DMAIC to Avoid Zombies at Work

Marc Gregor talks on how the Six Sigma approach can be used to deal with the unmotivated employees. This is the first part in the series of three parts.

Almost 10 years ago, I started working in a regulated industry, one that follows
current good manufacturing practices. I was attracted to its logical and
straightforward manner right away. Coming from a background in molecular
biology, it made perfect sense for me to build a quality system as a group of
subsystems that fits together perfectly.

 

In a biological organism, the digestive system extracts nutrients from food, and
the circulatory system delivers them to the cells through the blood. In a
quality system, the document control system stores the most up-to-date
procedures and delivers them to the point of use where product realization takes
place. Nature’s biological systems and organizations’ quality systems work to
keep the organism, or the organization, alive and healthy.

That is until the undead rise from the grave.

 

Most zombie movies show dead people walking slowly, moaning a lot, and trying to
eat people. It’s never pleasant for the few people who are alive, running from
the zombie hoard but never able to get far enough away. One bite from a zombie
can turn humans into the newest member of the undead. Certainly a zombie
infection is not good for any biological system.

 

People who want to stay alive and well instinctively search for a well-balanced
diet to sustain the body; zombies just want brains. People have an immune system
to protect them from infection; zombies just rot away. On a larger scale, people
are biologically wired to protect one another and allow their society to
survive, while zombies just destroy everything in their path.

 

The problem with zombies is that all they want to do is bite and destroy; and
they do it the same way they’ve always done it. Continuous improvement is not on
their, er, menu. Zombies don’t know how to employ DMAIC, which stands for
define, measure, analyze, improve, control, to become better, more efficient
zombies.

 

For instance, here is how DMAIC looks for zombies:

Define: For zombies, the
problem is never a nonconforming product or excess waste. The problem is that
they want to bite someone, but there is no one around, or people run too fast.
That is, until the cute girl gets her foot snagged in a tree root, and then of
course their problem is solved. Zombie snack time.

Measure: Zombies don’t collect
data. They just see a person and start chasing him. If they see someone else,
they start chasing that person instead. You certainly never see zombies trying
to work together. They do tend to dine together, however.

Analyze: Root causes are not
on any zombie’s mind (except for that root that snagged the cute girl for snack
time). For zombies the only goal is any person within arm’s reach; they don’t
think about much else.

Improve: Zombies never look for a better way to bite people. Chasing is the only
method they’ll ever use to catch someone, although just standing there waiting
for someone to run into them seems to happen a lot.

Control: No matter how many
people zombies bite or how many get away, zombies never reflect on what worked
and what did not. “Hey look, a guy with a shotgun. Let’s stumble toward him
really slow and see what happens.” They never learn.