Section A
Answer all questions in this section.
Background and Overview of Report
The COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 has brought substantial impact and changes to the economy and society. Organizations have to adjust or completely redesign their business processes to cope with the impact and changes brought by the pandemic. Lean Six Sigma has been recognized as a useful approach to improving business processes by identifying the process gaps and implementing effective improvement measures.
You are asked to identify a business process in the organisation where you are currently working or worked before or are familiar with. You may discuss with your supervisor or experienced colleagues to select this process which is facing challenges to meeting customers’ expectations or internal performance targets.
You are going to lead a Lean Six Sigma project team to improve this process. Submit a report on how you would identify the process issues, analyse the problems, recommend and implement ideas to improve the process, and establish control plans to sustain the improvement using the Lean Six Sigma DMAIC approach. We shall thereafter call your selected organisation the “subject organisation” and the selected process the “subject business process”.
This ECA focuses on the process-centric approach and qualitative analysis of the DMAIC model. Collecting extensive data and performing data analysis are not required.
Question 1 – Organisation Background
(a) Introduce the subject organisation, including its name (use a pseudonym if it is sensitive to provide the real name), its major businesses and customers, its products/services. Provide the website or real address of the organisation.
(b) Discuss how the organisation’s businesses have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, including its financial and operational performance, and its value/supply chain, e.g., customers, suppliers, and/or the processes in the production or the service delivery, etc.
(c) Appraise the suitability of Lean Six Sigma in improving the business process in the subject organisation during the COVID-19 pandemic. You must relate the discussion to the business process of the subject organisation.
(d) Describe the role/function of the subject business process, and the issues or challenges the subject organisation has been facing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Question 2 – Define and Measure
(a) Compose the SIPOC diagram of the subject business process and list the steps or changes if any in the process due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
(b) Explain the problem statement about the issue(s) in the subject business process. Examine the impact of the issue(s) on the organisation’s businesses. (You may refer to the problem statement template in Gitlow et al., 2015, p. 247.)
(c) Define the CTQ and its operational definition by analysing the VOC and the issues in the subject business process. Compare the current CTQ performance of the subject business process with its performance before the COVID-19 pandemic. Propose the project objective.
Question 3 – Analyse, Improve, and Control
(a) Develop the “As-Is” Process Map for the subject business process which should reflect the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the process.
(b) You need to organise a brainstorming session to discuss the possible causes of the issues in the process. Describe or show a photo of the brainstorming session. Show the Fishbone/Cause and Effect diagram of the potential causes.
(c) Conduct a Gemba walk and describe or show photos of at least two (2) wastes and the likely root causes of each of the wastes in the subject business process. Discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the observed wastes and the likely root causes. Update the Fishbone diagram in Question 3(b) on the likely root causes.
(d) Recommend and describe two (2) countermeasures/improvement ideas to improve the process. Indicate whether the countermeasure is to address the root causes or remove/eliminate the wastes identified from the Gemba walk in Question 3(c).
(e) Propose two (2) measures to standardise the improved process in Question 3(d). Examine the effectiveness of the measures.
(f) Develop a control plan for the improved process. You can make assumptions for the metric specification/requirement and any other quantitative figures in the control plan.
Section B
Answer all questions in this section.
Question 4
Your Lean Six Sigma project has successfully completed the DMAIC Control Phase Tollgate 5 review meeting. The project sponsor was very pleased with the results and was impressed with the DMAIC approach taken. He has now asked you to prepare a presentation to update the CEO on the Lean Six Sigma project. Arrange your presentation in a manner suited to the CEO.
Prepare a video recording of the presentation of at least 3 minutes but not exceeding 6 minutes. There are two methods for ECA video assignment submission; either Record Media or Upload Media. For Upload Media, please note that your file size should be no more than 500MB and the format is in .mp4.
Section C
Answer all questions in this section.
Question 5
Prepare a set of PowerPoint presentation slides upon which the video presentation is based. Please note that the PowerPoint must not be more than 15 slides and be converted to PDF before submission to SUSS (Canvas).
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