How the Internet is Democratizing the World and Contributing to a Powershift
Empowering Individuals through Knowledge at the Click of a Mouse In the current information age, knowledge is power and whoever has the most knowledge about the world succeeds in the cutthroat world of business and life. Knowledge can be about anything starting with information about pricing and arbitrage and including contracting terms and conditions and […]
Six Sigma and Quality Management
Six Sigma is a business management strategy which aims at improving the quality of processes by minimizing and eventually removing the errors and variations. The concept of Six Sigma was introduced by Motorola in 1986, but was popularized by Jack Welch who incorporated the strategy in his business processes at General Electric. The concept of […]
Open Systems Approach to Project Management in Organizations
When organizations have “flat” structures and consist of coalitions of people coming together with multiple loyalties, intersection of the organization with its environment being characterized by shifting boundaries; the informal nature of the work processes makes use of “open” systems approach towards organizations. The point to note here is that external environments both shape and […]
Non Random Patterns – Part 2
Shift in the Process: A shift in the process is defined as a pattern in which seven consecutive data points appear on only one side of the mean. Statistical studies have shown that if the number of points on one side of the mean is less than 7 then it is not a non-random pattern […]
What is Pugh Matrix and How to Use it ?
The Pugh Matrix is one of the most widely used methods of finding out the best solution once a number of alternate solutions have been generated. The success of the Pugh Matrix is in its simplicity. The tool is not very mathematically intensive and fairly simple to use. However, it has a record of coming […]
Closing a Six Sigma project is an elaborate exercise. One of the biggest parts of this exercise is the explicit documentation of the project. However given its importance to the projects that maybe executed at a later date, its importance is unquestionable. Here is a checklist of the activities that need to be performed while formally closing a six sigma project.
The most obvious thing to do while closing a Six Sigma project is to ensure that the objectives that were the cause of the project in the first place have been adequately met. The fact that there are numerous stakeholders with varying objectives, ending the project requires getting sign-off documents from all these stakeholders.
For each sign-off, the objectives set up in the Project Charter are reviewed. The achievements of the project team are then viewed in the light of these objectives and a decision is reached upon whether the Six Sigma project has been a success. However, since the objectives have tangible numbers, there is very less scope for politicising and ambiguity.
Six Sigma projects are meant to build process capability. Hence, it is the job of the Six Sigma team to ensure that the results obtained are standardized. This entails ensuring that the results are not dependant on the skill, knowledge or expertise of any workers or managers involved and can work independently of it.
As we have discussed earlier, no process is error proof. No matter how well designed the process, there is always a probability that things can go wrong. It is the job of the Six Sigma team to list down such scenarios where things can actually go wrong and work towards preventing them from happening in real life.
The plans should be documented along with discussing it with the process owner. There must be experts appointed to solve every type of possible problem that the Six Sigma team can foresee.
Every Six Sigma project executed brings with itself a wealth of knowledge. This knowledge may pertain to application of Six Sigma methodology, team building or more knowledge about the process in question.
This knowledge needs to be explicitly documented and stored in the knowledge repository of the organization for re-use.
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Step 3B: Choosing the Correct Control Chart (Continuous Data)
February 12, 2025
