1. Six Sigma Foundations Continuous Improvement Training
Identify Causes
Six Sigma Foundations
Continuous Improvement Training
Six Sigma Simplicity
Continuous Improvement - Identify Causes

2. Key learning point
Identify causes means create with the team a list of possible causes (X’s), the things that make your primary metric change
We can generate these from many sources as appropriate to the project
Continuous Improvement - Identify Causes

3. Process to identify causes
Benchmark your project with previous projects
Brainstorm the teams ideas
Use any material generated in measure phase
Continuous Improvement - Identify Causes

4. Benchmarking
You and your team ask BB/MBB, Associates and contacts inside and outside the company for ideas.
See separate section for more detail
Continuous Improvement - Identify Causes

5. Brainstorming
Remember that your choice of who is involved in brainstorming will effect the results
Perhaps you will record the information as a fishbone or a list
See separate section for more detail
Continuous Improvement - Identify Causes

6. Material from Measure phase
SIPOC will list Inputs – potential X’s
Metric graph may show special / common causes
Histogram’s shape may show symptoms of causes such as skew, granularity, multi-modes
Continuous Improvement - Identify Causes

7. Sharing the possible causes
Suggestions – write up the list clearly and keep it visible. to your champion, mentor, CI facilitation team.
This is to help people understand what the team is working on and to make it easy for others to get involved
Continuous Improvement - Identify Causes

8. Pitfalls If you have few X’s (Say less than 10)
you might miss the opportunity to make big improvements
you are constraining the teams in case of conflict over resource
you may not have enough subject knowledge
the project’s momentum is easy to stop
people may not have been involved early enough in the project to accept the teams
There is high potential for misunderstanding the scope of the project.

9. Six Sigma Foundations Continuous Improvement Training
Identify Causes
Six Sigma Foundations
Continuous Improvement Training
Continuous Improvement - Identify Causes