How Six Sigma Principles Can Improve Your Productivity

What is Lean Six Sigma?

• Maximize sleep without compromising productive time, normalizing sleep cycle
• Maximize strategic reserve time (SRT) to devote to personal projects
• Maximize productivity at work, or at home
• Eliminate waste in personal finance
• Eliminate waste in time management, thus reducing downtime
• Optimize your relationships for a stress-free personal life
• Develop a work-life balance you are more comfortable with
• Nurture personal leadership and managerial competencies
• Get things done: on time, to schedule, and within budget

• The DMAIC Process – Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control- for all-round improvements
• The 8 Wastes Technique –to cut waste and save resources
• The Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing Model –to alleviate stress and strengthen personal relationships

DMAIC

Using DMAIC to maximize your Strategic Reserve Time

Define

• Cut down on the amount of time you require to meet all professional commitments; OR
• Maximize the net amount of time you have on your hands, in any given week

1. Leaks in productive time. E.g. water-cooler conversations at work; a needy pet at home.
2. Sources of inefficiency. Don’t be afraid to follow the causal chain a little! E.g. the office canteen’s Wednesday brunches may be causing those unproductive Wednesday afternoons at work!

Measure

• Is your SRT less than 4 hours a week, while your neighbor seems to be able to eke out over 10 hours a week to devote to his sculpture project?
• Are you having to expend more time to do less at work than some of your colleagues?

Analyze

• Are you perhaps being drawn into water-cooler conversations because you have to traverse the entire floor to get to it, thus wasting more time than is ideal?
• Would the fact that your cook takes an off on Wednesdays explain why you’re forced to visit the cafeteria, instead?

Improve

• Consider carrying a flask of water to work, eliminating the need for frequent visits to the water-cooler.
• Carry a self-prepared meal for Wednesday lunches.

Control

• Maintain a set of spare water-bottles in case you misplace your first one!

• Colleagues taunting you into joining them for lunch downstairs, every Wednesday?

The 8 Wastes Methodology

Waste caused by defects

• Not being informed of the items to be purchased before you leave for the store
• Driving a vehicle with defective suspension that is in need of repair to work, daily

• Dealing in complete information: acquire comprehensive information on all aspects of a project before embarking on it.
• Open channels of communication.
• Conducting quality checks after each stage of a complex project.
• Regularly upgrading the tools and equipment utilized.

Waste due to overproduction

• Purchasing perishable items in bulk for the entire month, resulting in wasteful expenditure and rot
• Cooking enough food to feed an army…when you’ve a family of four.

• Produce, buy, manufacture, or create to specifications and accurate requirement estimates.
• On an individual level, by curbing compulsive behaviours.
• As with waste caused by defects, maintaining clear and open channels of communication.

Waste caused by waiting

• Delaying every stage in a cross-disciplinary project as you await the output from the phase before.
• Wasting far too much time waiting to catch the bus to work.
• Waiting on your better half to return your phone call.

• Consider private transport over public.
• If waiting on output from someone else, commence work on another task.

Waste caused by poor utilization of talent

• Putting an investment professional with 5 years of experience in charge of purchasing office supplies!
• Hiring a skilled carpenter to double as house-painter.
• A professional writer delegating the task of writing family invitations to his used-car salesman cousin.

• When embarking on a project, map out the talent and core competencies of all members before assigning tasks.
• Ensure everybody on the team or group has something to do and work on.

Transportation waste

• Lengthy commute intra- and inter-city commute and travel times.
• Finding parking space. It is estimated that the average driver spends up to 106 days of their life looking for good place to park –and flitting from store to store because you keep changing your mind because you didn’t plan beforehand only adds to the time wasted.
• Lack of clarity on documentation required. Carrying a brief with several dozen hard copies of your artistic magnum opus may not really be necessary when attending an interview for an investment banking position.
• Moving patients at your hospital from ward to ward.

• Consider your options!

• Waste to value!

• Eliminate wasteful transportation!

Inventory Waste

• Ordering twenty sheets of timber for a home improvement project that would require no more than five -because you ‘got it at a discount’
• Hoarding up on old computer accessories and laptops that have fallen into disuse
• Signing up for a fitness class you don’t have the time to attend would constitute a service inventory waste.

• Spring cleaning! Start by purging your wardrobe, your garage, and your storeroom of any and all unwanted and unutilized clothes, items, and equipment.
• Spend money only on purchases whose purpose and utility can be justified.
• Estimate needs and requirements more accurately to avoid overspending.

Motion

• A haphazardly laid-out office space where employees have to navigate obstacles to get to point B from point A.
• Taking two flights of stairs to deliver messages to your downstairs neighbor.
• Environment-driven waste: having to waste time searching for items on your disorganized work desk.

• Bypass the need for wasteful motion! Get your neighbor’s number, and have administration reorganize the floor layout.
• Organize! Categorizing items and labelling them will help you find what you need quickly.
• Plan in advance! Create a list of tasks you wish to accomplish before you leave your desk, cutting down on shuttling time.

Wasteful Processing

• Striving for obsessive perfectionism when the situation does not demand it, such as cleaning every unused nook and untouched corner at home –daily!
• Over-evaluating interpersonal situations, interaction, and body language.
• Spending five minutes to craft a two-line email communicating a minor point of interest.
• Meticulously washing and cleaning an off-road vehicle hours before an off-road event.

• Parametric estimation is your friend! Before setting out on any task, ask yourself how much effort is required to get the job done; if uncertain, base an estimate on a similar task you may have undertaken in the past.

Optimizing relationships: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing

How do I apply the Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing model to my personal life?

Forming

1. Give members the time and space they need to settle in.
2. Introduce all members to one another and initiate one-to-one conversations.
3. Not delve into details right away!

• Meeting your dorm-mates on the first day at university. While the dorm group is still forming, small talk is preferable to academic conversations –unless you’re looking to antagonize everybody and their dog, drawing your engineering major batch-mate into an argument about political ideologies on day one is probably not a good idea!
• A newly married couple sharing a dinner table with extended family on either side.
• Attending your child’s first parent-teacher conference.

Storming

1. Highlight and emphasize the bottomline-strengths of each team member.
2. Underscore the importance of tolerance.
3. Encourage amicable dispute resolution.

• Early sessions with the family counsellor or lawyer.
• Dealing with adolescents at home. Adolescent children and their parents form storming teams, since the individual members are beginning to assert themselves and forge their own identities.

Norming

The key characteristic of the norming stage is acceptance. Members begin to tolerate, accept, and even encourage the ideas and behavior of peers. Each person on the team is aligned to the common objective, and starts contributing to advance the team as a whole.
When your group is at the norming stage, it is important to-

1. Encourage out-of-the-box thinking, since people attempting to form friendships may hold back thoughts and opinions so as to not risk offending others.
2. Set up a feedback system.
3. Demarcate individual responsibilities clearly.

Examples:

• A joint-family that has lived together for a little over a year.
• The local theatre group you perform with.
• A music band in its first six months of operation, where the vocalist, bassist, where the vocalist, bassist, percussionist, and guitarist –all understand each other’s place on the band and respect boundaries.

Performing

At this stage, the team begins to perform its key activities efficiently and without supervision. Members are knowledgeable and motivated, and the creative process is structured and formalized.
To deal effectively with a group of people in your personal life who have reached the performing stage, it’s best to take a step back from day-to-day control and monitoring.

Examples:

• Routine orders from the neighbourhood grocer, who may autonomously include items of your preference without prior consultation.
• Visits to the family physician, who would now know ‘what’s best for you’.
• Households with persons who have turned 18.

In closing, it’s important to remember that Lean Six Sigma is as much a mindset as it is methodologies. Make these principles a starting point for your life to achieve success in every endeavour and turn your life around!