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It’s the holiday season, which includes thinking about the pending new year. This is the perfect time to start living more mindfully, meaning spending less money and making your money go further. Here is an easy way to try the magic of Six Sigma for yourself, and start saving money in your business. Get started by using the core Six Sigma principles right away, along with some Six Sigma tools.

• Always focus on your customers. There’s an old saying, ”The customer is always right.” This holds value because it’s the customer who keeps you in business. For information on the customer’s requirements, check out VOC, Voice of the Customer. The Voice of Customer can be obtained by a focus group of a targeted demographic, a one-on-one interview, or survey. If your company has a cutting edge product, then you need to find a lead user who represents your customer’s specific requirements. For example, if your company makes software games for gamers, you could contact a professional or an avid, high-level gamer and probe them for information for the design of the game.
• Understand exactly how the work gets done. Using Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is a great way to document and show everything that goes into the making and flow of the product. Value Stream Mapping is a visualization tool that really helps you make sense of exactly how to optimize your entire process.
• Eliminating waste and being proactive in monitoring for variation. This can be done by using the DMAIC template. The data you collect from this template will help pinpoint valuable information on where in the process variation is occurring.
• Make the processes flow smoothly. This is done by using the DMAIC to find the variation, along with the Root Cause Analysis tool to find any issues and how this affects the process, and the finished product or service.
• Teamwork makes the dreamwork. You need to involve cross-functional teams. This means everyone needs to be trained in Six Sigma’s principles.

Finally, be thorough and flexible! For more information on our Lean Six Sigma courses and services, please click visit 6sigma.us.