The One-Two Punch: Combining Lean and Six Sigma for Process Improvement

Transcript

[00:00:52] Josh Santo: Our guest today has spent his career straddling the worlds of academia and industry. He started out teaching in China, came to the US for a PhD in industrial engineering, and then dove head first into the early wave of Six Sigma, becoming one of the first master black belts at Seagate. Since then, he’s led continuous improvement, operational excellence, and quality teams at several companies, and currently serves as the site quality manager atnt, where he leads 40 plus dedicated quality professionals who cover three plants at their 1500 person flagship site.

[00:01:32] Josh Santo: On the side. He teaches Lean Six Sigma, and he just recently released a book called Lean Six Sigma for beginners making decades of hands-on experience, easy for students and pros alike to put into practice. 

[00:01:45] Josh Santo: Please welcome to the show Gary Jing.

[00:01:50] Josh Santo: Gary, thanks for being here.

[00:01:52] Gary Jing: Yep. It’s great to be here and thanks for the opportunity.

[00:01:56] Josh Santo: Yeah. Yeah. I, I, really enjoyed getting to meet with you, and though I missed your chat at,ASQ conference, I know we got to talk about it, so I’m, I’m really excited to get to it today. so for the listeners, we are talking today about. Quality. We’re talking about continuous improvement. We’re even talking about Lean Six Sigma and more.

[00:02:16] Josh Santo: But before we get into any of that, I’m gonna turn it over to Gary. So Gary, you are a site quality manager for a manufacturer. I would love if you would just share a little bit about what does your day to day look like in your responsibilities Look like.

[00:02:31] Gary Jing: Okay. Yeah. So, my day job indeed right now is the, site quality manager for Invent, is actually, this is a very big site. It’s a, a kind of 1500, People kind of, like my team, it’s close to 40 people. So, so in that case, I have like several teams for different plant and different value stream.

[00:02:54] Gary Jing: And, in the setting, I, I, I don’t do that much hands on activities now. It’s more of a coordination and facilitation address issues, escalation. So in the morning, typically, we will have a gamba, at the site level. That different plant, they roll up their, issues, escalation, then cross-functional team, to, to, to, to, to come in to help.

[00:03:17] Gary Jing: And then after that, it’s really just to, kind of be, be ready that any additional escalation service coming out from different value stream or different plant. and, and,if time allow, more of my attention is paid to more long term. Issues like team development or technology enhancement, that, that type of thing.

[00:03:40] Gary Jing: So,

[00:03:40] Josh Santo: Got it. So

[00:03:41] Gary Jing: okay.

[00:03:42] Josh Santo: start the day in a structured way and, but there’s still that need

[00:03:46] Gary Jing: That’s kind of a nutshell.

[00:03:47] Gary Jing: you, you don’t know what’s gonna come up. Right. It’s, it sounds like, Yeah.

[00:03:51] Josh Santo: that’s what we’ve heard from folks is that every day is a little bit different.

[00:03:56] Gary Jing: Yeah,

[00:03:57] Josh Santo: Well, let’s, let’s talk about. Quality in manufacturing, you’ve got a significant amount of experience there and across, you know, different roles as well.

[00:04:07] Josh Santo: You’ve got a continuous improvement background. I’m curious about your perspective on the concept of quality in manufacturing. How would you define quality? I.

[00:04:16] Gary Jing: sure. Yeah. And in, in in manufacturing environment, kind of the angle may be slightly different because over here things. Need to be measured objectively as a result. the quality is primarily measured against like predefined specs. And,in the same time, the specs I. Putting out it may or may not be, sufficiently reflecting the customer expectation.

[00:04:44] Gary Jing: So we kind of frequently run into a situation, not necessarily in my current company, but overall, right? I mean, I’ve been in multiple companies that, that is, the product may leave factory good, but we have issues in the field. If we look into that, a big part of product. And manufacturing maturity is to mature specs and at least for new product, that’s a, a, a big part of that and intend to make them precisely reflect the expectations of interested customers and not too much, and not to list.

[00:05:27] Gary Jing: since if you over expect, then, It’s going to increase the cost and it’s going to hurt bottom line. And then in a way, weakening the competition. So to find a good balance, especially for new product, about specs, is, is in a way like art and, and to me, for the environment I have been in, like many of those are high tech environment.

[00:05:52] Gary Jing: That’s actually a treaty thing.

[00:05:55] Josh Santo: So this idea of finding balance between specification and ex expectations balance that art that you described, that’s what you see and define quality as.

[00:06:09] Gary Jing: In, in a way, at least in the high tech environment, that’s a little tricky thing that is,upfront. It may not be very clear on how to spec a new product. And then, people learns, right? organizational try to learn and try to refine that, so,

[00:06:25] Josh Santo: It’s, it, so it’s the act of that balance, right? It’s the

[00:06:28] Gary Jing: mm-hmm.

[00:06:29] Josh Santo: of closing the gaps between expectations and reality while balancing what you can realistically deliver. To a customer. Oh, I think that’s a great way of looking at it. Now, I’m curious, does that perspective, that definition of quality, how does that differ from other maybe more common perspectives of quality that you’ve encountered?

[00:06:52] Gary Jing: Sure. Yeah. So in general, manufacturing may hold a little bit narrow view, on quality, right? But in a broad sense, quality probably should refer to like producing product, that’s constantly meet, the, Customer’s expectation and also the specs. And, in the same time try to, minimize defect.

[00:07:15] Gary Jing: in a way, product quality is, is about ensuring product to fit their intended use and, for, from defects. And,no significant variations. And as I mentioned, quite often, for practical manner people, May like to hold a little bit more narrowed view. for example, like focusing on spec, right?

[00:07:40] Gary Jing: Because those are more objective and agreeable in a way, and the reimbursable, and in the same time more overarching view is really about meeting expectations of the intended or targeted. Customers and, but, but that expectation in many cases is quite subjective and it can be a moving target and, hard to reinforce.

[00:08:11] Gary Jing: And, and as a, as a result, it’s kind of there, there, there could be debates and different views, right? So, the broad view, it actually involves how to define voice of customer. And, and, that, it’s actually, it may spin up to a, another big topic, right? So, anyway, there’s a more ideal scenario, which will be broad, from the quality, perspective, and there’s a more practical view, which would be narrowed to specs.

[00:08:47] Gary Jing: So.

[00:08:48] Josh Santo: Hmm. Okay. Well, and I, I can see hints of your, your perspective on how it’s a balance within that answer itself. Right. People,

[00:08:56] Gary Jing: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:56] Josh Santo: this before, we’ve actually recorded another episode in which one of our guests shared that oftentimes quality is viewed through a narrow lens.

[00:09:05] Gary Jing: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:05] Josh Santo: of the time that view is taken by folks who are outside of quality, but there’s a handful of, of folks in quality that are still learning to expand their view as well.

[00:09:16] Gary Jing: Sure.

[00:09:17] Josh Santo: that you’re focusing purely on specs, you know, kind of treating it as quality, assurance, you know. Kind of after the fact, you know, did the, we, we’ve already made the product. Now the product’s here. Now let’s get it over to the customer, as opposed to quality being this more broad approach to how you produce the product. I like that you broke it down on, the narrow view being focusing on. Spec versus that broader view of are we meeting customer expectations now? Then you called out that idea of a customer expectation. That’s a moving target, that’s subjective. That really requires you to be in tune with your customers, and there’s probably gonna be cycles of. Customer expectations weren’t met well, why weren’t they met? What do we need to do about it in order to to do that? And that gets to your point about defining the voice of the customer, which you said we could. We could probably dig pretty deep in there. wonder if you’d mind sharing your thoughts just at a high level on defining voice of the customer.

[00:10:23] Gary Jing: Sure. Okay. So that’s another, kind of interesting area to probe, right? And,as you can see, people are so used to this term voice of customer, but in my view, personal view, we should actually use a different phrase that may be more meaningful. That’s voice of stakeholders, and I advocate that in my class.

[00:10:48] Gary Jing: That is, even though we may stay with the, the terminology with of customer, but the meaning is really ways of stakeholder. What’s the difference? Customer tends to be, kind of focusing on the user side, right? the, the receiving side of the,of the product. But the stakeholder is much broad than that.

[00:11:10] Gary Jing: stakeholder is referring to whoever can affect us or being affected by us. And,what’s kind of, interesting is any of those. Like the interest of stakeholder. Well, by the way, in ISO they call that interest of party, right? So any of those different interest from stakeholder, it may derail.

[00:11:34] Gary Jing: Your, your business in a way. Right? And a lot of time things fail not because of the customer side that the need not served, but other side, it’s like the stakeholders need and, which could be, like the government, government. regulation or supplier, right? Like during COVID, a lot of business struggle is not because they couldn’t meet customer need, rather they couldn’t get the materials, get the parts.

[00:12:06] Gary Jing: So from the whole business kind of viewpoint. Voice of customer is really, should be broader than that, should be voice of stakeholder. So I, I use VOS instead of VOC, but because of the tradition, maybe I would just use that exchange exchangeable, just matter of, I personally don’t feel like we should stick to especially the end customer only.

[00:12:34] Gary Jing: I think that’s a great call out. I really mean that voice of customer, because I think about it kind of similarly in, in a slightly different way. Hmm.

[00:12:43] Josh Santo: and I think the, the, the thing is, is I, I’m encouraging people to expand their definition of customer and, and how I’m encouraging them to expand that definition matches stakeholder, right?

[00:12:53] Josh Santo: So it’s

[00:12:54] Gary Jing: Yeah. Yeah,

[00:12:54] Josh Santo: of customer. Just, do you know who your customers are? Your customer isn’t just your end user, your

[00:13:00] Gary Jing: yeah, yeah.

[00:13:02] Josh Santo: All of your stakeholders, which like you’ve put it, it’s whoever can be affected or, whoever is affecting us. It’s everyone. Every team coming together in order to deliver upon this promise of taking the raw material or the product or, or whatever your particular process is, taking that outputting what your next customer needs.

[00:13:26] Gary Jing: Yeah.

[00:13:26] Josh Santo: then you’ve got all the customers within that process. Right? Because you started out the conversation, you have quite the big team, I’m sure you have the perspective that everyone on your team is your customer. You’re there to serve them. They’re your stakeholders. love that reframe of voice of customer, and I think that’s so important to emphasize that your customer is more than just the, the, the person that receives your product. Your customer is every single stakeholder that you interact with, and that the stuff that you interact with, the things that you do have an impact on or are impacted by, and it’s taken that systemic approach.

[00:14:07] Gary Jing: Yeah. Yeah. And also the connection over here to quality. It’s, again, it’s reshaping the scope of quality, right? So,

[00:14:17] Josh Santo: Well, tell me more about that. It reshapes the scope of

[00:14:19] Gary Jing: well, it’s just to say if we’re, looking at like stakeholders angle, our quality, means broader. Kind of then what usually manufacturing is tracked or measured against, right? Which usually, to make it,practical and reimbursable things will, will be specific to specs, right? Will be like, expectations will be turned into specs.

[00:14:48] Gary Jing: it, it just, if we are talking about,voice of stakeholders. Then, quality has a broad, broader sense kind of from that angle. So.

[00:14:58] Josh Santo: And, and the word you used earlier, that idea of balance, how do you. How would you balance all of a sudden, you know, if you go from viewing one specific entity as your customer to to viewing all of your stakeholders and seeing quality as something that serves all of the stakeholders, that could feel a little overwhelming. How do you balance that scope?

[00:15:22] Gary Jing: Right, and, and that’s a good point. point It may not, to me, it may not be a, like a simple thing we can use. to, it’s just like a flip that you can flip on or, or so, and, it may involve like iterations to refine that. it certainly in the current, from the product development perspective, in, in the current, kind of practice, there are established thing from the very beginning.

[00:15:49] Gary Jing: It’s helping to find that. meaningful balance, right? Meaning you start from voice of customer and, and then you turn it into, specs and, and so forth. And the, Many of the reviews in different like stages, of the product development, all of those help refine how, you, kind of land to your specs.

[00:16:11] Gary Jing: still, in many cases, as I mentioned, many of my environment are high tech environment. In that case, technology’s changing rapidly. And, not necessarily mature, which means our respect evolve throughout the, lifetime of the product, as a result, because the technology is evolving as well. So there are those, you know, aspect in that as well.

[00:16:36] Gary Jing: That is, it may not be, like a clear, like, simple fixed theme. it, it may be it’s a iteration and its journey and, maturity cycle per se, right? to eventually, hopefully your mature product will reach a meaningful balance so that you bring sufficient profitability and, and along with serving the customer’s need.

[00:17:02] Gary Jing: So.

[00:17:03] Josh Santo: Got it. So it’s really, you’re, you’re almost kinda shifting the direction, right? You, you want to meet customer expectation, and you also want to consider that your customers are not just your end users, they’re. They, all of your stakeholders

[00:17:17] Gary Jing: Right, right.

[00:17:19] Josh Santo: be overwhelming. But as long as you keep that destination in mind of how do we better meet our customer’s, ex expectations, our internal, our external, all of our stakeholders, how do we better meet their expectations? You prioritize what? What can we do today, this month? This year, et cetera, and over time, you’ll, you’ll be closer to that goal. That may be more of an ideal, a reality that’s very difficult to achieve, but as long as we’re all working

[00:17:47] Gary Jing: Sure.

[00:17:48] Josh Santo: in pursuit of that, in that same direction, you, you’ll, you’ll tap into that act of of pursuing quality this way.

[00:17:57] Gary Jing: Sure, sure, sure. Yeah.

[00:18:00] Josh Santo: I, I have to imagine that some of your perspective is based not only on your experience, but also just your background. You’ve got an interesting mix of process, continuous improvement roles, quality roles in your background. does your continuous improvement background influence your approach to quality management?

[00:18:23] Gary Jing: Yep. that’s a good, good area to touch on. that is, I may hold a slightly different unique, view, in terms how to, divide or structure quality in my view. with the background I have, I see quality as three branches, the quality system side, right? You relay the QMS quality management system and so forth, and the day-to-day operations.

[00:18:48] Gary Jing: And then the third branch is the improvement part. And, for the day-to-day operation, it can be further branched out into like manufacturing supply or, customer design, et cetera. So, if you look at my, history, my background, most of my time has been focusing on improvement. side through Six Sigma or Lean C Sigma, approach or program.

[00:19:16] Gary Jing: And, it, it just, even during that time, I still considered it’s part of quality. Essentially. It’s just one of the branch of the quality. So, so this is how I see quality aside.

[00:19:29] Josh Santo: So in a sense, you’ve always been part of quality, right? You

[00:19:33] Gary Jing: Right, right. That’s how I see. Even though, I spent, maybe more time in the improvement aspect right side, so

[00:19:41] Josh Santo: Yeah. Yep. The title and the focus may have been very specific, but it was still part of the, of what you argue are the three

[00:19:47] Gary Jing: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:19:49] Josh Santo: recap those, you defined it as the quality management system, so just. Overall, how’s your system work together to deliver

[00:19:56] Gary Jing: Yeah.

[00:19:57] Josh Santo: that is expected?

[00:19:58] Josh Santo: You talked about the day-to-day operations and

[00:20:01] Gary Jing: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:01] Josh Santo: that manifests in different ways across different aspects of, all the operations within, within manufacturing. And then you talked about the improvement where you spent most of, most of your, your career. So it’s, it’s kind of like that continuous improvement background and experience really. Set a foundation from which you were able to build upon to move into these quality management roles in leadership positions. Well then thinking about that experience, one of the things that I know that you have a significant amount of expertise on, is Six Sigma. and Lean as well. And Lean Six Sigma. I’m curious, when you think about these three things, lean Six Sigma. Lean Six Sigma, what’s the difference to you between the three of ’em?

[00:20:52] Gary Jing: Sure. Yeah. So, with my background, I consider lean and cma. They are looking at the same thing, just through, kind of two different angles or lenses. A lean is typically, kind of from the angle of like waist. And the flow and Sigma, it’s from the angle of defect or variation. So either we can call that angle or lens, right?

[00:21:21] Gary Jing: And, one thing, I, I personally wanna highlight is they actually match up, in a way, for example, defect. it is one form of waste and also like variation it, interrupt flow. So, they’re just two different angle, but looking at very similar things, that’s, that’s one another thing I noticed on the ground, right?

[00:21:45] Gary Jing: there are frictions between Lean and Sigma on the ground level, in at the execution level. you just, in the same time it just, some of the pursuit are opposite or against each other potentially. But I. Another thing I also want to, highlight is the synergy between the two outweighs those frictions.

[00:22:09] Gary Jing: So as a result, nowadays it’s typically it’s lean and Sigma, combined in a way rather are various way people combine that either called integrated or combined. So,

[00:22:21] Josh Santo: Well, talk to us a little bit more about that idea of friction at the execution level. What, what, what is the friction between Lean and Six Sigma at the execution level?

[00:22:32] Gary Jing: sure. Yeah. And, and very commonly seen, for example, Sigma emphasis on data collection, data utilization and analysis. Lean talk about focus on efficiency. The, doesn’t. in general lean side, they don’t want to waste time on things you don’t see value or way to use it. So even in the data collection side, there are different like approach per se, right?

[00:23:01] Gary Jing: Lean, it’ll not emphasis on, too much data collection, but Six Sigma practice, no matter if it’s currently valuable or not. It tends to accumulate more so that down the road you can analyze it and, and you can reveal different things. But everything has a cost. When you, when you collect, data that you don’t see, immediate use right away, it may seem as a cost and or potential waste, right?

[00:23:30] Gary Jing: So example like that and, and,and, and not to mention system sometimes may, be seen as overprocessing. It is just too much data analytics and, and like burdening in a way. So, so in in the execution level, there are some of the different, like pursuit, that may not be in sync, but still I want mention, the synergy between the two, is actually, overruled.

[00:23:59] Gary Jing: most of those friction points. So.

[00:24:02] Josh Santo: Well, well talk to us now about the synergy

[00:24:04] Gary Jing: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. so, so what happened is, like, like as I mentioned right nowadays, usually it’s kind of used together. And, one interesting thing is I see like six Sigma people, they see, a lot of value, from lean practice. Or lean activities. It, it may not be the other way around.

[00:24:26] Gary Jing: Like lean people a lot of time may not necessarily see value of six activities. Right. but,but you see everything has its limitations. And lean, focus more on kind of, common sense, straightforward, things so that everyone can do, can practice. And as a result, it, I mean it’s, again, everything has pros and cons, right?

[00:24:49] Gary Jing: And as a result, it may, kind of have limitation to go deeper. In a way to drill down and, and that part to drill down, that it’s in a way, like go deeper, is the strengths of system side. And, and so, in a way they, can support, each other, and, and the strengths may not be exactly the same.

[00:25:11] Gary Jing: Right? And,so one of the. kind of popular way that people use them together is the so-called one two punch. That is, you start from lean activities to clean out those easy things like low hanging fruit and stuff. And, and after that it may force you to go deeper to reveal next opportunity and that’s when can help a lot.

[00:25:36] Gary Jing: using data analytic to allow people to drill deeper. And, and so that’s, you know, in a way highlighted the synergy between the two to allow you to start easy in the same time to go deeper as well. So that one, two punch combination.

[00:25:56] Josh Santo: Because at the end of the day, they both have the same goal. Like you called out, when we first started talking about it. It’s just taken two different approaches and those different approaches require different, different lenses. Just here are the tools that we typically use, here’s why we typically do it.

[00:26:12] Josh Santo: But at the end of the day, the goal is more or less the same. You know, you want to back to the point that you called out, you wanna

[00:26:20] Gary Jing: Yep.

[00:26:20] Josh Santo: your stakeholders expectations.

[00:26:22] Gary Jing: Yeah, that’s a very good point. That is, you see at different level it may be seen slightly different. Earlier I highlighted there are frictions on the ground level, right? And the execution. But at the executive level, that’s totally different. So the executive’s viewpoint, that’s exactly what you highlighted.

[00:26:44] Gary Jing: They are essentially doing the same. Doing the same thing. Just maybe different approach slightly. And, and, I can share one interesting kind of story I had with Jack Welsh. And, and yeah. So, it’s a very rare opportunity that Jack, we, hopefully everyone, knows is he’s the consider, he’s the former CEO of, ge, right?

[00:27:07] Gary Jing: Consider the Godfather figure of Six Sigma. So in about like, 2007 or eight in that timeframe. That’s after his retirement from ge. And there were, like media, like press report, kind of, saying he regretted that he wasn’t, introduced the lien first. So he got stuck to say sma. And, and, when I get the opportunity to meet with Jake Welsh, I, actually approved in that area since I want to confirm, or, it is, it is, it is.

[00:27:44] Gary Jing: Whatever, right? I want to know if that’s true that,media, you know, press report and,when I asked that question, very interestingly, Jake Wels didn’t answer it directly. He took a step back and, and say, this way he’s saying, you know. If you do them well, you get the same thing. So that kind of says it explains a lot, right?

[00:28:09] Gary Jing: From executives viewpoint, you get the thing essentially.

[00:28:15] Josh Santo: same thing. Yeah. The goal, the goal is still the same. And I think that’s an important clarification that you called out, is that at different levels, the perspective starts to change. And

[00:28:24] Gary Jing: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:25] Josh Santo: level,

[00:28:26] Gary Jing: Yeah,

[00:28:26] Josh Santo: which what a crazy story, one that you got to meet him and two, that you get to ask

[00:28:30] Gary Jing: exactly. Exactly.

[00:28:32] Josh Santo: a, such a great question,

[00:28:33] Gary Jing: Yeah. Such honor to, to have that opportunity and, and ask that question and get that, perspective. So in, in a way he didn’t directly, respond in a way he. Rejected the notion, right, that he regret he may, at the inner side, but he didn’t openly embrace that that.

[00:28:54] Josh Santo: right. Well, it’s a, it’s a great, it’s a great reminder of what the ideal is, what the, what the end goal is. In that, there’s multiple ways to get to that end goal and the way that you put it, that idea of a one two punch, you can start with one, something quick, something, you know, maybe even a little bit easier to get started with.

[00:29:15] Josh Santo: And then as the, the exploration of. What do we need to do to make this even better As that, as you start to go deeper with that question, you may have to use different tools, right? A different methodology in order to get to that particular point.

[00:29:32] Gary Jing: Yeah,

[00:29:32] Josh Santo: and I like how you put it, that it’s not really lean versus Six Sigma.

[00:29:36] Josh Santo: It’s how can we best use these different tools, frameworks, together. In order to achieve that goal, which Jack Welch called out.

[00:29:50] Gary Jing: which are the high level, the same basically.

[00:29:52] Josh Santo: same. Yeah, exactly. you know, I think that that kind of highlights an element of what people may get wrong with regards to, to Lean and Six Sigma, but I’m, I’m curious, are there other things that you’ve noticed that people to get wrong using Lean Six Sigma in manufacturing?

[00:30:13] Gary Jing: Yeah.

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[00:31:07] Gary Jing: one of the thing, I notice is, Kind of, especially in the early years that people may have like a little bit wrong in a way,perspective to those programs, especially in the early years that, people may feel like, it’s bulletproof and, and, it’s like a magic wand if you wave that, things will go away.

[00:31:28] Gary Jing: And, and I, I noticed that very strongly in the early years, but the reality is. Neither Lean or Six Sigma. they are, like bulletproof. I mean, they definitely help to help orientation, to improve, to thrive, but there are a lot of failures as well. And,it, it’s, it, it, it, it’s not automatic. W and, and unfortunately, in that case.

[00:32:00] Gary Jing: If it’s not a magic wand, a lot of people kind of tends to lose interest or faith to those programs and, and, so, so that’s a kind of a, unfortunate thing. And it may be tied to their expectation, maybe not very realistic. They, they definitely help this kind of, in, in, in a way kind of amplify your improvement, right?

[00:32:25] Gary Jing: Speed up your improvement. but none of those are like cure all type of situations, so I just want to mention that kind of interesting dynamic. So,

[00:32:35] Josh Santo: is an interesting dynamic,

[00:32:36] Gary Jing: yeah.

[00:32:37] Josh Santo: this misaligned, expectations, right? It’s

[00:32:41] Gary Jing: Mm-hmm.

[00:32:42] Josh Santo: it’s not a magic wand. It’s, it’s not going to be a quick fix. This is. It’s gonna take some time to, to get it done. Now I can’t help but be struck by that term expectation ’cause it’s come up a lot. So far. In this conversation we talked about how quality is a balancing act in which you’re balancing essentially meeting. Your customer expectations. And when we talked about customer, we talked about how your customers, actually, all of your stakeholders, in this case we’re talking about one of your stakeholders or a group of your stakeholders, their expectations not being in this case. So I’m kind of struck by, by this, this idea of like, sometimes expectations may not be realistic.

[00:33:31] Josh Santo: How do you, how do you balance that? If people are getting this wrong, if they see it as a magic wand, do we help the expectations become more realistic?

[00:33:43] Gary Jing: Yeah, it’s, it’s a good point, right? I mean, to me it, it is a learning curve. That, like including like people or organization, they need to learn what’s the right, perspective, right? Right. Expectation. Two things. Either to a program like Lean or Six Sigma. Or Lean Six Sigma or other things, right?

[00:34:03] Gary Jing: Even like for product. So, so if we move back to the quality, like. Perspective and, and even for the product, there could be unrealistic expectation as well. I, at least I know in the high tech area, I know in the traditional manufacturing product are more matured. That may not be a big issue. But for new, like high tech environment, new product, that happens a lot.

[00:34:29] Gary Jing: That is, there are newer technology that potentially can deliver certain wonderful things, right? But engineering side, it may not be there yet. So the actual product, it may not kind of, kind of be there yet. I mean, it does have a maturity kind of cycle, and over time it’ll be better, improved and, and, but at the beginning, it may not be.

[00:34:54] Gary Jing: And then as a result. there could be issues and the customer may not be fully satisfied. And, and so that’s the product side. And a program like Sigma, in a way, it’s also a product, it’s a program, and, and have similar things now over years, it get matured. Now I think people’s expectation get matured now as well.

[00:35:16] Gary Jing: And, and that’s why I emphasized in early years, I think that’s more, like obvious issue. And nowadays I think people are more realistic in how to position those programs, right? How, what to expect to those programs. So

[00:35:33] Josh Santo: Hmm. Yeah. Defining setting expectations. It’s an important part, not just in getting started, but

[00:35:39] Gary Jing: yeah.

[00:35:40] Josh Santo: routine maintenance. Checking in are, are your expectations being met? If not, let’s, let’s get to the, the root cause there, which could be a lack of realistic expectations, in which case we could probably think of, of some, corrective actions, right?

[00:35:56] Josh Santo: If you don’t have realistic expectations. Why, what do we need to do about it? Is it education? Is it

[00:36:02] Gary Jing: Yeah.

[00:36:03] Josh Santo: et cetera, et cetera. let’s, let’s put ourselves in the position of someone who may not have gotten started yet with Six Sigma. Let’s say somebody’s listening to this, they, they, you know, think, well, you know, I’m familiar with Lean Six Sigma. Not as much. I think that could help us out. How do you recommend manufacturers get started with Six Sigma if they haven’t done so already?

[00:36:29] Gary Jing: sure. Yeah. I do think lean, is more of a grassroots, type of like common sense type of practice. So it’s suitable for all levels of people, employees, and so forth. So, as a result, you know. Especially like floor level people. No, pre, rec, in, in a way for, people’s capability and qualification.

[00:36:52] Gary Jing: So, as a result, that probably, should be the first thing to try between Lean C Sigma. And, and also earlier we talked about one two punch, right? And, and, the, the first punch should be the lean kind of. Activities and then Six Sigma. Because it emphasis on the data analytics. It is indeed, needing a little bit more, education and, maybe a, a, a smaller group of people is more suited for that and, can be, used as the second punch to go deeper.

[00:37:25] Gary Jing: Right? To, to drive things deeper. So that’s one aspect. Another thing is, maybe, I, I, I don’t know how many people paid attention to, right? six Sigma side one is a signature framework called the dm, a define measure, analyzing, improve, and control. And another, signature, activity is data analytics.

[00:37:48] Gary Jing: You see data analytics definitely, it’s associated to some sort of college level education and, and, to be more capable. But the DA problem solving framework that is, kind of general. It, it can be, at least that framework, that mentality can be used by anyone. So, so even with it can of have a low starting point.

[00:38:16] Gary Jing: If you only want to follow that five phase DAC approach, then it doesn’t need a lot of like education to be able to do that. So it’s still even a level people can follow. So as a result. Many of the lean activities like Kaizen activities, they can follow the DMAC structure in a way to make it more, solid and, and complete, right?

[00:38:42] Gary Jing: So, so that’s kind of another part, worth to mention. And also, because of the data analytic capability, six Sigma has different levels of, kind of, progressional, thing. To, to reflect that capability. Like for example, like a yellow build, green build, black build master, black build. Each level is associated to a different level or a deeper level, data analytic skills.

[00:39:10] Gary Jing: And actually green build is a entry level data analytic. Usually it’s associated to. It, it doesn’t even need data analytic portion of that. So those will be a good starting point if people want to try, umab, at least to start. And then you gradually, move kind of deeper or go higher, right? to, to, with added, capability.

[00:39:41] Gary Jing: Maybe another part, works to associate this to is the 80 20 rule. That is, you see, that 80% of the problem can be addressed by 20% of the tools, which is what Yellow Build and Green build typically covers. So in a way that level give people the highest return on investment. lower investment, but pretty significant.

[00:40:07] Gary Jing: 80% of the return was only 20% of the in investment. So it’s a, it is a good if people are to try, maybe try starting from those levels. So

[00:40:18] Josh Santo: Got it. So you don’t have to be a master black belt with six Sigma in

[00:40:23] Gary Jing: correct

[00:40:24] Josh Santo: start getting the benefit.

[00:40:26] Gary Jing: this, right, right.

[00:40:28] Josh Santo: the lens can bring. Got

[00:40:29] Gary Jing: Yeah.

[00:40:30] Josh Santo: So getting started actually, probably quicker than one might expect you

[00:40:35] Gary Jing: Hmm.

[00:40:37] Josh Santo: the, looking into the dmaic problem solving framework.

[00:40:41] Gary Jing: Yeah.

[00:40:41] Josh Santo: And then, there’s also options of exploring the green belt and yellow belt, which would to your point, about 20% of the tools that. That, six Sigma can bring, but can unlock a significant amount of return

[00:40:58] Gary Jing: Yeah.

[00:40:58] Josh Santo: just on that basic side, so you don’t have to go full scale. Let’s get everybody to be master Black belts. Then we can

[00:41:03] Gary Jing: Okay.

[00:41:04] Josh Santo: Six Sigma. It’s a, it’s a much lower barrier to entry

[00:41:09] Gary Jing: Yeah, exactly.

[00:41:11] Josh Santo: is a, is a topic that comes up often.

[00:41:13] Josh Santo: It’s come up a number of times on the podcast so far. It’s a topic we also discuss with our customers here at Ease, root cause analysis and problem solving. Both Lean and Six Sigma introduce tools and methods for successful problem solving. I’m curious from your perspective, what do you think often gets overlooked in root cause analysis?

[00:41:37] Gary Jing: That’s a very good question is actually I do have something special to offer in that area that is over years with my practice. I did notice one kind of quite systematic and fundamental deficiency. Or problem associated the two, the established root cause analysis and even FMEA failure mode effect analysis.

[00:42:06] Gary Jing: And very interestingly, none of those established practice for those two type of activities, right? They have any consideration related to return on investment ROI over typically over the actions taken. Or derive from the analysis. I personally feel like it’s a, it’s a big problem. So, if I further elaborate, it’s kind of interesting.

[00:42:35] Gary Jing: You see any business decision, you always want to think about return on investment. So from the business perspective, right? But. Kind of, in root cause analysis or FMEA that’s totally not in the picture. So after certain years of pondering, wondering, and evaluating and, and now I, I guess I can understand why there are so many argument over root cause analysis, FMEA, either on the result or even on the practice itself.

[00:43:16] Gary Jing: So. People constantly struggle with those two activities. It’s my belief that a big part of that is the misalignment between the business need and those practice. They’re not aligned, and it is, it will be my focus in the foreseeable future. Actually, I want to. Kind of publicize this problem and drive for fix to that, essentially to introduce ROI return investment, like consideration or analysis into the root cause analysis and FMEA already, already done some of those through my publications and articles, and I want to push more.

[00:44:08] Gary Jing: So, and, and I see that in, in one way, can, Help resolve those continuing argument over those kind of, activities. So.

[00:44:18] Josh Santo: So when going through root cause analysis, make sure that you are able to clearly articulate the business impact of solving whichever problem that you’re trying to solve. I would imagine, Gary, that in your experience, people might have of like how you called out different levels of perspective You know, you know, lean and Six Sigma, and at the end of the day, at the, at the highest level, it’s accomplishing the same result. I would imagine that that kind of applies here with the return on investment. I imagine that when you seek to solve the problem, you have an understanding of the impact of solving that problem, but your perspective may not be the, the same perspective shared by, let’s say, plant management or even corporate leadership.

[00:45:08] Gary Jing: In a way.

[00:45:08] Josh Santo: Can you, can you talk to us a little bit about. W how to, how to communicate that return on investment, how to translate that to the

[00:45:17] Gary Jing: Sure, sure. Yeah. yeah. I mean, O may, maybe I will elaborate a little bit more, right? on what I mean about those return investment. It’ll help people to see how, to factor that in or say, calculate that. So what happened is the traditional established root cause analysis, FMEA. They focus on one aspect of ROI, which is the, the impact or the return side.

[00:45:44] Gary Jing: They wanna focus on the high risk item and they want to have big impact, but they have no, they ignore how much investment is needed, at least the current, practice ignores how much investment is needed and, and that hopefully people see the mismatch. Between the business perspective and also those problem solving perspective.

[00:46:06] Gary Jing: And, and, so one of the simple solution is to make that assessment explicit. So what I noticed, people actually always have that in mind. It’s just not known, not publicly elaborated, not known by other people. So, in a way it’s like a subconscious way. To decide when to stop as a root cause or what actions to take.

[00:46:36] Gary Jing: Right? And one simple way, I noticed I already, introduced it in our own practice, essentially just to make explicit ROI assessment. That assessment doesn’t have to be the financial level assessment. You can simply just to weigh like return or impact. Is that high, medium, low, and also the cost and the investment, high, medium, low.

[00:47:01] Gary Jing: As long as you make it explicit, you can easily align. People bring everyone to the same page because different people may have different thought on the cost, and then that discussion can help align people. And with that, it’ll make it more obvious on which actions bring in. Higher ROI, higher return on investment and so forth.

[00:47:25] Gary Jing: So one of the practice we are doing is we added a column in FMEA form. That column is called ROI, essentially, so that you will know out of the list of actions, right? And which one bringing you kind of more business benefit versus. Yeah. Yeah. In a way it’s like prioritize. That’s only one aspect. Another aspect is drive actions, because the traditional practice, for example, FMEA, right?

[00:48:02] Gary Jing: And people may feel like low risk item, you don’t need to take action. But in practice, in reality, if there are simple fix to that or simple improvement to that low risk item. People may just go implement that improvement and fix as long as the return investment is good. So it’ll help to drive for actions as well.

[00:48:26] Josh Santo: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:48:27] Gary Jing: idea about root cause analysis as well. It’ll help you to stop to decide where is the stopping point, because people constantly debate on is this the root cause or not? And if you bring in return on investment into the picture. It’ll be easily aligned people too. If it’s very, extremely high cost and, unknown return, maybe people will stop digging.

[00:48:53] Gary Jing: So, so,

[00:48:55] Josh Santo: how you put that very simply. It doesn’t have to be a huge cost benefit analysis. It’s

[00:49:00] Gary Jing: yeah.

[00:49:00] Josh Santo: a, an understanding of, you know, the return. Is it high, medium, low? Is

[00:49:05] Gary Jing: Yeah,

[00:49:05] Josh Santo: to do something about

[00:49:06] Gary Jing: yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:49:08] Josh Santo: great practical approach. I

[00:49:11] Gary Jing: Yeah. Yeah. A simple way to align people right together. Yeah.

[00:49:15] Josh Santo: Gary, we covered a lot today. I feel like I certainly learned a lot. I love that perspective of treating. Your customers treating everyone as your customer, right? Your stakeholders are actually your customers, and using that as the perspective that you, you think about when you think about quality and how quality is really there to help balance meeting your customers expectations and producing what they need.

[00:49:43] Josh Santo: In order for those expectations to be met. I love your thoughts on treating Lean and Six Sigma as a one two punch, and to not see them as these totally different approaches. Rather focus on where they compliment one another on that journey towards the same overall goal. And, and finally, one of the things that stood out was just make sure when you’re doing root cause analysis and problem solving, make sure that you are focusing on that return.

[00:50:13] Josh Santo: It doesn’t have to be a huge cost benefit analysis. It could be as simple as ranking. You know, where’s the impact fall on this scale of high, medium to low, what’s the cost and investment rank within that same scale, high, medium to low, and then finding the actions and activities that can be prioritized given the constraints that you have within your operation.

[00:50:34] Josh Santo: So Gary, thanks so much for stopping by.