Quiz 7: Process Improvement

A major city of Country SE, SA has a population of 150,000 approx. It has a student population of 12,000 approx. SH maintains a monthly record of her law department and finds recent increase with the readings of this year. Run charts are used to record changes in a process variable with respective to time. They are used to determine trends, cycles or performance of any process either to interpret trends or to compare present and future trends of a solution. Using run charts, determine the trends of law department as shown below: Construct run chart on each incident categories as follows: From the above constructed run chart, it can be found that there exists a significant increase in the incident of burglaries from the month of August to December. This drastic increase might would illustrate that burglaries are attempted by gangs. In order to interpret the trend of illegal activities, SH has considered the increase in burglaries. Scatter diagram visually represents the relationship between two variables. Plotting possible-cause variables against the present problem variables will help to identify the correlation that exists between the variables. In the present case, possible variables that can be plotted against burglaries would be the previous or next year's data of other gang activities of the respective months.

MG restaurant is a self-service breakfast buffet and serves business travellers. It has used Pareto chart to measure customer satisfaction. The restaurant found that the major concern from customers was the long-time they spend to get seated. World-class service firms make use of several methods to improve their services in terms of productivity and quality. MG has used SSM (Seven-Step Method) approach for problem-solving and to render quality services to its customers to obtain customer satisfaction. SSM can be differentiated from Deming's PDCA cycle as illustrated below: • SSM uses a logical sequence of steps to solve the issues that effects the process's quality. PDCA (plan-do-check-act) is a continuous quality incremental approach to improve the quality of a process. • SSM uses seven steps to improve quality of a product. The seven steps are- define the issue of the process, study the problem by using run chart, control chart etc. , analyse the potential causes that raised the issue in a process, implement the best solution that was chosen to provide a feasible solution, validate the results of the chosen solution by testing it and note if any deviations to the expected results, develop a strategy to organize the improvements and apply the plan if needed anywhere, and finally, summarize the project experience and recommendations to be followed while dealing with other issues. PDCA uses four steps represented by a wheel. The four steps are- plan to select the problem and focus to describe the opportunities needed to improve the process by brainstorming on an action plan, implement the obtained solution on trail basis and monitor the progress against milestones, verify and validate the obtained results of the modified process, standardize the changes made to the process if the result is free from issues else, repeat the previous process by learning from the experience. • SSM approach provides a simple and clear hierarchy to solve the issues of a process. Whereas, PDCA approach is found to be not as rigidly defined as it uses a wheel representation to solve the problem repeatedly. • SSM uses pre-planning stage that serves to clearly identify the issue that stands as a base-line to focus the problem. It also documents the implementation of issues and standardises the solution. Whereas, PDCA uses approaches like cause-and-effect diagram to know the possible causes of the problem that would bring confusion to identify the major cause of the problem. Thus, SSM is a linear process rather than a cyclic approach to implement a productive strategy for the continuous improvement of a process in terms of productivity and quality.