Six Sigma Project Effectiveness Monitoring

[hazwan2283]

Hi team, i have a question that I would like to ask the experts here. Can i know how long do we need to minimally wait and monitor the project effectiveness to calculate the savings?. Do we need to wait 3 months minimum? 1 year?..

 

[Steve Prevette]

Hi team, i have a question that I would like to ask the experts here. Can i know how long do we need to minimally wait and monitor the project effectiveness to calculate the savings?. Do we need to wait 3 months minimum? 1 year?..

My experience was we went off of "expected savings" which could get to be pretty unreliable shall we politely say with incredible amounts of savings that never showed up on the bottom line.

As an analyst, my preference would be to statistically analyzed whatever measures of effectiveness there were for success (monetary or non-monetary) and determine if a significant shift had occured. If it had, at least wait a few cycles (perhaps 5 to 7) to see if it stabilized and where it stabilizes at. If impatient, at least wait for a significant change (not a lucky shift) before declaring victory.

I do remember one project where the claim was they reduced Corrective Maintenance Backlog by 50%. But all they did was change the definition of what was counted as Corrective Maintenance. And associated cycle times actually got worse.

So I do not think there is a blanket amount of time. 1 year is probably too short if it is something that affects a human lifetime. One week might be enough if you had 21 shifts worth of data. It depends on the length of a "generation" for the process.

 

[Miner]

Hi team, i have a question that I would like to ask the experts here. Can i know how long do we need to minimally wait and monitor the project effectiveness to calculate the savings?. Do we need to wait 3 months minimum? 1 year?..

My company tracks actual savings for 12 months. These actuals are reviewed quarterly and verified by our finance department.

 

[Mike S.]

I think Steve gave sound advice.

Also consider what your company will do if the SS project is not shown to generate any savings, or perhaps even a loss. Despite what some proponents want you to believe, some SS projects, like some of all projects, result in failure. I've seen it happen, but the data was then tortured until it gave in and screamed "profit"!

 

[hazwan2283]

Thank you Steve, Miner and Mike