SQT Blog

Continuing from earlier …

When choosing Projects to tackle, they should be SMART:
– Specific: A narrow focus (to avoid lengthy projects that never finish)
– Measurable: Data availability is good / plentiful
– Achievable: The focus area is within our control or influence
– Relevant: The fix will be directly felt by the project’s customer
– Time bound: Result achieved by a certain date

But watch out for Project Selection Pitfalls

A significant percentage of projects that fail do so because the project was not appropriate in the first place.

Characteristics of inappropriate projects:
➢ Business case has not been made
➢ A solution has already been determined
➢ Many of the key stakeholders have not bought in to the project
➢ Data is unavailable and very hard to get
➢ Scope is too broad, project takes too long
➢ Key resources are not available
➢ There is no urgency to complete the project – not a burning issue
➢ Project is selected by managers in isolation, not part of a clear strategy.

Some interesting data:

“Without data, you are just another person with an opinion”
Lao Tzu

Data from the last 78 projects completed by graduates of our Black and Green Belt programmes showed that €7,866,858 was achieved in cost savings by their companies, equating to an average of just over €100,000 per attendee.

The above 78 graduates come from sixteen companies all in the private sector. They range in size from a company employing 4 people to one of 4000 employees and are evenly split between service and manufacturing industries. The projects vary from cost reduction projects targeting waste elimination/yield improvement to revenue generation via increased sales conversion/reduced time to market. These are real projects undertaken by real people, delivering real savings for their companies.

Making change stick and success last

Finally before you go implementing “improvement projects” remember, most people resist change and the reasons are as varied as the people themselves. They look into the crystal ball of change and see scary bad things happening to them. Resistance to new ideas can be inconvenient, even a real pain but is it something to worry about? Yes, the cost of being unable to get people to embrace new methods and ideas can be tremendous. A change effort is actually more likely to fail due to the inability of opinion leaders to deal with resistance, than it is due to the technical merits of the project

So before launching a major improvement project or change initiative, get people on board, hold crucial conversations, work through differences of opinion, understand their honest concerns and you will be rewarded with a supportive and committed team all going in the same direction, i.e. towards lasting success.

What makes a company?

Its customers
Its staff
Its suppliers

I thought of this saying “Ni bheidh a leitheid ann aris.” when visiting one of our suppliers recently.

The Nenagh Guardian does a lot of printing for us at SQT. SQT was previously based near Nenagh and we continued getting our printing done there after our move to Limerick, about eight years ago.

Recently for the launch of App School, we thought (late) of having some flyers printed. I phoned Paddy Brennan at Nenagh Guardian on a Thursday to ask him about printing glossy A5 flyers in time for a talk on the following Tuesday evening. Paddy said no problem. Have the design into him Monday morning, they’d print them then and I could collect them when passing through Nenagh, Tuesday afternoon.

‘No problem’ are just lovely words to hear when organising something late.

‘No problem’ to some extent sums up the ethos of this printing works.

As well as running the printing works, the Nenagh Guardian also publishes the weekly local newspaper, which circulates in North Tipperary. The paper is one of the few Irish regional newspapers still in private ownership.

When I dropped in that Tuesday afternoon, I realised it was some time since I had been in the printing area. It had been reorganised. I was intrigued to see all the old copies of the newspaper bound on shelves. There’s history here.

The first edition July 1838 – 171 years ago, pre-famine Ireland

The second edition

A mouse even did a bit of searching!

I must go back and search those early editions myself for any mention of training courses …

It’s true, “Ni bheidh a leitheid ann aris.”

Over a cup of coffee a few months back with Kevina O’Donoghue, our tutor on “Contamination Control”, the idea of starting up a Cleanroom Network was raised (nothing like caffeine to trigger the creative buds).
We spent the next few weeks talking to companies with Cleanrooms and to people who work in Cleanrooms, to see if there was any interest in getting together on a quarterly basis to discuss and share “all things relevant to Cleanrooms”. The response was fantastic and so we bravely booked a room for the 30th June in the Radisson hotel Athlone for 25 people. This was then changed to 35, then 40, then 46, then 55 and so much to our delight our first network meeting kicked off with 58 people in attendance, coming from Pharmaceutical and Medical device companies (both large and small), hospitals, test labs and cleanroom supply companies.
The audience was wide and varied but all had cleanrooms in common.

As it was our first meeting we had an agenda set to get the ball rolling so this included a presentation by Adrian Fuery, MD of Zimmer on the “Challenges faced during the initial set-up of a cleanroom”, followed by Johnny Curran from Cleanzone Technology who spoke about “Cleanroom classification and certification preparation”.
After lunch and some essential networking, Kevina spoke for an hour on “Audit findings and preventative action in relation to contamination control” and this sparked some very interesting discussions and many different points of view. For example “is a wedding ring considered a piece of jewellery in a cleanroom?” and “should false tan be allowed in a cleanroom environment?”. For a group that had only come together for the first time, the interaction and willingness to participate in discussions and share information was fantastic.

We spent the last hour chatting in groups, identifying the priority topics people wanted covered in the next and subsequent network meetings and much to my surprise, even managed to get nine willing volunteers to lead the discussions at our 2nd Cleanroom Network meeting on 17th September.

Overall it was a great day and a great success and proves there’s a lot to be said for drinking coffee!!!

Continuing from last week …

Before we put this all together look at the following “principles” and see how they could be applied to your organisation.

Principle #1
…‘Define Value’

Principle #2

…‘Identify the Value Stream’

This is all the steps and actions required to bring a specific product or service through the three critical transformation processes:

• Idea transformation – concept to market launch
• Information transformation – order-take through scheduling, to delivery
• Physical transformation – raw materials to final customer

Principle #3
… ‘Make the work flow’

➢ Every time the flow of work stops (be that a product flow in a company or a document flow in a service department or a patient flow in a hospital) we consume resources that adds costs but generates absolutely no value.

Principle #4
… ‘Respond only when the customer pulls work’

➢ Overproduction is the worst form of waste as it generates all other waste types e.g. transportation, inventory, waiting, paperwork etc.

Principle #5
…‘Strive to seek perfection’

➢ The real benchmark is zero waste, not what your competitors are doing!

Together the elements and principles all add up to one thing: Lean Six Sigma
It is the methodology being used by many progressive Irish and International organisations to achieve lasting business success.

In simple terms…

Lean is an approach that seeks to improve flow in the value stream and eliminate waste. It’s about doing things quickly.

Six Sigma uses a powerful framework (DMAIC) and statistical tools to uncover root causes to understand and reduce variation. It’s about doing things right (defect free).

Bringing them together, Lean Six Sigma

Since its development and application by World Class companies such as Motorola, Honeywell and General Electric two decades ago, Six Sigma has become the fastest growing and most successful approach to continuous improvement spanning all industries, regardless of size, position in the supply chain or service provided.

The focus of the Lean Six Sigma Methodology is to gain an understanding of what drives variation in processes so that it can be reduced and controlled, and to eliminate waste in all its forms.

Key success factors differentiating Lean Six Sigma from other quality initiatives:
• Major emphasis on analytical approach, leading to accurate data-based decision making
• Project driven using a defined set of problem solving tools
• Top management leadership focused on success and driving bottom-line savings
• Structured training at various levels to deploy tools and methodology, so that they become “the preferred way of working”

To be concluded next week …

We put together the following guide for Lean Six Sigma. Because it is long I will break it up into three posts. I hope you find it useful and welcome any comments.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change”
Charles Darwin

What makes a successful organisation? Being better, faster, cheaper than the competition? Delivering value in the eyes of the customer? Eliminating waste in all processes? Using less to do more? Does this criteria for success apply equally to manufacturing and service organisations? Yes, is the answer to all questions and getting there is a major challenge to Ireland’s future prosperity.

We need to move away from “the way things have always worked”, to better and smarter ways of doing business. All of us can and absolutely need to improve if Ireland is to move forward and be successful.

How do we know what is better and smarter? Where do we start within the company or organisation? How do we measure success? How do we know what success is?

Let’s start at the beginning.

Achieving success involves a number of key elements…

➢ Customers:
You must start by focusing on the customer and identify their critical to quality requirements. What exactly do they want/need? When do they want it? How should it be delivered? Where should it be delivered?

➢ Processes:
You must ensure that your processes are designed and managed to meet these key customer requirements.

➢ Measurements:
There must be appropriate measurements in place to understand how well you are meeting customer requirements and more importantly, how well the customer feels you are meeting their requirements (two completely different things!!).

➢ People:
You need to involve your people, ensuring they are effectively equipped (trained) so that they are able and feel able, to challenge their processes and improve the way they work.

➢ Tools:
Improvements are implemented project by project. Don’t boil the ocean, start with low hanging fruit and work your way through the organisation using a systematic, data driven, problem solving and process improvement approach (more about this later).

➢ Leadership:
No change happens without the correct Leadership, Support and Management Behaviour, this is the real key to success.

To be continued next week