1. Clearly specify the problem statement, apply the quality principals (Deming's PDSA, Six Sigma DMAIC, 7 QC Tools, Cost of Quality, etc.) to come up with your recommendation.
2. Need to demonstrate the 5W and 1H (What, Why, Who, Where, when and How). A final report and presentation are required for each group.
3. Look at the FLOW of the INPUTS, the TRANSFORMATION, and the OUTPUTS of a process. As part of the project expected to recommend ways in which the process can be IMPROVED for more efficiency, lower cost, or faster processing. Analyze a part of a system that is not performing the way the organization wants it to.
4. Include the following in the final presentation/report:
- Description of the company, its size with respect to sales, income, and employees, its location, its major products, its strategic operating guidelines (vision, mission, and goals), and its external customers. Also, include overall demographics.
- Description of the industry that this company is in: is it growing / declining. How does this industry perform in overall quality standards? What are the key elements that are driving this industry (positively and negatively) and the company (positively and negatively)? What are the projections for both in the future?
- Key competitors for this business. What does this company compete on?
- An overview of the process that you are working with and a description why it is important to this company. Describe the context in which your process takes place, how the major outputs are used by customers, both internal and external, and an identification of what problems currently exist with the process.
- Detailed description of how the process flows from start to finish. Be sure to identify all inputs at the beginning of the process, the steps at each stage of the process (and any other inputs that come in at each stage), and the outputs at each intermediate stage and the final process. Be sure to identify key metrics of the process such as how many, how often, how much, why and who. A detailed flowchart depicting the flow of materials, information, equipment, customers and/or other relevant flows should be included in this section.
- Detailed quantitative information (if available) such as details about inputs (how many, how much, how often), process run times, yields, and output measures.
- Suggested improvements to the process. Be sure to link this back to a specific step of the process where the problem is occurring. For each recommendation, identify the percentage of the problem that you think will be solved, the advantage of the recommendation, implementation guidelines, the cost of the recommendation, any disadvantages of the recommendation, and identify additional problems that implementation of this recommendation could cause.
- An executive summary outlining the recommendations and suggested course of action.
- If necessary, include key references from the text or other literature.
5 Tell a good story of:
- What company you worked with?
- The process that you choose
- Why it is important to the company?
- A description of the process
- Problems that exist within the process
- Your recommendations for improvement & supporting analysis