The Problem with Antitrust Laws
During the 19th century, the robber barons were dominating the American economy. A handful of people had more wealth and power than the entire nation. It is for this reason that they would collude with each other to keep everyone else at bay. These robber barons were depriving everybody else of fair opportunity as a […]
Demonetization and Its Impact on the Indian Economy
The Indian Economy which was billed as the “fastest growing major economy” in the world and the “only bright spot” among Emerging Markets seems to have slowed down even before the latest “shock therapy” of “demonetization”. Indeed, the recently released growth figures from the CSO or the Central Statistical Office considered to be the official […]
The Gender Pay Gap Debate
April 10th is considered to be “Equal Pay” day all over the world. This day has been commemorated since the year 1996 to remind the world that women are allegedly being paid less than men to do the same amount of work. As per the data from Facebook COO’s non-profit organization, women only receive 80% […]
The Singapore Growth Model
Singapore has been one of the great success stories of South East Asia. The country started with very little money or resources just a few decades ago and had built one of the best global cities today. Their success story is not similar to that of China or Hong Kong. The differences are remarkable. The […]
Why Forecasting has Become Very Difficult for Individuals, Firms, and Nations
Why are we being blindsided by Black Swans ? Whether you are an individual or a decision maker in a big corporation, or a policymaker in charge of planning for nations, it is a fact that forecasting has become very difficult in the present times. Indeed, the fact that big businesses and nations alike are […]
The next step in the Six Sigma journey is to have a clearly defined problem statement that will guide the team throughout the execution of the project. Here are a few tips which give us an insight into how a project problem statement must be developed.
As per a layman’s definition a problem is a difference between the expected state of affairs and the actual state of affairs. In organizations problems can come in many forms and can have many causes. In fact most of the times problems are hidden and what we think of as problems are only symptoms of the problem.
While it may sound fairly simple that there is a business problem that needs to be solved, in reality it is not so. This is because business problems have various dimensions and people tend to interpret some of these dimensions separately. The common problems that occur because the problem was not accurately understood in the first place are as follows:
To prevent this problem from happening, a regular problem must be converted to a Six Sigma Problem. The Six Sigma Problem, like the regular problem is a difference between the desired and actual state of affairs. However, it answers some questions explicitly and leaves no room for ambiguity. The questions that are normally answered are as follows:
This Six Sigma problem provides a concrete goal statement to the project execution team that can be worked upon. An example will make the contrast between a normal problem and a six sigma defined problem statement more clear.
Normal Problem: Employees usually turn in late to work causing loss in productivity.
Six Sigma Problem: At the New Jersey factory, 45% of the employees report to work within 15 minutes after the time that they were supposed to report to during the beginning of the shift causing a fall in daily productivity by 5%.
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