critique a six sigma study

1. Executive Summary

Kahiki foods, located in Gahanna, OH is a leading supplier of high Asian-style frozen food.

In December 2008, the company began to receive heavy surcharge from local authorities because of their poor water quality mainly due to an excess of biological waste entering the sewer system. Although there were 3 metrics used to determine water quality, one stood out over the other

Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) The amount of oxygen needed by bacteria to decompose all the solid wastes in wastewater, it is used as a measure of pollution.

The surcharge resulting from data collected by this metric were 74% of the resulting fees. The total bill for poor water quality reached $204,000 in 2009.

A six-sigma team was tasked to extremely reduce the BOD, after 6 months they reached 70% with a goal of 95%.

2. Define Phase Project Charter

Project Name	BOD Reduction at Kahiki Foods	Commencement Date	Sep, 2009
Project Sponsor	Kahiki Foods	Completion Date	Dec, 2010
Expected Hard Cost Reduction	$195,000	Expected % Reduction	95%

Project Mission

The main objectives are:

· Intense reduction in solid waste entering floor drains.

· Increase output at different plant processes.

· Green initiative for the organization. They mention greener when there are no way to measure if they achieved it, it’s just misleading for the top management

· $195,000 hard cost reduction.

Problem Statement

Per local authorities BOD levels shouldn’t exceed 250mg/L

Kahiki had BOD waste levels of 3864mg/L – 1546% higher than upper spec limit. The math is correct I calculate it

They consequences extra surcharges to full plant closure. The source of the waste was obviously originating from inefficient floor drain management

· Process map

· SIPOC map (supplier,Input,Process,Output,Customer)

To isolate the opportunities for waste to hit the floor

Understand the flow of food throughout the plant

Food waste is created at different production processes such as:

· Raw chicken processing

· Frying processes

· Packaging & dishwashing

· 3rd shift cleaning

3. Measure Phase

· Process Capability Charts

· Measurement Plan

· Demand Analysis to understand what “pulls” existed on the waste removal system is a marketing study used to determine what type of customers are willing to buy a product and how many units they are likely to buy and at what price range. It a marketing tool no need to use it

3 Metrics used to determine water quality: The team hypothesis that these metrics are correlated with BOD

1. Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD)

2. Total Suspended Solids (TSS) is the dry-weight of particles trapped by a filter used to assess the quality of wastewater after treatment.

3. Total Kjeldhal Nitrogen (TKN) is a method for the quantitative determination of organic nitrogen in chemical substances like ammonia.

Process Capability Charts for BOD & TSS clearly both metrics are not meeting the local authorities spec

Measurement Plan

reviewed data including previous and current production rates and sewer consumption trends. They examined data indicating pounds of waste entering/existing plant drain baskets. They also collected data related to the solid wastes found at other key areas, such as at the sump and the separator

Many of these metrics had never been recorded time spend developing operational methods of data collection

Data Collection Challenges

· System changed in 2007. They tracked charges to late 2007 due to system change only data from 2008 and on can be used as reprehensive of the current system.

· Standard sampling schedule 3 site visits/year moved to monthly.

· Data collection visibility most critical points came from cleanup shift.

4. Analyze Phase The main objective of the analyze phase of DMAIC is to get to the root cause of a problem

· 5 Why Analysis. to identify where improvement was needed and what the next actions should be

· FMEA. To examine potential inputs and their effect on the metrics

· Gap analysis to understand what system need to reach the its goals

· Fishbone diagram. To get ideas regarding potential inputs into the system

· Hot spot heat map. Shows a heat map of solid waste entering floor drains

· Regression Analysis. To examine statistical relationships between inputs

· Benchmarking. want to know best in class practices and root cause identification. It’s a quality control method no need for it to be in this case study

5 Why Analysis

The questions used are badly formed the same question is repeated but in phrased differently

Plant Floor Drain Hotspot Heat Map

9 drains accounts for 70% of total amount of solid found 50+ drains. 3 areas to

Target: Raw Process, Bagger Area. Dishwashing.

4. Improve phase

· Improved Solid/Liquid Separation: Inefficient solid/liquid separation from FMEA led to a pilot test using a more efficient separator.

· Reducing Waste Creation: Various projects were initialized to increase throughput and decrease the amount of waste created at the source.

· Employee Training: Simple but effective employee training was implemented regarding waste practices in relation to BOD

· Best Practice Identification: Going hand-in-hand with training, best practices were identified at various production points encouraging BOD sensitive waste handling.

· WAP Committee: A "Waste Awareness Program" Committee was formed with production employees to help serve as the acting body regarding best practice ID.

· Error Proofing: Adding visual SOP's, closing off drains and posting metrics greatly reduced defect opportunities.

Solutions were broken down into 3 Tiers of solutions and teams were created to tackle improvements posted to the action register:

· Tier 1 solutions involved those improvements that were "Just Do It's" and involved simple and more efficient cleaning methods.

· Tier 2 solutions were improvements that were slightly more involved and needed further development before deployment. Some of these solutions came in the form of creating a Waste Awareness Program Committee

· tier 3 solutions were those improvements that would serve as ongoing projects to extend throughout the end of the year. These solutions would take time to develop.

5. Control Phase

Post Improvement Results:

BOD(3/15/10): 1375 mg/L=70% Reduction wrong math done by the case study , actually it’s = 64.41% the correct math I done

TSS(3/15/10): 790 mg/L= 61% Reduction the amount for it before is not mention so no way to measure it if it is correct or not

Expected Hard Cost Reduction 2010 = $178,365 no way to measure because they didn’t provide the numbers before

Control Plan Element 1: Continued employee training

Control Plan Element 2: Sustainability hinges on employees active in the solution process.

Control Plan Element 3: Error proofing

Control Plan Element 4: Accountability is paramount

6. Conclusion

The case yield good results and reached its goal of 50% reduction in BOD waste level after 6 months, but the diagrams and various analysis methods mentioned throughout the study are not presented (no proof) which can be misleading. The math is mostly wrong

The study is much simpler to execute than presented to be.