You have just been asked by your manager to lead a process improvement team. Your manager has asked you to identify a process that needs improvement within the business. Think about a business process for your current employer or a former employer that could use some improvement. If you cannot think of a business process for an employer, think about a process in your personal life.
Provide a description of the process and explain why you think that this process needs some improvement. Within this module you have been introduced to several quality tools. As the leader of this process improvement team you have decided to use at least two of these quality tools to help with this process improvement project.
Identify a minimum of two quality tools that you will use in this process improvement project Provide a brief description about the quality tool and explain how this tool will help your team improve the process. Finally, describe the overall improvement that you hope to achieve by using these quality tools.
1.Graph 2.Check Sheet 3.Pareto Chart 4.Cause&Effect 5.Scatter Diagram 6.Histogram 7. Control Chart
Quality control consists of developing. designing. producing,marketing, and servicing products and services with optimum cost-effectiveness and usefulness, which customers will purchase with satisfaction.3
Dr.Kaoru Ishikawa
For my former employer, the process improvement initiative I would investigate would be to determine if an answering service was necessary. This company is small and uses their staff to take calls after hours and on weekends. Staff members are usually on call once a week after hours and once an entire weekend (Saturday & Sunday). Staff members continuously complain about the volume of calls and their inability to have time off to spend with their families. This causes extremely high turnover with staff in addition to issues with reliability for clients. Both high turnover and the loss of clients cause decreased profits for this company that could potentially be prevented by hiring an answering service.
I would use the check sheet because data would be collected for the amount of calls a staff member receives when on call. The data would include the days of the week for a period of two
weeks, with the reason of the call listed. The reasons listed would include urgent-for those calls that require immediate follow-up, moderate-for the calls that require changes in scheduling or sending messages, or low-for those calls that do not require any follow-up for resolution. Low resolution calls have historically been reported for calls on weekdays.
I would also utilize a histogram to detail the variation of data on frequency and urgency, based on the day of the week. I would use three color coded bars for urgency documented for every day of the week compared to the number of calls each day. This method is quick and easy to relay information and can be used to see if the data can assist the organization and stakeholders.
The overall improvement I hope to accomplish would be to assist reliability for