How do I select my next Six Sigma Project?

Usually, when I provide with a 6s course, one of the most common question is: “How do I select the right project?”

And to be honest, there is not a magical or standard formula to answer this question, each professional decides what is best, and why.

However, I would like to explain my approach, probably it will give you some clarity specially if you are starting this great path.

To start, from my experience, there are multiple sources of information, to start a project, such as:

·        Clients

·        Reports

·        Audits

·        SLA/Metrics

·        Etc.

But how to get just 1 from all of them is confusing, so I have come with this strategy.

First, we need to review 4 aspects that might start letting you know, what to take, based on relevance:

1.      Money (How much is the process costing)

2.      Time (How much time is placed on this

3.      People (How many people are involved in the process)

4.      Errors (How many errors are we recognizing)

Once we have the 4 above points information available, we should use a Pareto for all of them, this will give you clarity on what process to work on, has a tendency among the most important classifications. So for instance if you have 10 different errors, and you need to select 1 to eliminate and the error A on the appears on the first position of all or most Pareto, you might start seeing where to point, but this is not all.

Notwithstanding, sometimes you might end up working on top repetitive and/or reproductive issue/category, but sometimes this might not be the most appropriate pain point selecting either, it is a good practice to create a High level process map, and crossing the errors with the mapping, you might end up noticing that 1 error, might be the cause of all errors that later on appear on the process, and you are trying to resolve.

Remember, select as your next project, what impacts the most, not what appears to appear the most.

So in a nutshell.

Create 4 Pareto 1 per type

·        Money

·        Time

·        People

·        Errors

Then do a High Level process map and cross it with the errors, you might get surprise from the results.

About the author. 

Andrey Mendez + 7 years of experience in Quality and Project management. Certified as: Quality Engineer, 6 sigma Black Belt, PMP, PRINCE2, ITIL & ScrumMaster/Product Owner, ISO 9001/27001 internal auditor.