Using DOE in Sales and Marketing - Cell Phone Campaign

DOE, known as Conjoint Analysis in the marketing literature, is the most powerful statistical technique for making the connection between the psychology of the customers’ decision making process and the product or service you have to offer. When applied well, it can allow you to gain an almost psychic insight into the Vital Xs influencing a customer’s buying decision.

Bridging Functional Silos to Achieve Customer Impact

During the Define phase, it is common that a project is made smaller and more manageable by limiting the scope of the business process it will address. This may, however, cause problems during the Measure and Analyze phases when root causes outside the project scope are found. An exploration of this issue is found in a case study that demonstrates how one company employed an integrated approach to bridge functional silos and achieved "customer impact" when the project scopes appeared mismatched to the resources available. By combining upper level process mapping with a series of failure modes and effects analyses (FMEAs), the company effectively scoped and managed an organization-wide initiative with hundreds of Six Sigma projects.

Process Capability Calculations with Non-Normal Data

During your Six Sigma project, you must calculate the defect rate of your business process twice: first during the Define phase to show the impact of the problem and second during the Control phase to show how well you have improved the process. When you don’t have normally distributed data, you must either:

• Divide the data into subsets according to business subprocesses
• Mathematically transform the data and specification limits
• Turn the continuous data into discrete data

The Impact of Control Strategies on Z Shift Values

A survey of projects at ABB using continuous process data for the calculation of Z(short term), Z(long term) and Z(shift) showed a range of values for Z(shift) from zero to seven at the Measure phase. Large Z(shift) values indicate a lack of control and give the Master Black Belt a reasonable target for project improvement.

We have interviewed process owners, management and quality staff in work environments where real-time, continuous data is available to the process owners, but where SPC goals are not strictly followed owing to conflicting performance goals or there are time delays in reporting or correcting processes. Process owners have developed heuristic, rational and successful strategies to reduce defects while minimizing interruptions in production.

We applied these strategies to typical process data and reproduced the observed relationship between Z(short term) and Z(long term) for continuous data, and derived a relationship to estimate Z(short term) from Z(long term, discrete) directly from long term defect counts.

Six Sigma Projects in the Human Resources Department

HR is no different than any other aspect of a business in being able to deliver Six Sigma projects with significant financial benefits to the company. Projects can be directed toward the internal customer by conducting HR functions faster and more efficiently, or directed toward the external customer by contributing to the ongoing transformation of the company to achieve a well functioning Six Sigma program.

Trusting the Data: Gage R&R in Transactional Projects

An essential component of any Six Sigma project is the gage R&R step. When traditional tools are hard to apply in transactional projects, the best approach is to ask the question, "Do I understand what my data represents and can I trust it?"

Calculating Process Efficiency in Transactional Projects

The principles of Lean Manufacturing can be applied to any business process. This article outlines some of the common problems seen in a transactional project and outlines an example where simple graphical methods can be used to interpret cycle time data. Once the non-Lean processes are identified and characterized, then 5S, brainstorming and other improvement tools can be applied with realistic goals for improvement.