Seven Attributes of a Lean Six Sigma Control Plan

One of the main objectives of Lean Six Sigma is cutting out unnecessary steps and waste in a process or business model. In Lean methodology, any step without value is removed in order to help increase efficiency, workflow, and profitability.

To enhance quality, organizations create control plans to help business leaders monitor metrics, document successes and make adjustments for constant process improvement. A control plan is a method for documenting the functional elements of quality control that are to be implemented in order to assure quality standards are met for a particular product or service.

A well-organized control plan can help businesses monitor growth, avoid process decline and ensure problems do not reoccur.

Here are seven attributes to consider when developing a Lean Six Sigma control plan:

• Measurements and Specifications – One of the qualities of an organized control plan is maintaining quality in all aspects of a process. Quality is something that can be measured by customer satisfaction. By defining quality features and measuring them to determine quality standards, processes can meet specifications that are deemed customer-approved.
• Input-Output Process – The Input-Output (IPO) model helps identify processing tasks required to transform inputs into outputs. The IPO method helps provide a well-organized way to study and record aspects of the transformation process while identifying what actions to take to help achieve desired output.
• Process Execution – A control plan can help improve process performance by developing mistake-proofing approaches designed to eliminate errors in a process whenever possible. A common Six Sigma tactic used to eliminate waste is called Poka-yoke, which literally means “to avoid errors.”
• Performance Reporting and Sampling – A control plan can also help address when to conduct performance management reviews, the frequency of such reviews and what products or services to inspect for errors. An organized control plan leaves no question unanswered and helps businesses conduct an accurate assessment of process efficiency.
• Documenting Information – Information in the control plan should be accessible to anyone in the company who has a need for it. Additionally, information should be categorized to help organize, plan and manage company data.
• Adjustments – An important part of the Lean Six Sigma method is process improvement or making adjustments to fix problems, reduce waste and cut costs. When a problem has been detected, corrective action is necessary to prevent delays in production and avoid error reoccurrence.
• The Process Owner – Process owners are generally in a position of authority to review, modify and make changes to process operations. Among other duties, they are responsible for product demand and customer satisfaction, and they monitor production performance using process reviews, measurements, and statistics.

Typically, a control plan should be organized in a way that’s easily understood by the project team members, but also comprehensive enough to explain the intricacies of process quality assurance.