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Those who take mass transit to work know the frustration of trying to make an important meeting only to discover the bus is not at the stop at its appointed time. The same goes for students who are trying to make that all-important class and get to the stop just as the bus is pulling away from the stop, earlier than expected.

Last week's iSixSigma Live! Summit in Miami examined this problem during an off-site tour of the University of Miami in Coral Gables. The school, which has an advanced Lean Six Sigma system in its Business Services Division, recently completed a project to optimize its campus-wide shuttle bus service, which was experiencing problems with wait times that were beyond customer tolerances.

Dr. Howard Gitlow, Professor of Management Science, at the university described for the iSixSigma tour group some of the details of the route optimization project, which was conducted by MBA students in the School of Business Administration and spearheaded by Master Black Belts Rick Melnyck and Scott Widener. After conducting more than 100 voice-of-the-customer surveys, the project found that nearly half of the customer complaints fell under the categories of long wait times for buses, great variability in wait times and "stacking" of buses at certain heavily used stops.

While one obvious solution would be to set up a schedule with timed stops, the VOC data showed that 81 percent of the students preferred to leave the current, unscheduled shuttle system in place, Widener said in his presentation.

One of the difficulties encountered during the project were the many variables that could create havoc in the system, such as time of day, rush-hour traffic, weather, bus breakdowns and heavy passenger loads caused by campus events. As Widener described it, the buses were "like links in a bicycle chain" running around the perimeter of the campus, only these links could also move independently and sometimes bump up against each other during their circuit.

Using the university's state-of-the-art dashboard, the team analyzed data on the number of buses in service, the distance traveled between stops, the time duration at each stop, the particular dates and times under study, and the number of passengers embarking and disembarking. After cleaning up some "noise" in the data, such as GPS units that were not turned off at night, showing "huge stop durations," the team began noticing patterns emerging, such as heavy passenger loads in the early morning and the very light use of some of the stops.

The team eventually came up with three recommendations to meet VOC demands and save money for the university:

• Cut the express service, which would reduce the amount of buses and thus the incidencecs of stacking that occurs during peak periods. This change would also save the unversity $1,980 per day in expenses.
• Eliminate certain stops, which also reduced the number of difficult and time-consuming left turns the drivers needed to make.
• Add a timed schedule to only the night route bus, guaranting that buses will be there at pre-determined times, which reduces wait time and increases safety.

One of the more intriguing findings in the data had to do with what Widener called the "sense of entitlement" many students held about their bus routes. Rather than walking to a stop that would take less than five minutes, they insisted on going to their usual stop and waiting longer for "their" bus to arrive. In some cases, he said, wait times could be significantly reduced if students crossed the street and took the bus in the opposite direction, say clockwise in the loop, which would get them to their destination faster than their usual counter-clockwise route. Yet, the students refused to change their habits, he said.

A few years back we sold of our Malaysian made Proton cars and got a Toyota MPV and another Toyota sedan. When the sedan came I also got the book The Toyota Way. Reading the book and driving (not reading and driving at the same time though) the cars is just inspiring. To me Toyota is peace of mind- no engine problems, no electrical system issues, no gear box breakdown. To top it all, those VVTi engines are great- one wonders where all the power came from the relatively small engines. Never had a problem with my pedal and carpet- the only thing I had to be careful is not to pedal-to-the metal otherwise that stab in my back.

I am personally gratefully for the Toyota quality. You see, I had to work 3 states away from home at one time. For nearly two years those were tough times for me- making a 400km trip back to home on weekends and 400km back to work. The drives were gruelling- heavy rains, lousy roads at certain stretches and fatigue. Not a single time my Toyota broke down otherwise I would have been mugged or something. The ABS kicked in when it should, the engine never overheated under straight 6-hour drives and the VVTi made sure the slower vehicles ate dust. I am taken care of, really.

I am sorry to hear of the tragic accidents to which the cause was identified to quality. However I also observe there’s some level international political play which strives to change people’s perception on Toyota. As for me I wish to thank Toyota personally, for bringing me back home safe from those terrible inter-state drives.

After a tasty appetizer of seminars and the hands-on work at the Project Bowl on Monday, iSixSigma Live! offered it's main course yesterday in Miami to start the first official day of the summit. Steve Wilson, of Quality Conversations, may have summed it up best in his opening remarks when he said of the conference's many offerings, "If you go away from this table hungry, it's your fault."

And he was right. The three rousing and inspiting Keynote Addresses had something for everyone, from the greenest Green Belt student (such as myself) to the most seasoned deployment leader.

Frank Hauck, executive vice president of EMC Storage Division, Global Marketing and Consumer Quality, started off by telling the story of his company's transformation and rebirth due to Six Sigma. In the 1990s, he said, EMC was a typical siloed company of the booming 1990s that put all its emphasis on one hardware product and nearly lost its shirt in the dot-com crash. Today, after focusing on the needs of its customers and building loyalty, EMC is a thriving, information-based, matrixed organization that has diversified its software product offerings.

Later, Erie County (N.Y.) Executive Chris Collins told a tale once thought nearly impossible of a strongly Democratic county that elected a Republican in a landslide to run the government based on Six Sigma methods. "By all accounts, I should not be an elected official," Collins admitted. "My opponent said in a debate that a government was not a business and could not be run like a business. I said, 'Let's stop the presses and just hold the election right now.'" He ended up winning with 64 percent of the vote in November 2007.

Since adopting Six Sigma an uphill battle in the public sector, with resistance "10 times what you would ever face in private companies," Collins said&nbsp Erie County has dramatically streamlined its processes, saved a total of $7 million and achieved a 10.8-fold return on investment in the 2008-09 fiscal year, The first question put to Collins from the audience was, "Will you consider running for office in California?"

Former Formula-1 racecar driver Derek Daly, in his engaging Irish brogue, held the audience in rapt attention in the final Keynote session. In a funny, rollicking account of his racing days, he said he began to notice that the same small number of racing teams kept making it to the winner's podium time after time, even when the rules changed, competition got tougher and speed was dramatically increased. The difference, he said, was preparation, the ability to adapt to change, and a knack for creativity and innovation qualities that have been stifled by many American companies today.

As sports metaphors go, Daly's racing-team-as-corporation model felt particularly apt, considering that the tiniest mistake can send you into a concrete barrier at 245 miles per hour. Though the Super Bowl is right around the corner, he poked fun at any business lessons that might come from American football. Unlike Formula-1 racing, "the NFL has no R&D and no manufacturing division," he said. "And after a few seconds of playing, they all stop and have a little chat." Also, he pointed out, "on any given Sunday, 50 percent of all NFL teams win! In racing, there's only one winning team every day!"

I'm looking forward to more fun and informative session today, plus the much-anticipated announcements of the iSixSigma Award winners.

The most famous example of right-to-left planning I can evoke is –

That the United States should set as a goal the "landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth" by the end of the decade

Powerfull stuff, no messing around, but with a budget of $19.6bn you get a flying start. The engineering that went into the Apollo missions is astonishing. It’s a simple idea, set a deadline date and work backwards, right to left. Set the project team the task of creating a delivery plan to meet the set-in-stone delivery date. Let’s look at the Six Sigma Goal statement using the industry-standard template as follows:

To Increase/Decrease the Metric from Baseline Level to Goal Level by Timeframe

We fix this time constraint during Define. Of course it is within the project teams control to set the timeframe, but that is by no means always the case. There is the industry benchmark of 3-months to aim for and business expectations of rapid results.

That leaves the two other constraints – Cost & Quality. What tends to come next? Which is the more tangible, readily measurable and universally understood? No obscure conversations - “what does quality mean to you?” - everyone understands cost. The project defines its costs and gets the budget approved.

We now have two fixed constraints which leaves one more to flex, the quality of the project. So you could debate the logic here and cover alternative situations & scenarios within this project-based paradigm. But the real point I am looking to make is - Are projects always the best way of continuously improving business performance? Does anyone have experience of non-Project based delivery? Does it work or do you need to have project structures and the norms of project management? Could the goal read?

To Continuously Improve the Metric

We’ve all sent the news of Toyota’s recall problems, including the latest decision to pull the andon as it were and halt production until the defect is sorted out. Suddenly the company, and its venerable Toyota Production System do not appear to be as infallible as it has in the past. Indeed, some analysts are predicting big problems for the company as it recovers from these highly visible quality problems, with many customers defecting to other brands.

I for one, am impressed by the speed and scope of the actions Toyota is taking to address the problem. Toyota will likely look at all of the causes of this, not just a faulty design or part that was used, but questioning conditions at the highest level. According to this morning’s New York Times, “Toyota’s president, Akio Toyoda, has himself berated the company for excessive confidence, which he said had set the company up for a painful fall in the global economic crisis.”

While the number of actual occurrences related to the defective parts may not be significant, Toyota is doing the right thing here.

Contrast this with the banking industry. Goldman Sachs created and sold products to investors, that it later bet against and made enormous profits when these products failed to perform. It’s like a car company selling cars known to be defective, and then buying insurance policies that paid off when the cars broke down. The best Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein could muster up was a lame admission that this behavior may have been improper. Meanwhile, there is no evidence of efforts to correct this, or prevent it in the future.

The “5 why” approach to root cause analysis is by no means new, nor does it originate in Six Sigma. Yet it is often used in the Analyze phase, especially when significant data on the X’s is not available.

Most of us have been there – we gather the team of experts, draw the fishbone, and start brainstorming. We ask why 5 times until we get to “the root cause”. Then maybe rack and stack the causes using some sort of matrix, rating each cause by ease of correction vs. impact on the problem. Sometimes we don’t even need to ask why 5 times to get to the answer. One or two is all it takes.

Recently, I had the opportunity to (i.e. was required to) take a class on a specific Root Cause Analysis method. In this class we talked about asking why many more times than 5, taking it all the way back to theology or absurdity, whichever comes first. We were taught to search for as many causes as we could find, taking time to validate each and every one before ruling it out and moving on. No rack and stack matrix would do – we needed to find the root causes, and work to develop solutions that involved true error-proofing, preventing these issues from recurring. Or else enlighten management to the risks we were accepting by choosing not to address certain causes.

Hundreds of past fish-bones and “5 why’s” flashed before my eyes – suddenly they seemed somewhat inadequate. Memories of glitches in Improve as we piloted process changes, due to a step or factor we overlooked in Analyze. It was a teachable moment for sure.

I don’t suppose Taichi Ohno literally meant only ask 5 times to get to the root causes of problems, but the takeaway from this experience reminded me that sometimes the right number of why’s is not 5, but 25 or 125.

Those of you who are passionate about excellence know that at the end of the day, it is this passion that enables you to envision the improbable, exceed your goals and create a new standard of performance - A standard that has its roots firmly planted in process excellence, measurement and accountability for results.

After posting more than 100 blogs that challenged Six Sigma naysayers and toured the W.O.W. Side, I have decided to take a small break from the blogging world. Before I go, I’d like to share a few last thoughts and comments. First, a special thanks to iSixSigma for allowing me the privilege to share my thoughts on the blogosphere. Thanks also to the many readers and posters who kept me on my toes.

In real six sigma fashion, I offer the following lesson learned from my five years of blogging: People may not always agree with what you say or find value in what you offer, but at the end of the day, if only one person walks away with a different question, thought or idea, then you have made a difference.

Excellence is an Attitude - Get One!

Visit the Cox-Box Store for 2010 Calendars and Mugs

The Cox-Box is Copyright © 2000-2009 iSixSigma LLC and Gary P. Cox – All Rights Reserved
Reproduction Without Permission Is Prohibited – Request Permission