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Six Sigma for Growth Readiness Assessment

Many organizations will benefit from PDSS' formal Six Sigma for Growth Readiness Assessment service.  This is a short, but intensive engagement, where at least two PDSS consultants spend three days at your company site conducting interviews with key staff, presenting information about Six Sigma for Growth and compiling data into a summary report and recommendations for a successful initiative.  This exercise provides a baseline status and a plan for the organization to undertake the changes necessary for a successful Six Sigma for Growth initiative.

Step 1: Interviewing and Presentations to Key Staff

PDSS will work with your leaders and product development teams to get current product development process facts and data on the table.  Together, we will assess that data to identify critical strengths and weaknesses, which will then be assessed for their impact on critical DFSS deployment success factors.  The assessment considers the following areas:

• Innovation strategy and organic growth goals
• Product portfolio development, technology development and product commercialization process linkage and flow into the production, sales, service and support organizations
• Technology platform development process and risk management performance
• Technology transfer discipline, metrics and performance history
• Phase structure and tool alignment to gate deliverables
• Project management discipline, design of project plans, cycle-time forecasting vs.  actual cycle-time performance
• Product development budget and product/production cost integrity against plan
• Design re-work, fire-fighting and schedule slippage
• Supply chain performance and issues
• In-bound marketing, VOC acquisition and processing performance and balance between Voice of the Customer, Voice of Marketing Experts, Voice of Business Leaders and Voice of Technology (internal & external)
• Gate keeping skills, scorecard use and metrics for gate deliverables (tool-task-deliverable traceability within and across each phase)
• Product development corrective action documentation and “tracking to closure” system
• Business case integrity relative to forecasted entitlement
• Warranty costs, cost-of-poor-quality metrics, customer satisfaction and product reliability performance

Step 2: Evaluation of Leadership, Management and Corporate Culture

PDSS will schedule brief interview sessions with your key stakeholders to gain their perspective on your unique product development issues and needs.  We must understand your product development leadership and management culture to successfully adapt Six Sigma for Growth to your company.  We must identify the right balance of stability vs.  change to optimize your product development performance.

PDSS will provide brief, focused Six Sigma for Growth awareness presentations in these meetings and outline the roles of executives, business management, technical teams, marketing teams and the “Belts”.  This is done to stimulate discussions around the unique issues facing your product development organization.  We will discuss common change management issues that they will need to actively manage and support.

Step 3: Evaluation of Existing DFSS Competencies and Proposed DFSS Projects

Many companies have invested in Six Sigma for Operations and may have Belts who can participate in the Six Sigma for Growth deployment.  Participation may include team teaching, tool mentoring, assisting in project reviews and other capacities.  There are some similarities, and important differences, between Six Sigma for Growth and Six Sigma for Operations (DMAIC).  We will, with your guidance, identify members of your staff who have the potential, desire, time and management approval to participate in the deployment.

We will also review your proposed Six Sigma for Growth projects for their technical, marketing, financial and strategic focus and content.

Step 4: Presentation of the Summary Report on the Assessment Data and Recommendations

We will present the summarized assessment data, review recommendations for corrective actions and specific issues that will influence the structure, timing and content of Six Sigma for Growth training and projects.

Recent Publications:
'Six Sigma for Technical Processes'
by Skip Creveling
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'Six Sigma for Marketing Processes' by Creveling, Hambleton & McCarthy
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