Facilitated Lean Six Sigma Kaizen Event
Streamlining and Automating our process for identifying, evaluating, and investing in projects =/> $1 million
Co-Facilitated Kaizen event with my colleague Juan Cacicedo reviewing our processes used in evaluating, selecting, and investing in projects =/> $1 million. The goal of this event was to review and analyze the entire process searching for opportunities for streamlining and improving.
My responsibilities included:
- Created a hypothesis used to recommend this effort. Received CIO approval to proceed
- Identified and contacted all attendees providing schedule and overview
- Facilitated all meetings guiding attendees through the Lean Six Sigma Kaizen phases (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control phases)
- Created review document that captured all requirements, gaps, opportunities, etc. gathered during Kaizen meetings
- Created workflows and graphic representations (examples below) to be used in the final document detailing our suggested process improvements
- Created best practices document with recommendations regarding the investment into large budget projects
- Gained final approval via sign-off from the entire Kaizen group and our executive sponsors.
Initially, we scheduled ½ meetings once a week for 16 weeks. The Kaizen workgroup consisted of senior representatives from Finance, Enterprise Architecture (EA), Project Management Office (PMO), the Office of the CIO (OCIO), Application Solutions, and Clinical & Communication Systems.
During the Define phase of the Kaizen process improvement event, met with teams’ subject matter experts and senior management. Used the following Lean and Six Sigma tools to gather user feedback and to define gaps and opportunities:
During the Measure, phase used the following Lean and Six Sigma tools to illustrate the current state and to graphically depict various metrics based on feedback and historical data:
During our review and evaluation of the process, we identified irregularities in the calendar used to schedule meetings in which these =/> $1 million projects are reviewed and evaluated. For example, during the January project cycle project managers were given 18 days to prepare for the Initiation Meeting while November and December only allowed 4 days:
Our team collaboratively proposed a new calendar with more balanced and even project cycles:
During the Analyze and Improve phases we took the data captured during the Define and Measure phases to complete analysis and to create a recommended Action Plan:
Based on the analysis we utilized FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis- utilized to brainstorm solutions to existing problems). In this case, we used the ‘Texas Style” FMEA version (“lighter” version used for rapid analysis for brainstormed solutions):
During the Control Phase, we utilized the present state analysis combined with the solutions/ideas discovered during the Define, Measure, Analyze and Improve phases to create future state diagrams and strategies:
As the Action Plan was created to ensure a successful implementation of a proposed solution the Control (or Monitoring) Plan was created to ensure gains resulting from implemented process improvement are maintained long after the process improvement project has finished. This is accomplished using the testing and metrics checks established during the Kaizen Process Improvement event:
Finally, a concise Benefit Conclusion statement reiterated the issues and promoted the solutions identified during the Kaizen event needed to improve this process:
