Anyone familiar with the book “The Oz Principle”, has heard the tag line “See it, Own it, Solve it, Do it.” The
authors coined this phrase and use the whimsical tale of the Wizard of Oz to
help illustrate the path to individual and organizational accountability. Following the analogy, as you travel down the
yellow brick road to personal accountability, like the Lion, you first need to
muster the courage to “See it”. Second, as the Tin Man did, you need to find
the heart to “Own it”, followed by the Scarecrow’s lesson and obtain the wisdom
to “Solve it”. Finally, as Dorothy did, exercise the means to “Do it”.
The Concept of “See
it, Own it, Solve it, Do it” translates very well to the world of
continuous improvement and six sigma. In fact it sounds a lot like the familiar
acronyms, DMAIC (Define,
Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) and PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act).
As with Dorothy’s journey to find the wizard, the first step
along the path to enlightenment is to “See it”. After all you can’t improve a
process until you define a problem, i.e. You can’t fix what you can’t see. A
fundamental driver to the philosophy of continuous improvement is following the
Lion’s example and having the courage to question the current state. Not to
except the status quo but to constantly ask, how do I make this process better,
faster, cheaper and safer! This concept is difficult for many people, as it
requires a level of humility. It is human nature to take pride in your job, and
contemplating that there might be a better way often impacts ones ego. One of
the most useful mechanisms to help “See it” is to leverage your organizations
diversity and use the tactic of “Outside Eyes”. Similar to the difficultly one
encounters trying to spell check their own essay, having a team member from a
different department review the process often produces several constructive
insights.
Another successful tactic and one of the fundamentals of
lean thinking is to make things visual. Graphs and charts help the brain see
patterns and tendencies that can often be difficult to perceive when only
looking at a column of numbers. One of the most useful tools in the Six Sigma toolbox
that greatly facilitates seeing trends is the control chart.
In early 2014, I was helping a very large client try to determine
why their process was taking longer then expected to gain the desired result. In
the world of high-speed manufacturing, time equals money and every second
wasted had an enormous associated cost. The customer insisted that they had not
modified their process in any way but had noticed a slight decline in
productivity over the past couple months. According to their SOP (Standard
Operating Procedure), an intensity measurement was taken every day to
demonstrate that the equipment met the necessary requirements. If the
measurement was between the predetermined acceptance limits the equipment
passed and therefore could be used. In essence they utilized a simple pass/fail
test. Since their measurement system returned passing results they had ruled
out the equipment as a possible source for the increased production time and where
beginning to look at alternative explanations, including moving away from my
organizations product.
Upon visiting their
facility and providing “Outside eyes”, I saw that their current system provided
some useful information but did not incorporate a time element.
When we created a simple control chart using
their historic measurements, a downward trend became immediately obvious. This
concept helped the customer “See It”. In this particular example, the graph
illustrated a normal degradation of the intensity of their light source over
time. The customer was not aware of this normal bulb characteristic, but rather
was under the assumption that as long as the bulb lit, a stable intensity would
be produced. In addition to making the trend visible, we incorporated warning
limits. This helped proactively determine when to replace the light source, therefore
eliminating process time delays, costly scrap and rework. Through the
implementation of this very simple Six Sigma tool, it helped the customer see
the true root cause of their issue.
The first challenge in many cases is the ability or the
willingness to challenge the status quo, especially when we own the process.
After all, nobody like hearing your baby is ugly. However, like the Lion we
need to muster the courage to suppress our ego, utilize outside eyes and make
the process very visual. In order to complete
your journey to the Emerald City, you need to take the first step and “See It”.
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