Six Sigma Project Charter

COURSE PROJECT PART B

KAIZEN EVENTS

Introduction

Kaizen event is a continuous improvement strategy that was developed using the kaizen philosophy. The approach is applied by companies to instill a culture of efficient and continuous improvements in them. Through this approach, such organizations are then able to make improvements in areas such as service delivery, customer care and others, hence reducing wastages and strains. Following on from the value stream mapping assignment (Part A) which was focused on a banking process, this study will assess the potential Kaizen events in the banking sector primarily focusing on its transaction process.

Kaizen Events in Transactional Process

The banking transaction processes may have associated wastages in the form of over-processing of transactions, motion, inventory, waiting, and defects, among others. This transaction involves customers who have diverse needs and, thus, the process must be able to coordinate activities to ensure that customers are efficiently served. Hence, they have to be directed efficiently with regards to the location of the services desired.

Kaizen event in the transactional banking process can come in the form of the elimination of aspects within the transactional process that contribute to delays in the process. It is a common occurrence for this to happen in the banking sector especially when customers are required to queue in banks. For instance, delays between the times the process activity ends and the next one begins may occur, for instance, when a customer queues and then arrives at the service desk, where their issues may end up being unresolved and/or re-directed. This sort of occurrence creates a delay that needs to be eliminated. Otherwise, it will lead to customer dissatisfaction, time wastage, increased waiting periods and additional operational expenditure.

Banks have to establish appropriate inquiry desks that would guide clients and reduce or eliminate the wastage. This is a concept that is largely practiced today by players in the banking sector where the inquiry set up has been automated and thus before queuing the customer’s process tickets that guide and issues them with numbers that direct them to the correct service desk. It is an efficient system, which improves the delivery of service as it also indicates the waiting time. Besides the automated inquiry point, banks should put in place personalized inquiry desks that would serve the clients who may not understand the workings of the system or those that are unsure of the services they are seeking. As a strategy, this will eliminate “waiting” wastage as the customers would avoid queueing only to end up at a service point that will not serve their needs, and hence waste their time and that of others in the queue that would in turn experience service delays.

Through the use of automated inquiry and queuing machines, customers can then be easily categorized in line with the appropriate service counters, thereby improving the transactional process and eliminating congestion by reducing the waiting time and the number of customers that will be waiting for services. As a result, the average service time will be improved, more customers will be served at a time as they will be correctly placed in the queue, teller’s productivity will improve, and “waiting” wastage will be eliminated.

The primary purpose of this particular Kaizen event is to ensure that the transactional process changes for the better, through the elimination of the “waiting” wastage and taking away the activities that are contributing to time delays and transactional costs. Hence, it is aimed at ensuring continuous improvements by reducing the average time the bank customers wait for services in the bank's transactional process. This will also improve the satisfaction of the bank’s customers.

Kaizen Event Agenda

This Kaizen event is established in line with the process mapping technique that is value stream mapping, and is developed in line with the need to improve banking sector transactional process. In the banking transactional process, customers tend to spend a large amount of time merely waiting to be served resulting from delays during queueing which are causing wastage. This wastage disrupts the flow of activities, so through the above Kaizen events continuous improvements can be realized, facilitating efficient service and eliminating delays.

Rationale

The Kaizen event is strategically applied with an objective of solving the bank's transactional process problem that is associated with the condition where customers’ waiting time exceeds the acceptable time. Hence, the intention is to apply it to realize the target objectives of reducing customer service waiting time, ensuring that delays are eliminated or brought to a customer acceptable range. In line with this, the process-mapping technique that was deemed appropriate in the application is the value stream mapping technique, which isolates events and makes it easy to analyze and point out the areas that require improvement.

It is essential to appreciate the fact that automation alone cannot realize the above-stated objective. Thus, there is a need to include the concept of lobby managers that serve to assist in ensuring that the goals can be fully achieved, as they help to direct those whose needs are undefined and ensure that they do not result in process delays. The outcome is to provide a high level of efficiency, reduced delays and improvement in the customer value proposition.

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