Making Information Technology a Competitive Advantage

Author: Forrest W. Breyfogle III

Given its more ambitious objectives, E-DMAIC is markedly different from DMAIC, particularly in three of its five steps.  They are:

Measure: The IT department orchestrates the collection of performance metrics on a "big picture" basis. It measures metrics at the 30,000-foot-level, which covers operational and production metrics, and the satellite level, which covers enterprise and financial metrics. There are also cascading metrics measurements.  For example, the product return rate that was measured at the 30,000-foot level cascades to the manufacturing facility product return rate at the 20,000-foot level. Data is captured in a time-series format, as a motion picture, not as a snapshot.  Satellite-level and 30,000-foot-level metric reporting makes possible tracking that describes trends and predicts the future rather than simply charts the past.

Analyze: The organization's enterprise resource planning data is analyzed in its totality.  The blending of analytics with innovation provides a broad range of benefits: It determines where improvement efforts should focus; helps the organization build bridges across its silos; provides insights to strategy building; enhances the simulation modeling of value stream maps and other tools to identify process and policy constraints that can be overcome; identifies risk assessments so that adjustments can be made before problems occur; identifies opportunities for improvement; and compiles meaningful customer feedback so it can use this information to identify which employee should tackle which underlying problems. 

Improve: IT is used to help prioritize improvement and design projects that impact the business as a whole.  Strategies that were created analytically/innovatively in the Analyze phase result in creation and completion of improvement projects for achievement of process-owner metric goals. The metrics concentrate on the processes that contribute most importantly to the bottom line—up and down the value chain.

As a result of all this, the IT system is no longer viewed as an expense.  Rather it has become the enabler of improved organizational management through the orchestration of no-nonsense measurements. E-DMAIC now allows the organization to establish a system that will stay in place irrespective of management changes. It assures predictability, despite changing economic and competitive factors. It allows the organization to get out of firefighting mode.  It maximizes the contributions of all the employees. Everyone is helping the organization enable the 3Rs of business. 

Forrest W. Breyfogle III is the founder and CEO of Smarter Solutions, Inc., www.smartersolutions.com.  The company specializes in helping organizations improve their customer satisfaction and bottom line through the implementation of advanced measurement and improvement processes.  Breyfogle is the author of the recently published how-to book, The Integrated Enterprise Excellence System: An Enhanced, Unified Approach to Balanced Scorecards, Strategic Planning and Business Improvement. Contact the author at forrest@smartersolutions.com.