Implementing Lean Six Sigma throughout the Supply Chain 7.pdf

Chapter 6 Analyze Phase Introduction Now that the team had established a baseline of the process and gained the voice of the customer, they needed to do some problem solving. In the Analyze phase, the team needs to focus on identifying potential root causes of the problem: improve trailer utilization. They also need to validate cause-and-effect relation- ships between the key process input variables and the key process output variables. By doing this, the team should be able to identify the vital few root causes of the problem. As expected, the team was given a set of questions by their team leader, Anita, for the first meet- ing of the Analyze phase. ◾ What is the current state? ◾ What are the root causes that impact the process? ◾ Can we validate the root causes identified? ◾ Is the current state as good as the process can do? ◾ How does the root process perform? (variation and target) 167 168  ◾  Implementing Lean Six Sigma Throughout the Supply Chain ◾ What inputs should be changed to improve the root cause? ◾ Do we have adequate data on the root cause of the process? ◾ Who will help make changes? ◾ What resources will we need? ◾ What could cause this change effort to fail? ◾ What major obstacles do we face in completing this project? Many members wanted to jump to the solution and fix the problem now, but Anita wouldn’t let them. Anita and Jim together explained that this process was structured and had a reason for each phase. T