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Establish a unique home page for your team, with a team ID and password to keep your project confidential. Only one team member needs to register to establish an ID and password for the team. |
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Pick either the Six Sigma or Eight Discipline method of process improvement. |
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Follow the MoreSteam.com on-line template to guide you through the process steps. |
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Use the Toolbox for on-line coaching in process-improvement tools and methods. |
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Use the shared file space provided by MoreSteam.com
to store graphs, charts, or other files among team members. |
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Choose the limited text version once you are familiar with the MoreSteam.com process steps. |
Total Continuous Improvement is offered by MoreSteam.com as a process to raise the performance of an organization by eliminating WASTE, or cost, in various forms. Waste and inefficiency may take many different forms, including: warranty claims due to poor quality, unproductive use of labor, excess inventory, scrap, employee injuries, excessive lead times, substandard order fill rates, and poor customer service - just to name a few. The unifying theme among all of these factors is the impact on the bottom line performance of the organization - however the bottom line is measured. There are many methods and activities that have been devised over the years to improve processes.
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Two examples are the Six-Sigma Process and the Eight Discipline Process. These are the two problem solving processes directly supported by MoreSteam.com. At the heart, they are very similar if they are applied within a similar framework. The analytical tools behind the process are virtually the same and have been widely used within the field of quality engineering for many years - see the Toolbox section. The fundamental intent of most process improvement methods is to express the scientific method in a systematic, understandable, team-oriented approach to identify and fix problems and reduce variation. This applies to service businesses as well as manufacturing operations.
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One of the historical problems with process improvement processes is that they were not always applied within a total business framework to organize and prioritize improvement efforts. The editors of MoreSteam.com saw this first hand at a Big-Three automobile manufacturer in the early 1990's, as teams sometimes worked on problems with a low impact on the bottom line, while issues with greater leverage were not addressed. This piecemeal approach to process improvement has been at the heart of the "failure" of many companies' quality improvement initiatives. The Six Sigma approach has recently been used with much success by employing a broader focus upon cost (all waste), not just quality. Whether you select Six Sigma or Eight Discipline as your process improvement method, the first step of the Total Continuous Improvement module is to identify and prioritize the leading sources of waste (cost), to make sure that the primary problems are tackled. You can view a flow chart of the Six Sigma or 8-Discipline processes below:
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Most process improvement efforts rely on breaking problems down into smaller, more manageable, components. This reductionist approach sometimes fails to recognize that the problem is greater than the sum of its parts. MoreSteam.com emphasizes a Systems Thinking approach to identify interactions between activities and the unintended consequences that can arise from well-intended corrective actions.
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A foundation of the Six-Sigma process is the training of "Black Belt's", or experts, who have job functions dedicated to leading process improvement teams. The cost of training black belts is significant - upwards of $20,000 to $40,000 each for four weeks of on-site training over four months. While the payback potential may be enormous, the investment may be hard to swallow for many organizations. The mission of MoreSteam.com is to provide high quality on-line assistance and training to process improvement teams - most of which is free. The Total Continuous Improvement process offers free tutorial screens and links to other helpful sites. MoreSteam.com also offers on-line certificate study programs.
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| To proceed with the Total Continuous Improvement process, please log in. A unique home page will be created to organize your improvement efforts, with access controlled by a password. |
