Assignment Details:

In today’s increasingly competitive market, many organisations are facing challenges in operations due to various issues in their business processes which are critical to their business. Lean Six Sigma provides the methods and tools to identify process issues and implement measures to improve the business process.

• Consider the organisation you are currently working in or the one with which you are familiar. You are asked to identify a business process in this organization that is facing challenges in meeting customers’ expectation or internal performance targets.
• You may discuss with your supervisor or an experienced colleague to select this process. You are going to conduct a Lean Six Sigma project to improve this process.
• Submit a report on how you would identify the process issues, analyse the problem, and recommend ideas to improve the process using the Lean Six Sigma DMAIC approach.

We shall thereafter call your selected organisation as the “subject organisation” and the selected business process as the “subject business process”.

Question 1 – Background, Define & Measure

(a) Introduce the subject organisation – the name of the organization (if it is sensitive to provide the real name, use a pseudonym instead), its nature of the business, products or services provided, and types of customers served. Provide the website address of the organization if any.

(b) Briefly describe the role/function of the selected subject business process. Develop the SIPOC diagram of the process. Define the problem statement about the issue and the impact on the organisation’s operations.

(c) State the VOC, define the CTQ metric to measure the process performance. (3 marks) (d) Propose the project objective after describing the current performance of the process.

Question 2 – Analyse & Improve

(a) Create the “As-Is” Process Map for the subject business process.

(b) Apply the fishbone diagram to generate the possible causes of the problem in the process by organising a brainstorming session with your colleagues. Briefly describe how the brainstorm session is organized or take and show a photo of the brainstorming session.

(c) Conduct a Gemba walk, describe and show*

(i) At least three (3) wastes you observed in the subject business process.

(ii) The likely root causes of each of the above wastes. * Show by means of photos taken on the symptoms or evidence of the root causes and wastes observed during the Gemba walk. Students are to seek permission from the organisation before taking the photos. Students may produce drawings or sketches if taking photos is not allowed in the workplace. The photos and drawings should not reveal company confidential information.

(d) Recommend and describe three (3) countermeasures/improvement ideas to improve the process. Indicate whether the countermeasure is to address the root causes or remove/eliminate the wastes identified from the Gemba walk.

Question 3 – Control

(a) Recommend two (2) measures to standardise the improved process in Question 2. Examine the effectiveness of the measures.

(b) Develop a control plan for the improved process. You can make assumptions for the metric specification/requirement and any other quantitative figures in the control plan.

Question 4 – Lean Six Sigma Deployment

(a) Discuss with your supervisor or speak to someone involved in quality or process improvement function, relate and describe how your organisation currently drives continuous or quality improvements with regards to approach or methodology, organization and roles, training programs, etc. Examine and describe the challenges of the current approach. (Limit your answer to 350 words)

(b) Evaluate and recommend how your organisation can improve the effectiveness of its continuous or quality improvement effort through adopting the Lean Six Sigma management – organisation and roles, improvement project selection and deployment programs, etc. Appraise and explain the benefits and advantages of adopting the Lean Six Sigma management. (Limit your answer to 350 words)