requirements. Defects cause process instability. Special cause variation must be eliminated in order for a process to achieve stability. A stable process exhibits only common cause variation. This is where the process is behaving in a systematic and predictable manner. It’s statistically stable. Variation is consistent and “normal” for the way the process is expected to operate. One must have a stable process before process improvements can be meaningfully pursued.

Several methods have been introduced over the years focused on improving quality, including the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle discussed previously, ISO 9000, total quality management (TQM) and Six Sigma, to name a few. These approaches to improvement have had some level of prominence in manufacturing and transactional domains for the past 30–40 years due to their focus on the elimination of process defects. While many of these methods continue to be used for quality improvement today, others like lean concepts have been included or even used to replace them. Regardless of the method or combination of methods used for process improvement, the fundamental approach remains the same … process stability and capability before efficiency; efficiency through waste elimination and flow improvement; sustainability through structure, discipline and accountability.

As discussed previously, the first part of this book will explore process quality, which is rooted in stability and conformance to requirements. A process must be stable and capable before meaningful efficiency improvements can be pursued. If a process is not stable, the first course of action is to achieve stability. If stable, process capability is the next priority to create a solid foundation for efficiency improvements, which is covered in more detail in the second part of this book.

TQM and Six Sigma

The American Society for Quality (asq.org) describes ISO 9000 as a set of international standards on quality management and quality assurance developed to help companies effectively document their quality practices in order to maintain an efficient quality system. According to i Six Sigma (isixsigma.com), “Total Quality Management (TQM) is a management approach that originated in the 1950s and has steadily become more popular since the early 1980s. Total quality is a description of the culture, attitude and organization of a company that strives to provide customers with products and services that satisfy their needs. The culture requires quality in all aspects of the company’s operations, with processes being done right the first time and defects and waste eradicated from operations”. Although there is no widely agreed-upon approach to TQM, it leverages many of the existing quality tools and techniques used to establish and maintain process control.

Another method that grew in prominence during the 1980s was Six Sigma. Contrary to TQM, Six Sigma brought a very specific methodology, called define, measure, analyze, improve and control (DMAIC), to process improvement. Six Sigma is a disciplined, data-driven approach for improving the quality and efficiency of an organization’s operational and transactional processes. It’s a data-based methodology that is used to address product and service problems through reducing product variation, optimizing processes and developing robust new products and services. This is accomplished through the deployment of statistical- and analytical-based tools proven effective for problem-solving and decision-making.

The ultimate goal of any quality initiative is to achieve and maintain product and service conformance to requirements. Once consistency has been demonstrated, improvement activities can shift their focus from eliminating special cause variation to reducing common cause variation in cases where product or service reliability requires further enhancement. Once stability and capability have been confirmed, process efforts can focus on efficiency (productivity) improvements.

Key Points

■ Quality improvements focus on individual processes to ensure conformance to requirements.

■ A stable and capable process is a prerequisite for implementing efficiency (lean) improvements.

■ A process must be stable before capability can be assessed, established and controlled.

■ All processes must be continuously monitored and controlled to ensure stability and maintain reliability over time.

■ Process control sustains quality improvements.

Chapter 1

Process Variation

Variation in behavior leads to variation in results.

The Shingo Model for Operational Excellence

Understanding Process Variation

Process variation is the root of many quality problems. The ability of a process to produce results that conform to requirements is an indicator of its capability. Conformance is often assessed by the degree to which a process is performed within its control parameters or a product meets the form, fit or functional requirements specified by engineering or customer. Process capability can be evaluated by comparing output results to a process target (mean), data variation (standard deviation) or proportions (e.g. percent good vs. bad). Figure 1.1 visualizes the benefit of shifting a process output to better align with its desired target value (mean) and reducing process variation to within specification limits to achieve a more capable process. Stability is reflected in consistent demonstration of process output capability.

Figure 1.1 Reducing process variation.

(Source unknown – Reproduced.)

The known characteristics associated with variation that should be understood when working to manage it include:

■ Variation exists in everything we do; it’s always present

■ Variation is caused, can be predicted and quantified

■ Sources of variation are additive

■ Process output variation is affected by input and process activities

■ Quality can be affected by significant process variation

■ Process variation is a combination of part and measurement system variation

Variation observed in process outputs can be correlated with variation observed in process inputs and activities, which include machines, ...