The Cost of Poorly Performing Processes – Need for Six Sigma
February 12, 2025
Organizations world over have realized the need for re-structuring themselves and adapting business processes to be able to survive in the global scenario. This process of change management from an old hierarchical structure of Organization to a Business process oriented organization began two decades ago. What has aided the new design is the development of […]
With the globalization of the world economy, there has been a concomitant rise in the number of companies that operate globally. Though international business as a concept has been around since the time of the East India Company and continued into the early decades of the 20th century, there was a lull in the international […]
Why Do 80% of All Projects Fail to Deliver on Time and What can be done About Them Research shows that nearly 80% of the projects fail to maintain timely completion of deliverables at each stage of the project as well as fail to finish on time. Project Managers often complain that the Triple Constraint […]
Donald Trump has positioned himself to be a populist leader. Although in reality, he is an opportunist leader. He has promised his voters that he will stop outsourcing and protect their jobs from cheap foreign labor. Most political pundits did not believe Trump will be able to achieve anything of that sort. After all, even […]
Multinational companies are facing the problem of knowledge management. Industries like software and ITES hire extremely skilled employees to work for them. However, they face several problems. This is because the skill lies in the “employee’s minds” and not in the system. As a result, if the employee goes on long leave or quits the […]
In the equation - Y = f(X), Y is the dependent variable and it is dependent on the variable X. In other words, when there is a change in value of X then value of Y will automatically change. The following are the characteristics of both types of variables:
Y | X |
Dependent variable | Independent variable |
Output of the process | Input to the process |
Effect | Cause |
Symptom | Problem |
It is monitored | It is controlled |
It is important to know that the variable or the factor that we want to improve is a Y or an X. If the variable under control is a Y then we should identify the Xs or the independent variables that affect Y and we should focus on improving the Xs and thereby improving the Y. There could be more one X that influences the Y and we should try to brainstorm along with the team to identify as many Xs as possible and then perform Pareto analysis or other prioritization tools to identify the critical Xs that impact our Y.
Customer is the person (whether internal or external to the organization) who uses the output that the organization produces. A customer could be
Customer requirements can be defined as the needs of the customer and his expectations from the output that the organization is producing and delivering. When the organization is able to meet all the customer requirements then it will lead to Customer Satisfaction. On the contrary, if the organization is unable to meet the customer requirements then the customers will be dissatisfied and over the period of time they will turn away from the organization’s product. Customer requirements are also called Voice of the customer - “VOC”.
While performing the above the following questions should be asked:
CTQ stands for ‘Critical to Quality’. In other words it represents the critical requirements of the output. CTQ’s could be derived from Customer requirements, Risks, Economics and Regulations. For eg a CTQ could be on-time delivery or accuracy etc. It is very critical to identify and define CTQs appropriately because it depicts the quality parameters that relate to wants and needs of the customer.
Once we have collected the voice of the customer (VOC) we then will have to arrive at Critical to Quality (CTQ) elements so that the customer requirements can be incorporated into our process and the output can be produced as desired by the customer.
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