Six Sigma Project- and Business Process Management with I-TRIZ

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1 Dr. Elena A. Averboukh is an industry-funded professor at the University of Kassel (Germany) in Quality and Safety Control Systems and works internationally as a TRIZ- and Six Sigma Master Instructor and Master Black Belt for manufacturing, transactional, design and e-business companies ( She serves as a nominated expert of German standardization body DIN in the European (CEN) working groups on system ergonomics and usability. She has two Master degrees in electrical/system engineering and in mathematics/computer science and three Doctoral degrees in process automation, modelling and identification of complex systems and in quality and safety control systems. She may be reached via e.averbukh@ieee.org. Six Sigma Project- and Business Process Management with I-TRIZ Elena A. Averboukh Interdiciplinary Centre for Quality of Life and Usability Studies (LUSI-Centre) Ideation International-Germany e.averbukh@sixsigma-24.de 1. Introduction Many businesses are project-driven and/or managed in form of projects. Along with broad deployment of Six Sigma methodologies and toolboxes the role and importance of efficient project idea generation, project activities planning and management has become missioncritical for business capability and competitiveness. Failures in planning tasks, project activities, milestones, deliverables and allocating project resources particularly lead to inneficient use of resources available, to significant project and budget overruns, and, hence, to the customer dissatisfaction and business losses. These failures become critical under the time pressure, when human errors are even more probable. In this paper we analyse Project Management (PM) process, its major failures, their causes and negative effects, and illustrate how I-TRIZ tools may support efficient and low risk project management particularly meeting time-, budget- and innovation requirements. 2. Project Phases Basically any Project execution and management can be presented as decomposition process, followed up by a recomposition (or integration) process (see Fig.1). These processes may be managed at different levels of business responsibilities, with different level of project volume, duration, budget and criticality of decision making (planning and reporting). Yet basic process steps and related leadership activities are pretty similar. During the decomposition process, the originating requirements (so-called Voice of Customer and/or Voice of Business etc.) are defined, measured, analysed, and then partitioned into a set of domain specifications and measurable characteristics with -1-

2 acceptable tolerance intervals (so-called CCR- critical customer requirements). Along with this decomposition the target domain area (business process and/or system and/or product and/or service etc.) is also defined, modeled and analysed, as well as partitioned. I.e. decomposition covers functional, operational and technical areas of business processes and systems under development and should be performed with certain completeness, consistency and concordant across these areas. Main objectives of decomposition are to enable Revealing the problem statement, which represents significant Business Pain or Business Challenge, narrowing the project scope to a feasible problem statement, which has highest business impact and priority and can be solved using resources available (time, budget, team etc.). Further partitioning project activities into scalable task-modules. Efficient planing and allocating these tasks between project stakeholders and team members. Regular reviewing and tracking the work progress, refining the plan, reporting etc. Decomposition Re-Composition Request/ Demand/ Business Case 1.Problems 2.Functions 3.Directions 6.Concepts 5.Solutions 4.Ideas 7.Systems Project Start 3.Task Project End Project Resources Fig.1 Decomposition-(re)-Composition Phases of V -Project Life Cycle The following (or sometimes concurrent) Recomposition process is usually performed iteratively and is focused on verification and evaluation of the activity s outputs (e.g., ideas, solutions, concepts for the pre-selected directions of change/improvement etc.) and integrating them into the bigger modules with final testing and System 1 deployment. Main objectives of recomposition are therefore to Generate innovative ideas, Find alternative solutions for implementing these ideas, and Integrate best suitable solutions into efficient low-risk concepts and -systems, matching customer- and business requirements. 1 Under System we understand any technical or non-technical System, which consists of different components (human and/or non-human) that communicate with each other to achieve common objective. System may realise manufacturing, or transactional process, service etc. -2-

3 Fig. 2 shows how these two phases match with Six Sigma Roadmaps, i.e. with so-called DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve and Control) for business process improvement and -management, and with DMADV (Define, Measure, Analyse, Design, Verify) for (re-) designing new products and/or services, i.e. Design for Six Sigma (DFSS). Decomposition Re-Composition DMAIC Define Measure Analyse Improve Control DFSS Define Measure Analyse Design Verify Fig.2. Match project management phases and activities with Six Sigma Roadmaps In fact both phases are performed iteratively with similar types of decision making, i.e. - identifying complete and exhaustive set of alternatives - defining the priorities and prioritising the above set, - selecting alternatives with highest priority to be further elaborated in the next project phase, and - planning and allocating project resources for it, i.e. maintaining project focus on implementing first those functionalities which are of most importance and value for the end-customer. Due to the rapid market changes, increasing competition and technology evolution, the projects are aiming moving external targets, i.e. changing demands with changing resources available. Therefore V- project life cycle has to be executed iteratively and concurrently, including retirement of sub-systems and meeting changing internal business demands within changing environments and resources. This additionally contributes to the complexity of project management and increases demand in new approaches, technologies and tools, which enable project progress and -resources visibility for efficient error-prone planning, productive and efficient task execution and flexibility. 3. Project Failures Below we analyse most typical failures in project execution and management, that have very high Costs of Poor Quality (COPQ). Traditional management and six sigma tools unfortunately do not efficiently support early detection, prevention and control of these failures, which leads to the project over-run and over-budget. -3-

4 3.1. Incomplete set of alternatives for making management decision (choice) The most typical and most expensive type of failures is incompleteness of a set of alternatives, that we have to prioritise, select, plan and execute. Then our choice is by default limited and there is usually no extra controls to verify the completeness early in the project life cycle. Therefore the risks are rather high to oversee more efficient or even right way or solution and to detect this failure only after implementation or deployment of the project results. Main causes of missing alternatives are so-called psychological inertia, lack of creativity, lack of analytical skills in system analysis and engineering and systematic problem solving, lack of interdisciplinary human resources and competence in the project team, limited time, budget etc. Failure rate for this particular defect, i.e. incomplete set of alternatives at each step of the project life cycle and decision making, starting from defining the problem statement and scope, and finishing with composing solutions into concepts and integrating modules into the system, varies in average from 15-25% up to 50% or even higher. As schematically shown above in the Fig.1, there are 7 different basic types of outputs at different steps of the decision making process, which have to be complete (exhaustive) in order to make right choice and to plan the next project step with optimal resource allocation. The First Pass Yield in Project Management is at best (0,75) 7 = 0,13 to (0,85) 7 = 0,32. That means, that the total probability to be on time and in budget at the end of the project without any rework loops just because of this failure is usually less then 13-32%%. And this is certainly unacceptable, especially in today s competitive market situation. From this example we can see, how crucial the first steps and early detection of wrong or irrelevant problem statements (step 1) are for the whole project success. But also incomplete functional model of the future system (step 2), overview of possible directions for change/improvement (step 3), etc. lead to significant delays and extra costs etc. The Costs of Poor Quality particularly due to this incompleteness are higher for those management decisions which are made early in the project life cycle or even by project selection and/or defining original problem statements. Apparently they lead to rework, but there is again no guarantee that after the rework we have an exhaustive set of alternatives to be evaluated and selected etc. We are faced with endless loops of rework or even a complete redesign in different application areas, like software-hardware systems development, product design, business process streamlining etc Resolving contradictory requirements The next typical failure is compromising in satisfying conflicting requirements, instead of searching for efficient ways to resolve contradictions and aiming to satisfy all contradictory requirements. Apparently, compromises never lead to innovation or breakthrough ideas, solutions or concepts. We brainstorm on some alternatives in a trial-and-error fashion, and the first ideas which sound more or less reasonable are usually taken into further development. -4-

5 The main negative effect of such failure is a high risk to come to the market with out-of-date solutions and loose competition Failure Prediction Any idea or solution that we select for implementation can be a source or parent of new socalled secondary problems. Therefore relevant failure prediction and prevention should take place before the final concept is developed and implemented. In mission-critical or strategic projects 4-5 nested follow-up secondary problems have to be analysed to reduce risks etc. Usually at this stage the project is already very much under time pressure and the loops of formulating, analysing, solving secondary problems and controlling/preventing negative effects are often missed out or performed unsystematically and/or without necessary indepth. Unfortunately traditional methods and tools, like FMEA (Failure Mode and Effect Analysis), risk analysis etc., which are usually recommended, particularly within the Six Sigma Tool Box, are by far not efficient and productive enough to speed up performing these steps with required precision and quality. Project leaders, in their turn, have no opportunity to force the team to perform these activities as it may lead to significant project delay. And even if it is performed, there is not at all a guarantee, that the failures mentioned above in p.3.1 and 3.2. do not occur again, so far a similar approach and methodology are used. 4. I-TRIZ to improve efficiency in project management TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) comprises systemic analytic methods and principles which support the above decomposition and re-composition project phases towards generating innovative and efficient solutions at each of the above mentioned steps. TRIZ has been developed in the mid of the last century by the Russian inventor Henrich Altshuller. H. Altshuller has had many followers and researchers who have further developed the TRIZ-science and applications, particularly through cross-disciplinary analysis of the patents, modelling technological, business, social etc. evolution trends and developing TRIZbased knowledge-based software products. One of the most advanced TRIZ research in methodology, principles, evolution trends etc. has been performed by TRIZ scientists and analysts at Ideation International Inc. They developed a whole set of of decision-support TRIZ based tools (so-called I-TRIZ) during the last years ( ). E.g., one generic I-TRIZ tool, the Innovation Workbench can be efficiently applied for diverse applications and at different phases of the project management decision making. Application of IWB tools is exemplified for a few projects in diverse applications (manufacturing, transactional etc.). It has apparent advantages, proven by many successful design, development and improvement projects in different areas and businesses, as following: a) IWB Systemic Questionnaire for describing the As-Is System, its resources as well as overall demand, objective, constraints etc. may be efficiently used to facilitate cross- -5-

6 disciplinary teams during the project launch as well as to perform management reviews of how the team understands the demand/request as well as assessing resourses available. b) Describing (Modeling) alternative Problem statements with the help of the graphical I- TRIZ Problem Formulator is not only a powerful tool for knowledge elicitation and team facilitation, it serves also as a key to the follow-up automatic problem-centred retrieval of Directions for Problem Solving, relevant Ideas for each Direction, as well as diverse examples of implementing Ideas in innovative Solutions from different application fields. Contradictions are not hidden, but are encouraged to be highlighted during this Problem Modeling. That particularly stimulates and supports maintaining project focus on the breakthrough solutions, and gives the project leaders an opportunity to review an exhaustive set of directions, ideas, and solution examples for each (sub-)problem formulation at different phases of the project. c) Diverse I-TRIZ Tools are available, which support and guide efficient integration of Ideas, Solutions into Concepts using resources available, facilitate teamwork and communication, as well as project progress reviews. These tools may speed the teamwork on the Decomposition process steps up to several orders, provide Completeness of the outputs at each step to be further evaluated, i.e. prioritised and selected for further elaboration in the project. The project manager gets much more visibility of the project progress and can plan further work modules and allocate project resources with minimum uncertainty. Application of these tools makes project activities and tasks scalable and supports efficient review and evaluation. Creative work on decompostion and re-composition becomes more predictable and managable for the project leaders, as well as easier and much more productive for the team members who excel their job functions having I-TRIZ support. The same systemic methodology and tools are used to tremendeously speed up analysis and solving of the secondary problems and failure prediction process, before the final concepts are accepted. There are simplified I-TRIZ software tools, like Ideation Brainstorming, Eureka etc., which contain a limited number of TRIZ principles, operators and/or smaller knowledge-base. These tools can still be efficient and easily used by project leaders as well as by the project team members to moderate and guide brainstorming sessions at different steps of the project cycle. Special customised tools are available particularly for I-TRIZ failure analysis (IFA) and/or for failure prediction (IFP). I-TRIZ methodology, principles and application examples in these tools are particularly adopted to support efficient team facilitation and project activities towards finding the route causes of failures for primary problems (IFA), and brainstorming on the exhaustive set of potential failure scenaria for both primary and secondary problems and their solutions (IFP). 5. Discussion In this presentation we report about efficient application of the I-TRIZ methodology, principles and software tools for the project management activities at different level of complexity and responsibility. Discussed methods and tools are certainly applicable for company wide Project - Pipeline establishment and maintenance -6-

7 Project ideas generation Problem Statements Optimisation etc. Our practical applications cover manufacturing, financial and service sector, design and development, software- and web-applications development etc. Training programmes in Six Sigma (both DMAIC and DFSS- Design for Six Sigma- are appropriately updated and relevant topics are included as obligatory part of the training for Six Sigma Champions and Six Sigma Black- and Green Belts, as well as upgradesupplements for certified Six Sigma professionals and for managers, project leaders etc. Copyright 2005 Dr. Elena A. Averboukh -7-