Continuous Improvement

ABSTRACT Lean Six Sigma Executive Overview (Case Study) Templates are a guide to Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, and Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt Projects. Lean Six Sigma Practitioners use the DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control) Phases. The Lean Six Sigma Executive Overview (Case Study) include the most common tools used in the DMAIC Phases. There are Backup Slides that include the tools and templates of Optional or less often tools. There are guidelines in the notes section. These templates are used to document Lean Six Sigma Projects as they are executed. I wish you well on your projects. Steven Bonacorsi, Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt.

This paper similar to the study of recruitment and selection process, element of organisation social capital building, the paper focused attention on one function of human resource as it relates to organisational social capital building, the paper is widening the gap in knowledge on how to influence other human resources function such as training and development. This paper opens discussion on how training and development relates to organisational social capital building using Nigeria medium enterprises human resource perception. Business today operates in an environment, where every organisation focus on attaining increased productivity and performance from the staff they recruit. Human resource practitioners are expected to, not just, recruit staffs; they are saddled with the responsibility of training and developing employees they recruit in order to the achieve objectives of their firm. Hence, the use of training and development programmes and policies to build social capital for firms requires attention, that too, in a contextual manner. This paper studied the view of medium enterprises human resource practitioners as regards using training and development programmes to build organisation social capital.
Quantitative approach was used as the sole research method, 500 questionnaires were sent out to human resource practitioners in Nigeria medium enterprises, 451 were retrieved back. The paper uses a Likert-scale questionnaire as instrument and descriptive, bivariate and multiple regression analysis to investigate if human resource practitioners in Nigeria medium enterprises understand the need to use their training and development programmes to build organisation social capital for their firms and what influences this perception generates. The study reveal that Nigeria medium enterprises human resource practitioners focus on the social nature of work than on efficient process of work whilst design training and development programmes and in assessment of training needs of the organisation implying they are in support of the use of training and development function to build organisation social capital. Education background and qualification of human resource practitioners is found to the only factor responsible this positive perception.

Esta tesis desarrolla el modelo de un sistema para la toma de decisiones y mejora continua que toda organización o industria debería de poseer; tomando como punto crítico la gestión cuantitativa de información. En este trabajo monográfico el modelo propuesto se implementa en las granjas de porcicultura, ubicadas en Nicaragua, de la compañia AGANORSA. La tesis incluye como base los conocimientos desarrollados por Russell Ackoff, Edwards Deming, y Eliyahu Goldratt. Además de utilizar métodos cuantitativos como el cálculo de capacidad instalada, la modelación y simulación de procesos, análisis de factibilidad de escenarios, y otros.

This project is the continuation of the successful Repair Time Standards research initiative started two years ago to establish accurate repair time standards for vehicles in public transit systems. During this third phase the engine removal and replacement system were ...

Managers come and go, but real leaders of innovation are rare and their tenures in any given role may be short, either because they are in high demand or because senior executives don't really understand how to leverage change agents to achieve their business objectives. Robotics Process Automation (RPA) is one of those disruptive technologies that presents leaders with an opportunity to adapt, change and achieve marked results. But how ready are leaders to embrace the transformation that RPA portends. Assessing RPA Readiness Before embarking on the RPA journey, leaders should ask themselves a few core questions relating to their current and desired states of operation, their existing talent pool and other resources, and the senior executive's willingness to truly sponsor the combination of human and virtual labor. Questions might include the following:  How significant are the competitive and operational related threats and opportunities in the eyes of senior management driving the need for RPA?  How would the shift to combining human and virtual labor reshape the core value propositions for accuracy, efficiency, cost reduction, customer service and profitability?  How disruptive will RPA really be and what are the varying perceptions of IT, compliance, risk management, and business unit leaders regarding its implementation?  How should skill requirements and work processes change to fully realize the potential benefits of RPA? The answers to these questions can help business unit and shared-services leaders build the business case for RPA transformation and can inform their sponsors, stakeholders and critics regarding the longer-term strategy, planning, and resource decisions that RPA will require. As great as the opportunities are for RPA, our practical application of the technology in banks, insurance companies, health care and manufacturing suggests that most companies do not do a great job of socializing RPA adequately among constituent stakeholders before launching their RPA initiatives. Companies seeking to make such a transition face constraints relating to process and work flow, talent development, robotics operating models, RPA governance, IT operational alignment and technology requirements. There may be concerns about integrating legacy systems with RPA technologies, the impact of robotics on PII, SOX, SCC, FRB, FSB, OCC, HIPPA, GAP and other compliance and reporting requirements. There is also a shortage of the talent and skills required to undertake RPA transformation programs, as well as conflicting strategic priorities within leadership teams. Furthermore, while the focus of RPA has been on improving process efficiency, accuracy and transaction speed, there exist equally valuable

The 2014 update of this note is now available at http://bit.ly/LPS-5cc — 

On the basis of research they did to improve construction productivity in the 1980s, Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell created The Last Planner  System (LPS) to improve the predictability and reliability of construction production.
Last Planner manages the relationships, conversations and commitments that together enable program & production planning decisions to be made collaboratively at the lowest possible level in a whole range of one-off production settings — software development, ship-building, yacht fit-out, construction and other examples of one-off production. With adaptations, LPS works in new product development and design too. 
Last Planner is a short-term project planning system first used in engineering construction 20 years ago.  It continues to create significant improvements in project & program safety, predictability, productivity, speed of delivery, profit and feelings of wellbeing among project staff.  LPS offers a realistic way to collaboratively manage project-based production, enables issues to be identified and resolved before they become problems on-site and increases the chances that work will flow and projects be completed on time.  It is a vital link between logistics and building assembly teams.  That’s why more and more companies are making it part of their standard procedure for project delivery.
In construction, for example, Last Planner promotes conversations between trade foremen and site-management at appropriate levels of detail, and before issues become critical.  These conversations increase the chances that work flows and recognises that personal relationships and peer pressure are critical to that process.
Over the last two decades Last Planner has evolved. It has become associated with new theory, some details have changed and others clarified.  This process will and should continue.  As when making any supposed improvement, the change should be benchmarked against pre-change performance so as to be able to answer the question “is this change an improvement”. ""

Today, it can be maintained that the customer is a ‘king’ as he will buy only the products that satisfy his needs and wants. The companies of today are facing new challenges: global business and local operation, standardization, and individualization of products, demanding customers and fierce competition. The company wants to achieve shorter product development time, lower costs, high quality of the product, and finally, customer satisfaction. In order to achieve the set goals, the company has to take into account the customers wants and needs during the new-product-development process. This article presents the mode of description of processes that allow recognition of suitable natural systems and their transformation into technical systems and a model for management of development process. The phases of quality functions deployment (QFD) during the new product development process along with the location for collecting customer needs and wants are presented. A detailed description...

In order to continuously improve its knowledge and to identify problems and possible solutions, an organization requires understanding of the way business is aligned with the organizational strategy and how information systems are supporting the business. The paper presents a framework for describing and associating organizational concepts at multiple levels of detail using three separate areas of concerns: goals and strategy, business processes, and information systems. The framework is presented as an extension to the ...

ABSTRACT Purpose – Ensuring compliance with food safety legislation and market requirements is one of the key issues facing the poultry meat industry. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how a pre-requisite programme (PRP) and key performance indicators for food safety can be developed in the poultry meat supply chain. Design/methodology/approach – The first stage of the research involved an examination of literature, which was conducted using desk research. The second stage includes a discussion on food safety management systems in primary production and the development of food safety plans with an associated PRP. Findings – Effective food safety management systems in primary production are critical to supplying food which is safe and wholesome. In order to manage food safety effectively measurable indicators of performance should be developed. These will provide data on the suitability of the food for sale, the effectiveness of the food safety management system and any potential areas of weakness which in turn will drive continuous improvement. Originality/value – This study is of benefit to the broiler industry in the further development of quality assurance standards and business improvement models.

Petroleum industry production systems are highly automatized. In this industry, all functions (e.g., planning, scheduling and maintenance) are automated and in order to remain competitive researchers attempt to design an adaptive control system which optimizes the process, but also able to adapt to rapidly evolving demands at a fixed cost. In this paper, we present a multi-agent approach for the dynamic task scheduling in petroleum industry production system. Agents simultaneously insure effective production scheduling and the continuous improvement of the solution quality by means of reinforcement learning, using the SARSA algorithm. Reinforcement learning allows the agents to adapt, learning the best behaviors for their various roles without reducing the performance or reactivity. To demonstrate the innovation of our approach, we include a computer simulation of our model and the results of experimentation applying our model to an Algerian petroleum refinery.

An Adaptive Management Framework (AMF) is a systematic process for continually improving management policies and practices by learning from the outcomes of operations through research. There are many benefits to an adaptive management framework as it allows for decision making to proceed even when there are considerable gaps in knowledge and uncertainty, by specifying actions, monitoring and adjustment of visions,

Most risk management activity in the healthcare sector is retrospective, based on learning from experience. This is feasible where the risks are routine, but emergency operations plans (EOP) guide the response to events that are both high risk and rare. Under these circumstances, it is important to get the response right the first time, but learning from experience is usually not an option. This case study presents the rationale for taking a proactive approach to improving healthcare organizations' EOP. It demonstrates how the Prospective Hazard Analysis (PHA) Toolkit can drive organizational learning and argues that this toolkit may lead to more efficient improvement than drills and exercises.

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Wiley's copyright policies do not allow me to post the published version of the paper, but they do allow me to send out individual copies. So if you don't have access to the Journal of Healthcare Risk Management and would like a copy of this article, please email me at:
alan [dot] j [dot] card [at] gmail [dot] com

Three definitions of ``quality'' have entered the qualityassurance (QA) debate: quality as value for money, quality as fitfor the purpose of the institution, quality as transforming. The firstis pivotal for retrospective QA, which sees QA in terms ofaccountability, and conforming to externally imposed standards. The lasttwo are pivotal for prospective QA, which sees QA asmaintaining and enhancing the quality of teaching and learning in theinstitution. In this paper, the reflective practitioner is taken as themodel for prospective QA. Three stages are involved in institutionalreflective practice: articulating an espoused theory of teaching, thequality model (QM); continually improving on current practicethrough quality enhancement (QE), in which staff development should playan important role; and making quality feasible (QF), by removingimpediments to good teaching, which often arise through distortedpriorities in institutional policy and procedures. These three stages,QM, QE, and QF, are essential ingredients in prospective QA.

Root cause analysis is perhaps the most widely used tool in healthcare risk management, but does it actually lead to successful risk control? Are there categories of risk control that are more likely to be effective? And do healthcare risk managers have the tools they need to support the risk control process? This systematic review examines how the healthcare sector translates risk analysis to risk control action plans and examines how to do better. It suggests that the hierarchy of risk controls should inform risk control action planning and that new tools should be developed to improve the risk control process.

Learning style models constitute a valuable tool for improving individual learning by the use of adaptation techniques based on them. In this paper, we present how the benefit of considering learning styles with adaptation purposes, as part of the user model, can be extended to the context of collaborative learning as a key feature for group formation. We explore the effects that the combination of students with different learning styles in specific groups may have in the final results of the tasks accomplished by them collaboratively. With this aim, a case study with 166 students of computer science has been carried out, from which conclusions are drawn. We also describe how an existing web-based system can take advantage of learning style information in order to form more productive groups. Our ongoing work concerning the automatic extraction of grouping rules starting from data about previous interactions within the system is also outlined. Finally, we present our challenges, related to the continuous improvement of collaboration by the use and dynamic modification of automatic grouping rules.

The main objective of this study is to develop a life cycle mode for a process-oriented quality assurance in organizational performance of food and beverage companies. As an iterative and dynamic process, quality assurance is interwoven in the production and process of food and beverages in the agro-allied industry. Through the review of literatures in existence, specifically those that focus on procedures, frameworks and methodology, a process oriented framework is developed around non-linear sequential stages presented as: planning (before), design and production (during), post production and delivery (after). The model is approved through an advanced systematic methods employed in collecting, organizing and generating reports about quality assurance for updates or changes. Many studies emphasize that quality assurance needs a friendly environs that take quality as a key factor and a work value for attaining the objectives of an organization. A practical quality assurance model is then proposed by this study that complies with the guide of food and beverage developmental stages. Practical steps are recommended in each stage. There is great potential in the quality assurance model for its transformation from static, the state of after-the-fact to a state of dynamism and iterative state, thereby improving the ongoing self-improvement culture

The new concept of designing global manufacturing for world markets has emerged in the 21 century. Global manufacturing refers to technologies and systems that represent the best modern manufacturing practices successfully implemented in the industries. The concept of dynamic global world-class manufacturing(WCM) has become the single most motivating theory in many major industries and reliability management is one of the

Lean Six Sigma Measure Phase Tollgate Templates are a guide to Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, and Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt Projects. Lean Six Sigma Practitioners use the DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control) Phases. The Lean Six Sigma Measure Phase Tollgate Templates include the most common tools used in the Measure Phase. There are Backup Slides that include the tools and templates of Optional or less often tools. There are guidelines in the notes section. These templates are used to document Lean Six Sigma Projects as they are executed. There are checklists and guides to ensure the Measure Phase is completed and approved before moving to the next process improvement phase. I wish you well on your projects. Steven Bonacorsi, Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt.

The persistent high failure of change and transformation initiatives, to meet their expected outcomes, even with prevailing change management process and knowledge, has driven our need to understand what influences a human systems capability to change, and how can organisations achieve true Agility. Dynamic Systems Maturity Theory research has taken us a giant step forward in understanding how we can better manage change and transformation, and more importantly by the application of the theory improve the success rates of change and transformation initiatives. This paper introduces DSMT and its application to organisation change through the Organisation Capability Maturity Framework (OrgCMF™).

Organisations are increasingly focusing on their business processes (BPs) to excel. Since the journey towards process excellence is challenging, various authors have proposed a business process maturity model (BPMM) to gradually improve maturity and capability. Nonetheless, a comprehensive definition for BPMM, maturity and capability is missing. Moreover, the differences between maturity and capability are frequently neglected. Therefore, this study elaborates on the lacking foundation. In particular, a thorough literature study is conducted to address three gaps regarding the BPMM scope, terminology and design. It reveals six basic BPMM components within a BP lifecycle (scope gap): (1) modelling, (2) deployment, (3) optimisation, (4) management, (5) culture and (6) structure. Their overall growth refers to maturity, whereas the growth of an individual component includes capability (terminology gap). To increase its usability, a BPMM gives guidance on both assessing and improving BP...

The Internet provides developers of connected software, including web sites, applications, and devices, an unprecedented opportunity to accelerate innovation by evaluating ideas quickly and accurately using trustworthy controlled experiments (e.g., A/B tests and their generalizations). From front-end user-interface changes to backend recommendation systems and relevance algorithms, from search engines (e.g., Google, Microsoft’s Bing, Yahoo) to retailers (e.g., Amazon, eBay, Netflix, Etsy) to social networking services (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) to Travel services (e.g., Expedia, Airbnb, Booking.com) to many startups, online controlled experiments are now utilized to make data-driven decisions at a wide range of companies. While the theory of a controlled experiment is simple, and dates back to Sir Ronald A. Fisher’s experiments at the Rothamsted Agricultural Experimental Station in England in the 1920s, the deployment and mining of online controlled experiments at scale (e.g., hundreds of experiments run every day at Bing) and deployment of online controlled experiments across dozens of web sites and applications has taught us many lessons.  We provide an introduction, share real examples, key lessons, and cultural challenges.