The success or failure of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) projects is connected to many things. A critical aspect of a successful Lean Six Sigma program within an organization is how and when LSS projects are selected. The conduct of an effective Project Identification and Selection Workshop (PISW) goes a long way toward a successful LSS program. The first step in conducting a PISW involves identifying the value drivers in your organization. Identifying and understanding those value drivers are sometimes a misunderstood. Value drivers provide broad understanding of where to look for opportunities and must be connected to the organization’s strategy.
Value drivers lead to opportunity areas. They provide a way to impact an area or focus of the organization. They come from financial analysis, voice of the customer, or process analysis. Value drivers are too broad to be addressed with a LSS project. Value drivers need to be translated into project ideas. Detailed definition and analysis is needed to get at real LSS project opportunities.
The first phase of the PISW is geared toward identification of the value drivers in the organization. A self-assessment is done from three different perspectives—the organization is looked at through three different lenses: Voice of the Customer (VOC), Voice of the Business (VOB), and Process as they flow from the strategic objectives (or goals) of the organization. Starting with the identification of the organization’s Strategic Value Chains, areas are identified where projects are strategically focused and will yield the biggest return on effort.
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What do our customers say?
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How can we improve from a business perspective?
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What is it that we do? What are our key business processes? And, which ones need improved?
The organization must understand how to serve its customers needs more effectively. What are customers telling you? How can you better understand what they are telling you? How can you ultimately better serve your customers? Identify your customer key requirements and identify gaps between requirements and performance. Accurate measures are required to get at performance. And finally, what processes require improvement to enhance customer satisfaction?
Understand where the money lives; understand if you can get to it by looking at customer gaps, level of past attention, and internal benchmarks.
The PISW attendees must know going in what the organization’s critical processes are and which processes need improvement. The attendees must also be pretty familiar with opportunities for improvement within each of the processes. Process analysis steps should include: identify, classify, and evaluation of the processes. Determine which processes warrant the next level of analysis. And, attendees should have value stream maps for those processes to be examined in order to determine project opportunities.
There are several key success factors relating to the PISW. A strong management commitment is required to ensure projects are driven from strategy and value. All potential improvement projects must go through the Project Selection process. Projects tend to spawn more projects—the project selection process must be revisited frequently to ensure proper priority and to maintain a quality project pipeline. Projects must be properly scoped to maximize chances of success. Resist temptation to overload resources with projects—it will delay results. Don’t hesitate to kill projects “in-process” if they don’t continue to meet the criteria for prioritization.
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