Seven Steps academy is offering Lean Six Sigma certification training on behalf of American Society of Quality – ASQ South Asia.  American Society for Quality (ASQ) is a worldwide globally recognized body, which has more than 85000 Quality professionals as members, who are experts from a wide spectrum of industries, educational institutions, medical colleges and hospitals etc., related to quality.

A Certification from ASQ is considered a mark of quality excellence and is recognized by more than 125 organizations worldwide. It helps in the advancement of professional development, builds credibility and recognition among peers as a part of the global community. A certification helps in career advancement and significantly helps the professional improve organizations bottom line through effective application of quality tools and methods.

How ASQ certification differ from other certification bodies

• The American Society for Quality (ASQ) is a global body of Quality professionals, with more than 150 years of history. ASQ  offers several quality certifications on various professions starting from Healthcare, Product Design, Reliability, Software development, Supply Chain, Pharmaceuticals etc.
• It is the most reputed professional body and the largest and in the world, committed to raising the voice of quality led by global Quality thought leaders like Dr. Walter Shewhart, Dr. Edward Deming, Dr. J. Juran, Dr. Phil Crosby and Dr. Feigenbaum to name a few.
• There are several organizations offering certificate courses on six sigma but ASQ offers professional six sigma certification. The certification is valid for a period of three years from the date of issue and needs to be kept current by either carrying out activities as prescribed by ASQ for recertification units or taking the exam again before expiry.
• ASQ certifications are recognized and respected globally by leaders and organizations alike. A certification by ASQ is scientific way to measure an individual’s proficiency and knowledge about various tools and their effective application, analysis and synthesis to deal with practical business challenges.
• The BOK and question bank for the exam are continuously enhanced by constantly seeking inputs from senior and experienced members of ASQ who are veteran quality professionals with decades of experience.
• ASQ does salary surveys among various business sectors every year. It is an established fact that on an average an ASQ certified professional draws 15-20% CTC higher when compared to professionals without ASQ certification. ASQ certification is recognized worldwide and is considered as one of the most sought-after professionals across the globe.

Seven Steps Business Transformation Systems is a Bangalore based consulting company for manufacturing, services, retail, logistics, construction, Education, hospital, hospitality.  Kanban system implementation is done as a combination of other tools and methodogies such as 5S, Value Stream Mapping, Cellular Manufacturing, Total Productive Maintenance, Six Sigma etc., Through their group vertical – Seven Steps academy, various training programmes are also offered for both onsite and public programmes.

Some of the flagship training programmes conducted at Seven Steps Academy of Excellence are:

Six sigma Green Belt

Six Sigma Black Belt

Six Sigma Yellow Belt

Skill development programme – Campus to Corporate – Precision Engineering

Applied 5S

TPM

Lean Experimental Learning Programme

• ABC company is a home interior products manufacturing company located in Bangalore
• Company produces for around 40 clients) in a month
• Types of furniture manufactured are wardrobes, kitchen cabinets, TV cabinets etc.
• Study was done to streamline material procurement, storage, issue procedure & inventory management
• Number of vendors – Raw material ~ 25, Hardware~10
• Lead time – imports ~ 4 weeks, local ~ 1 week
• Total inventory was around Rs. 60 lakhs

Major operations are:

Head office

• Client interaction & Design
• Approval from client
• BOQ (Bill of qty preparation)
• Material Purchase
• Preparation of CAD drawing

Factory

• Receiving, storage & issue  of material
• Production
• Quality checking
• Packing
• Dispatch

Testimonial from customer:

“We  were very much happy to associate with Seven Steps for the implementation of Lean Project at our Factory.

The dedicated efforts by you and your team are very commendable and down to earth.

My Shop floor teams are well trained by you on 5S, Kaizen, Kanban, Error Free Delivery, Kitting,etc which helped us in improve On Time Delivery,Reduce Lead time,100% Fulfillment and tracking of inventory at different stages.”

Seven Steps Business Transformation Systems is a Bangalore based consulting company for manufacturing, services, retail, logistics, construction, Education, hospital, hospitality.  Kanban system implementation is done as a combination of other tools and methodogies such as 5S, Value Stream Mapping, Cellular Manufacturing, Total Productive Maintenance, Six Sigma etc., Through their group vertical – Seven Steps academy, various training programmes are also offered for both onsite and public programmes.

Some of the flagship training programmes conducted at Seven Steps Academy of Excellence are:

Six sigma Green Belt

Six Sigma Black Belt

Six Sigma Yellow Belt

Skill development programme – Campus to Corporate – Precision Engineering

Applied 5S

TPM

Lean Experimental Learning Programme

Many organisations work towards improvement in a big way with little success and rather with increased frustration.  Before even embarking on the Journey of excellence, there is need to evaluate if our processes are having initial process stability.  As high probability, many of the processes will be unstable and not capable of producing desired results.

Stability is defined as the capability to produce consistent results over time. Instability is the result of variability in the process.

For a process to function consistently, 4Ms Man (people), Machine, Method and Materials are some of the pre-requisites.  Let us look in to this further in to details.

1. Man:  

As per Toyota’s one of the statement, it mentions that their primary job is developing people. Cars are byproducts. You can see the importance given to the people side.  In most of the organisations, very little clarity is there on the manpower requirement. Some organisations have just head count on paper without the required skilled people on ground. Some other organisations have very low morale of the employees due to the fact that salaries are not paid on time, no skill development, no good working conditions etc.,

In lean organisations, high emphasis is given to the people development through organisation wide training needs such as 5S, Autonomous Maintenance, Quality at source, Quick Change-over, Problem solving tools and techniques, Team building.  Apart from this, concepts such as Training within Industry – TWI where key aspects such as Job relations, Job method, Job Safety and Job instruction is taught in systematic way. At Toyota, TWI is used for development of people.

2. Machine:

Many organisations still function in outdated fashion when it comes to machine availability.   Machines are attended only upon a breakdown. Just having a machine is not enough. Machine should be in a position to give consistent results in terms of performance.  Where the entire operations are highly dependent on machines, methodologies such as TPM has to be implemented in a structured way. Concepts such as MTBF, MTTR are to be in use and machine availability has to be ensured such that it helps in improving OEE.  In operations where dependency on manpower is high, having back-up machines also will be highly recommended. 

3. Method:  

For consistent performance, having standard work, and the amount of time it takes to perform a given process needs to maintained in such a way that variation from from person to person, across shifts, or over time is stable. 

4. Material: 

Having the right material – it could be raw material or consumable at the right quantity, at the right quality and at the right place is very essential.  The operator should be regarded as surgeon and as important. Required materials should be always available. Concepts such as mizusumashi or water spider is one of the concept applied for internal material flow. Just in time (JIT) and Jumbiki system (for automotive) is applied parallel to ensure material availability.

Some of the impacts of lack of 4Ms are:

1. A high degree of variation in performance measures—either pieces produced or pieces per labor hour.

2. Changing the “plan” often when a problem occurs. This includes relocating labor or leaving a position vacant when an absence occurs, moving product to another machine when a breakdown occurs (and thus not producing the planned product), and stopping work in the middle of an order to change to another order.

3. It is not possible to observe a consistent pattern or method to the work.

4. Batches or piles of work in process (WIP) that are random—sometimes
more, sometimes less.

5. Sequential operations that operate independently (island processes).

6. Inconsistent or nonexistent flow (also indicated by random WIP piles).

7. Frequent use of the words usually, basically, normally, typically, generally, most of the time, when describing the operation, followed by except when

8. Statements such as, “We trust the operators to make decisions about how the work is done” (It’s important to realize that no operation will ever achieve a perfect level of stability, and thus to some degree these conditions will always exist. In fact, stability is not only a requirement for flow, but developing flow helps motivate disciplined approaches to stability—they go hand in hand. The main consideration is how unstable the process is, and how stable it needs to become in order to move into the next phase of achieving some degree of flow.

Some of the Lean Tools that help in improving Stability of operations are

• Visual Management and 5S
• Total Productive maintenance
• Waste Elimination
• Just in time
• Continuous Flow
• Value Stream Mapping
• Quick change-over or SMED.
• Heijunka or load levelling

Seven Steps Academy is part of Seven Steps Group helping organisations in developing internal talent by conducting various public training programmes and in-house training programmes.

Some of the flagship training programmes conducted at Seven Steps Academy of Excellence are:

Six sigma Green Belt

Six Sigma Black Belt

Six Sigma Yellow Belt

Skill development programme – Campus to Corporate – Precision Engineering

Applied 5S

TPM

Lean Experimental Learning Programme

Every organisation strives to be best in improving productivity, Quality, Cost, Delivery, Morale and Safety  (PQCDMS) at work place.  Work place is also called as Gemba or the spot of action.  Gembutsu is the actual thing – product. 

For effective management of Key Performance indicators such as Ontime in Full Delivery (OTIF), Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ), Manufacturing Lead time, safety  – near misses etc.,  having real time information at the point of use is very essential.  At Gemba, there will be many situations arise on daily basis which can be termed as process is fully under control or out of control.  For this, the real thing in the form of expected product quality – samples, trends of various variables are to be tracked in real time for the person responsible to respond well in time.  In other words, proactive information or potential problems should be made visible in the Gemba.

If the abnormality or trend is not comprehensible and not in time, no one can even attempt to grasp the situation to respond.  The key principle of Visual Management is to spot abnormalities – potential or actual well in time.Visual management works well with supporting tools and techniques such as Jidoka which is one of the key pillar in Toyota Production System.

One of the pre-requisite for Effective visual management is to implement 5S. Seven Steps Business Transformation system has proven model for deployment of 5S through their flagship programme – Applied 5S which makes implementation of 5S not only easy and effective. It is linked to various business goals such as improved Ontime performance, improved Quality, improved health and safety of employees and reduced cost.

Some of the key elements of Visual Management are:

Where visual management is practiced,  the visual displays and updates are usually management by the people belonging to the respective function.

Visual Management will be very effective where Gemba Walk is practiced consistently by leadership team.  When the Leaders walk through the shop-floor, they can see the problems or good condition at a glance. Where things are good, spot appreciation is given by the leaders to the to team members.  Visual management is practiced method for determining when everything is under control or out of control in real time instead of sending the data to board room for monthly or quarterly meetings.  By the time the data is analysed, the problem may not even exist or it could have resulted in serious loss due to rejections, excess inventory etc.,

Visual Management should include 5Ms such as Manpower, Machines, Method, Material and Measurements.

Seven Steps Business transformation helps in deployment of continuous improvement culture in organisations through their flagship training programmes conducted through Seven Steps Academy of Excellence.