What is it?

FMEA started as an engineering quality tool and it is basically used to recognize and isolate potential factors that could cause failures. Its most easily understood as a preventative measure, so here is the low down on FMEA.

There are 5 types of FMEA: system, design, process, service and software. Here’s how the breakdown.

• System FMEA focuses on universal system functions, think companywide processes like security protocol or project structures.
• Design FMEA focuses on apparatus and subsystems, think equipment and e-mail follow up responses based on protocol.
• Process FMEA focuses on your process, for example those e-mail protocols I mentioned in the Design FMEA portion.
• Service FMEA refers to service functions, like how you handle customer service or after service for your sales for example.
• Software FMEA refers to the functions of your software, the most relevant application of this is the automation of much of the software we use today.

What does it look like?

ASQ FMEA Template

What can I use it for?

FMEA has a wide range of applications and consulting your belt will give you a specific direction that aligns with your company goals. There are some universal applications of FMEA that you can use as a guideline to get started. You can use FMEA for:

• Reducing product/service failures.
• Assessing customer needs.
• Eliminating potentially harmful design settings.
• Helping to target possible risks
• Creating a way to identify failure that prevents them from affecting customers.

What doesn’t it do?

Like all 6Sigma tools, the effectiveness of FMEA lies in the practitioner. And while it has a lot of benefits, there are few things to remember when you implement it.

1. It only identifies failures, it does not eliminate them.

2.  Staff implementing FMEA has to be aware of what to do with the failures once they have been identified.

3.  The emphasis of this tool is on prevention, not reaction.

FMEA is a wonderful tool and creates many valuable opportunities in your organization. When properly utilized the savings that FMEA can create will lead to the type of quality environment that positions your organization as an industry leader.

What is it?

Define:  This is where you will put in the most work, because at this stage you will be setting the ground work for all of your changes. You will need to define everything here, specifically critical to quality variables and identified process problems.

Measure: Collect information and review data. The catch to this step is to ensure that your measurement systems are substantiated. When using measurements you will need to ensure that they are measuring specific data and that the measured data aligns with your organization’s goals. Not sure how to do this?  Have a conversation with your belt and your executive team; they will point you in the right direction.

Analyze:  In this step you will be asking your staff to study the relationship between processes and qualify their impact on the quality of your products or services. Ideally you will want knowledgeable staff involved in this process, but how do you start and what do you do? Talk to your belt, they can guide you effectively and easily through this process.

Improve: This is the area that will allow you to humanize 6Sigma from your staff by focusing less on measurements and more on innovation. You should be looking for suggestions and then moving on to a process of elimination. This is an area where I like to implement ‘dry runs’ of the solution to show me where the process improvements are realistic and where they are not.

Control:  This is one of the most important parts of the process, but it can only occur once the other steps have been completed.  Failure to complete the previous steps guarantees that you will be perfecting the wrong change. In this step, the devil is very much in the details. You must be vigilant and flexible; your belt will help you put together the best control strategy for your organization.

DMAIC is all about making a change work for your organization. You don’t have to produce complicated charts and statistics for it to work for your organization, but you do have to understand how it works. Although this is a simple summary, there is enough information to get started. When you are ready to get down to detail and create a DMAIC strategy, SPC can help.

6Sigma has gotten a sometimes well deserved rap for being overly-complicated, but this is a tool that is the antithesis of that reputation. It does involve metrics but the bulk of the focus is on strategic planning. Strategic planning means many things to organizations, but within the lens of a 6Sigma strategy it should mean a road map to the best version of your organization.

What is a Future State Vision?

A Future State Vision is basically what it says; it is a concrete plan for the most desired state of your business. Think of it as a more specific path to your company’s vision board. This is where you create the details that will get you to the goals on that vision board.

What does it look like?

How do you use it?

The tricky thing about a Future State strategy is that you have to come up with the end before you can address how you will get there. So to begin with you will actually start at the end and the how whole point of the strategy is to figure out the most practical (in terms of manpower, expense and resources) path to get there.

What does it do?

The Future Strategy does not provide you with a roadmap for your current problems. The metrics you use for this strategic should resemble your operational metrics, but they should not be exactly the same because your outcome for this strategy will be different. This is a big picture operational strategy so your metrics should be performing at a macro level when you turn your attention to this strategy. What it does do is help your staff to create meaningful big picture metrics, so low hanging fruit will not work here. This tool will be a great asset to upper level management responsible for creating organization wide strategy.

As with all my 6Sigma tools, this is just a template. Your specifics will lie in the knowledge your belt will bring in drafting this tool specifically for your organization at an executive level. So what are you waiting for? Start dreaming.

1. Align scorecards with business goals
2. Establish supplier evaluation processes
3. Communicate with suppliers – and take action
4. Share information with internal departments

You can view the article the entire article on his blog at: http://blog.softwareadvice.com/articles/scm/four-best-practices-to-improve-supplier-performance-scorecarding-1120211/.